Fukona Isekai?!?

不幸な異世界

The man groaned, completely oblivious to the irony of how cliche such an action might be as his existential introduction. Why should he care after all? He had been fully insensate, lacking even a hint of conscious thought. At the moment, his perceptions were limited to his person. Coincidentally, he found himself personifying a living human migraine beyond any exponential intensity he had ever before experienced.

His first reflexive, conscious thought intruded "A human migraine still counts as human, right?"

The man quickly realized that the wit-pulping-agony of the migraine had a pair of unpopular sidekicks: full body muscle cramps in a matched set with systemic deep aching bone pain. The man wondered if he had been kidnapped and subjected to comprehensive torture, but just didn't remember it. Had the man not been utterly consumed by such excruciating pain, he might have paid more attention to a strange, silky-soft fuzzy sensation of faint but urgent movement focused on his left forearm.

The man emitted yet another more emphasized groan, which he promptly developed and evolved into a deeply meaningful moan as the sound of it reverberated into his brain. This fully woke him to a distinctly regretful sense of consciousness and self-awareness. This was not what he signed up for. What did he sign up for? There's got to be a manager he can speak with somewhere.

"What is going on? Where is here? Who am I?" the man asked himself internally, before finally speaking aloud to himself:

"Ugh, I don't know jack"

"Jack?" the man questioned himself internally before continuing on in an attempt to identify himself

"Everythings fuzzy, I guess I'm Jack. So much for self knowledge! Ouch!"

'Jack' couldn't hear anything over the exquisitely painful ringing in his ears, and his sense of smell was resolutely denied as an embarrassing amount of snot liberally poured from his burning sinuses to be mixed with the dirt he seemed to be lying facedown in.

'Jack's mental self review continued.

"I think I'm naked. Oh dear God I hurt!" he thought.

In response to some reflexive habit for sanity-preservation, Jack, as he began to more confidently identify himself as, instinctively added humor to his self-exploration efforts "Did truck-kun finally get me, or did I owe money to someone?"

"Damn, those were total dad jokes" Jack chastised himself with minimal conviction.

"This is one hell of a hangover, I haven't had a fuzzy hole in my memory since...ok wow, I can't remember and that's a bit terrifying."

Jack's skin grew taut and preternaturally chilled as the uncomfortable existential realization washed over him. However, the emotionally induced artificial chill was shortly replaced by a tangibly real chill.

"No, this is no hangover, and yes I'm naked, I feel wind on my butt."

Jack thought to himself and continued on:

"Yep, I think that's dry grass making my sack itch. Ugh, I hear a mosquito. Dear God, it sounds like an actual Apache attack helicopter, and not some online jerk who claims to identify as one because they are easily threatened and insecure."

"Crap, are there ants in my butt crack?" Jack continued internally with growing unease.

"What the hell is shaking my arm? Why is it so soft and fuzzy?"

Jack refocused on this newly identified sensation in order to distract himself from the danger his own imagination was attempting to inflict upon him.

"I'm going to have to open my eye at some point" Jack resolved, completely unaware of the peculiarity of his statement.

Jack braced to endure the agony of forcing his taut and rigid neck muscles to tentatively consider responding to his unreasonable demands. He mentally leaned into his pain, using it to call up a spark of reflexive anger that helped him brow-beat his body into obeying. He nearly shat himself as the exertion to lift and turn his head coursed through his entire body. As the pain tested his tentative sanity, Jack could have almost sworn he felt the pain ripping apart individual muscle cells as he strained.

"Ok, let's not get all chuuni with kwisatz haderach fantasies here" Jack reprimanded his errant thoughts through a painful mental haze.

Unsteadily but inexorably, Jack turned his head towards the peculiar and situationally inconsonant sensations he was experiencing on his left forearm.

The exertion needed to lift and turn his head quickly drained Jack's pitiable mental and physical resources. Through main force of will, he was able to momentarily contest the inevitability that was gravity. He turned his rictus grin to face the puzzling sensation he felt on his forearm. Then, with unenviable hesitation and no small measure of better judgement, Jack willed his crusted, dehydrated right eye to crack open and resume public service.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Jack instantly regretted the whole sum of his entire existence, brief and limited as it was. Liquid living agony rampaged along an optic nerve that would not normally be expected to shoulder this type of workload. As Jack's eye complained vociferously to his brain, he found his brain joining the revolt. Jack's grotesquely over-strained mental capacities buckled, his fragile awareness shattering as he fell back into an insensate stupor. Be it Grace or Fortune, unconsciousness allowed Jack to avoid discovering how much it should have hurt when his forehead slammed back down into the ground.

If he had been offered a choice, Jack would have overwhelmingly prefered to stay unconscious and sleep off whatever inexplicable misfortune had been inflicted on him. Consciousness however, did not turn out to be a conscious choice for him, as he woke once more after only a few moments. Jack came to himself with all his previous maladies, except now he had unlocked the bonus package that included a painful goose egg on his forehead and the indignity of a face smeared with mucus-mud.

Despite experiencing a new level of existential pain and humiliation, Jack was not awarded any sort of arbitrary recognition for this achievement. It was almost like there was no method to all of this madness, and no arbitrary system to document individual progress imposed upon reality. Who would expect something like that anyway?

After some very reasonable hesitation, Jack began to gather whatever dregs he still had in the tank. He struggled to achieve some level of mental calm, trying to mentally separate his pain from his thoughts and other sensations. As he did so, Jack felt the taut cramps in his muscles slowly begin to ease their incessant grip on his frame. As this progressed, he simultaneously felt the growth of a cool and refreshing tingling spreading from the base of his skull up across his scalp, down his neck and spine, and across every inch of his skin.

"ASMR" some small part of him recognized in the back of his mind.

As his premature rigor-mortis vanished, Jack felt a somewhat disturbing sensation begin to grow and spread inside his bones. It was a peculiar, warm glow, building in rhythmic counterplay to the cool sensations he felt across his skin. Endorphins flooded his system, easing the mental and emotional impacts of the pain Jack had been experiencing.

"Uh oh, I'm having chuuni hallucinations again!" Jack almost panicked as he tried to convince himself that he hadn't just felt the insides of his bones itching as nerves regrew and reattached themselves.

Fortunately for his delicate grip on sanity, Jack was immediately distracted from further pursuit of that line of thought. Overwhelming relief flooded his entire body, allowing him to abruptly and instinctively gasp for deeper breaths than he had been able to take before. He once again nearly lost consciousness as the sudden unnatural change in what his brain was experiencing clashed completely with every natural expectation for continued suffering his subconscious had been anticipating. Overcome by the existentially jarring juxtaposition, Jack briefly fell into the vertigo of his own mind. Reflexively, Jack found himself following some unconscious habit for breathing exercises, led by his intuition. By forgotten habit or instinct Jack worked to straighten his limbs, further deepen and slow his breathing, and consciously release the emotional expectation of further pain. Half delirious, he worked to restore whatever equilibrium he could claim.

After only a handful of moments, Jack felt remarkably refreshed and reinvigorated, allowing his hold on consciousness to grow stable. When he then considered the incomprehensible suffering that had been his whole reality mere moments before, Jack's subconscious suspicions lept up in a lunge towards full on panic that he barely contained. Once again Jack found himself reflexively repeating a mindfulness exercise, which allowed him to fully compartmentalize the panic and begin to pay attention to his surroundings for the first time since regaining consciousness.

He was scared. No, he was terrified. It was a tight knot of nausea and pain in his gut. But he was ok, he had just felt more pain that he could rationalize, but he didn't seem to be hurt or dying NOW, and in fact he felt pretty good for the most part. Weird, even the goose egg on his forehead didn't seem to hurt anymore. Huh, what else could he still feel?

Yep, there was still itchy grass on his sack and ants in his crack.

Oh crap they were already stinging, and it was going to really suck to wipe later.

Huh, he felt cold running water on his foot and he hadn't noticed that before. Oh yeah, he had just straightened that leg out, so that must have put his foot in water.

Oh wow! His scalp was still tingly, and the painful ringing in his ears was gone! Suddenly Jack could hear without the oppressive weight of angry reality crushing his very existence! It's not like reality or anyone else had asked him. His existence was entirely coincidental, as far as he was aware.

Yep, he heard running water, wind through trees, something rhythmically rustling the grass and leaves close to his head on the left side, and...an ice cream truck?

Jack absentmindedly found himself musing "I wonder if they have bomb pops."

Wait, that noise to his left, it was suspiciously close to that thing he felt earlier, yep that thing he felt earlier on his arm.

Yep, it was still there on his left forearm, almost ticklish, soft and fuzzy, firm in some places gentle in others, rhythmic and flowing, just barely shaking his arm. In a way, it was harder to notice because now it didn't send jolts of suffering to antagonize an already overwhelmed brain.

Jack resolved himself to once again risk opening his eye to investigate. He assured himself that this was an inescapable eventuality. Considering how improved he felt, he believed he could trust reality enough to not inflict more unreasonable and inexplicable punishment on him at this time. After all, his eye didn't even feel cracked and dehydrated anymore.

Except...he became aware of another common biological imperative that tends to closely accompany rapid rehydration. Additionally, pain was declaring its return to Jack's experience portfolio as the previously noted insects intensified their assault on his nethers. This newer reality impacted him thoroughly, overcoming the fading remnants of his endorphin rush and causing Jack's eyes to snap open immediately.

Rampant confusion slammed into Jack's psyche, and he struggled to reconcile his current reality with his previous expectations of sanity.

"What are you doing?" Jack dryly asked the very fluffy white and grayish rabbit that appeared to be nervously humping his forearm.

The bunny met Jack's gaze. What followed next was perhaps the most peculiar of all the man's already rather bewildering recent experiences.

David Attenborough's mental narration intruded upon Jack's alarmed mind. The disembodied mental voice of the famed naturalist answered in a desperate tone, bordering somewhere between panic and breathy passion.

"I don't know! I'm not quite certain what came over me or what is going on!"

The bunny's eyes widened further as David Attenborough's telepathic dialogue narration continued.

"I just really like you, I feel very connected to you and need to be a part of you and...so I don't understand what is happening...

"Wait...Buddy Friend? Is that you?!?"

Jack's eyes widened to match and meet the rabbit's, as he urgently jerked his arm away from the fluffy, adorable, albeit non-consensual suitor.

The rabbit was caught off guard, mid thrust, and bereft of the prior focus for his ardently confused passions. He suddenly found himself falling and tumbling backwards in mid-air. With alacrity and grace that seemed to surprise the rabbit, it twisted and landed on its feet with every appearance of casual ease, settling back on its haunches to resume meeting the man's now much more hostile and guarded stare.

"Buddy Friend?" Jack requested clarification for how the rabbit had addressed him.

"Wait, Cal?!" Jack half exclaimed and half demanded of the rabbit, as sudden recognition widened his eyes.

The rabbit met the man's gaze as they shared a moment of mutual surprise, recognition, relief, and bewilderment.

"Buddy Friend! It's you! Where are we? What's going on? Why was I humping your arm?!?" David Attenborough telepathically narrated to Jack once again.

"Dude! I don't know, you tell me!" replied the man before continuing to press the bunny for answers.

"How the hell are you talking in my head? Why the hell do you sound like David Attenborough?" the man demanded.

Cal, as the rabbit had now been identified, looked taken aback for a moment. He seemed to carefully ponder before offering his response.

"Well, what do you expect?" David Attenborough/Cal telepathically communicated once more.

"You never watched anything but documentaries! Some anime fan you are! I wanted to watch more shonen, but no! What do you expect when every single night for years I fell asleep with his voice in my head?!"

Abruptly, the telepathic narration from David Attenborough ceased, to be immediately replaced by an alarmingly close approximation of the late great Steve Irwin's telepathic voice.

"Oi! Would you prefer I be the Crocodile Hunter mate? Oi! He's getting agitated!" Cal/Irwin taunted as Jack's eyes widened in alarmed consternation.

"No! No! Attenborough is great! Stick with that buddy! Still, how the hell can you talk? Where the hell are we and what happened?" demanded Jack, in a growing panic.