“You’re being bullied, aren’t you?” he asked, this time with more confidence. Though he was still slightly slouched and drawn into himself as he usually was, he stared directly into my eyes, as if daring me to deny it.

“No?” The sheer certainty he had in his eyes made me hesitate for a second before I dismissed the idea as being stupid. I shook my head. “I’m not being bullied, Jamie.”

Jamie’s expression didn’t change as he looked up at me.

I stared back at him, wondering what the hell was happening. Was that it? Was this the end of the conversation?

“You know, sometimes when something bad happens to you, don’t you feel like sometimes, it’s easier to just act like it never happened?”

Apparently it wasn’t over.

“Jamie,” I said.

He held up a hand before I could continue. “Let me say my piece first. Please, Lena?”

After a moment of thought, I realised that I couldn’t think of a reason to deny his request. I could just stay quiet and let him talk. I needed a moment to think of how to explain my self-isolation from him and the rest of our group, without giving away the fact that I was doing it so the Mediators would have an easier time in killing him.

I frowned.

“I’m not being bullied,” I said.

Jamie smiled at me. It was a sad expression, somehow.

“I care about you, Lena,” he said. “It’s easy to ignore something bad that’s happening around us, and I know you might want to pretend everything’s fine, but I don’t want to be someone that ignores my friend being hurt.”

I grimaced. I knew Jamie was only two years younger than me, but there was a sincerity in his words and his expression that made him look like a child. A naive, innocent, stupid child.

“It’s fine, Jamie,” I said.

“It’s really not,” he said.

“But it is,” I said. “Sometimes bad things just happen. Sometimes we just need to let it happen, for the sake of the greater good.”

“What kind of greater good needs people to suffer?” he asked, perplexed.

“The kind where the suffering of others is at stake,” I replied, frowning. “The kind where one person’s suffering can make sure more people don’t suffer an equally terrible fate.”

Jamie stared at me wide-eyed, raised a finger, then grimaced as he thought for a moment.

“I get how it might feel like that,” he said, a little hesitantly. “But no offence. I think you’re being a little melodramatic. You being bullied won’t determine the fate of the world or anything.”

I frowned. I had forgotten that’s what we were talking about. I glanced at the Mediators to see if they’d reacted at all. I assumed they had some sort of way to listen in on us, even if they were sitting across the tavern from us.

Jamie followed my gaze and sighed.

“I’m not being bullied,” I said.

Jamie just sighed again.

“Shit. Sorry if I sounded a little pushy. I know how hard it can be to talk about these kinds of things. I just wanted to let you know that I can lend you an ear if you want to talk.” He peeked up nervously at me, to give me a wry smile. “I mean, I get it. I really do.”

“I really doubt that you do,” I said. If Jamie knew my real internal turmoils, I doubted this conversation would be as civil as it was. He was a nice kid, but I doubted he would casually be trying to console his indirect murderer like this.

I grimaced again at the idea.

“No really,” Jamie continued, blissfully unaware that I was holding a different conversation than the one he was participating in. “I get it. I was bullied too, back in my old world.”

Jamie awkwardly scratched at the back of his head as his gaze drifted to the side.

“Well, I wasn’t really bullied. Not like in the movies, where some jock chooses a kid from the nerd clique to beat up and extort lunch money out of. I guess I was just… shunned? Kind of like what the others are doing to you.” He let out a humourless laugh. “Now that I say that out loud, I guess I’m not really as noble as I was making myself out to be. I’m only empathising with you because when I look at you, I see myself.”

I winced as I looked at Jamie’s genuinely sorrowful expression. “Jamie, seriously. It’s not what you think it is,” I said.

“No, I’m serious, Lena,” he said, his voice rising in volume, and deflating in mood simultaneously. “I know what it’s like, and I know how much it sucks. You just keep telling yourself that everything’s alright, because you think that admitting that it sucks will only make things worse. Well it won’t. It doesn’t, and it won’t.”

The tavern was quiet, and Jamie’s voice was getting loud enough that it could probably be heard by everyone else there, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Jamie,” I said.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He didn’t seem to notice.

“The worst part is, now that I’m looking at it from the outside, I can tell that I was just being stupid. These are good people, Lena. I don’t know why everyone’s excluding you, but I know that if you just talked to them, they’d probably talk to you too. I don’t think they hate you. They just don’t really know you. It’s not like they’re punishing you for existing, but you gotta stop thinking like they are,” Jamie said, looking back at me. He tried to give me a smile, but it was shaky. “I think you’re really cool, Lena. I’m sure if you talked to everyone, they’d realise how cool you are too.”

I looked away, unable to face his earnest gaze. He stayed silent, waiting for an answer.

“Umm, thanks,” I said. “But I’m serious Jamie. I’m not being bullied.”

Jamie frowned and sighed.

“I understand,” he said. “Just know that if you ever need someone to talk to, or if you ever need my help, I’m always here.”

I shook my head.

“No. Listen to me, Jamie. I’m not being bullied. I just happen to dislike every one of the Mediators we travelled with,” I said, hoping that it would be a good enough explanation to stop him from spiralling further into this conversation. “It’s as simple as that.”

Jamie gave me a sad smile.

“I get it, Lena. I used to think that I hated everyone too. But we don’t need to talk about this right now. Just know that I’m ready to talk whenever you are.”

I sighed. It didn’t seem like anything I did would convince Jamie of the truth. At least not right now. I didn’t even know if it was even necessary to do it. If Jamie thought I was unhappy travelling with him and the Mediators, would that make it more or less likely that he would let me stay in Plainswood when they left?

“Alright,” I said. “I’ll talk to you if I need to.”

“That’s all I ask.”

He smiled at me, but I couldn’t muster the will to smile back. He seemed so happy to have ‘helped’ me, that a pang of guilt struck me, and struck me hard.

“You can talk to me about your problems too,” I said. “You know. If you want.”

Jamie blinked a few times, as if he’d never considered the idea before.

“Thanks, but I don’t have problems,” he said, his voice a little flat.

I’d seen him cry and mope too many times to know that wasn’t true, but I wasn’t going to push him.

“Well, if problems ever do come up, just let me know. I’m ready to talk whenever you are,” I said, deflecting his own words back at him. “Alright?”

Jamie nodded. “Alright. But I really don’t have any problems. At least not after coming here. I guess my life back at home wasn’t the greatest, but that’s over now. I’m fine.”

He didn’t sound fine, not in the slightest, but again, I wasn’t going to push him to talk about it.

“That’s good,” I said.

“It is,” he replied, a little too quickly. “I mean, I know I never used to have friends, but now I have you! And Oren, and Sera. Tenna and Laush are nice too. Oh yeah, and magic exists too! That’s a thing.”

Jamie let out a laugh. It wasn’t a happy one, being devoid of any humour or life. In the corner of my eye, I saw the two conscious non-Mediators, my dad and the tavernkeeper, flinched at the sound.

“Jamie,” I said.

“Yeah it’s been really good, even if it’s been pretty crazy,” he said, ignoring my attempt to interrupt him. “But now I have everything I ever wanted. Magic, friends, adventure. I guess it feels a little weird, especially since this all happened so fast. I mean, sometimes, I can’t help but think this is all just some weird dream and I’m going to wake up in a hospital bed with the doctor saying that I’ve been in a coma for a few weeks. You know?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. He was speaking too quickly and gasping for air too frequently for me to be able to make sense of what he was saying before he moved onto something else. He was taking quicker and quicker breaths, and though he wasn’t quite hyperventilating, he seemed pretty close to it.

“I don’t know what to do. What am I supposed to do? How do I make sure that this is real? I don’t want to go back. I’m good here. I don’t want to go back.”

Yup. This was definitely not the behaviour of someone who was ‘fine’.

“Jamie.”

He kept talking, making no indication that he’d even heard me. His words were getting more and more muddled, and it was getting more and more difficult to make out what he was saying.

I reached out and touched Jamie’s elbow. That seemed to get his attention as he looked up at me.

“Jamie. Can you feel me touching your elbow?”

“Y-yeah,” he said, still struggling to catch his breath. He looked down at where my hand was touching him, as if he needed to see it to confirm it anyways.

“I used to get pretty bad nightmares when I was a kid,” I said. “They were usually about some weird nonsense that could never really exist, but whenever I was in them, they did feel real. My mom always told me that if I’m having a bad dream, I can always try to scratch myself on the shoulder because you can’t feel physical sensations in a dream. Is it like that for Otherworlders too?”

Jamie nodded shakily. “Pinching.”

“Pinching?” I asked.

“We pinch ourselves to make sure we’re not dreaming,” he said. “Not scratching.”

I tried to give him a smile. “Why don’t you try that out?”

Jamie nodded, and pinched the flesh above one of his wrists. He winced.

“That hurt,” he said.

I nodded. “Do you still think you’re dreaming?”

He looked up at me. He was still taking gasping breaths, but they weren’t nearly as shallow and rapid.

“N-no,” he said.

“That’s good.”

Jamie’s deep breaths were the only noise that filled the tavern. I was tempted to glance to the side to see the reaction from the civilians or the Mediators sitting in the room, but I didn’t want to break eye contact with Jamie. He was getting better, but he didn’t seem completely convinced as of yet, so I simply locked eyes with him until his breathing slowed down to a level that didn’t make me worried as much.

“Are you okay?” I asked, once he stopped gasping for air.

Jamie grimaced and looked away, blushing an angry red.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry for freaking out.”

“I told you to stop apologizing so much didn’t I?” I said, tapping his elbow once more before drawing away from him. “It’s not your fault you freaked out.”

“It is, though,” he said, scoffing. “I’m just mentally weak.”

“You literally travelled to an entirely different world, Jamie. And I don’t know exactly how you did it, but I can guess from context clues that it wasn’t exactly a pleasant process, either. It’s normal to feel stressed.”

Jamie looked up at me and made a quiet noise that sounded like it was something between a laugh and a sigh.

“That’s funny. I thought I was supposed to be consoling you,” he said, though his voice held no humour in it. “Guess I still can’t do anything right, even in an isekai world.”

“You’re fifteen. Name me one fifteen year old that isn’t a complete fuck up. You can’t.”

Jamie groaned. “This wasn’t what we were even supposed to be talking about! I didn’t want your help, I wanted to help you! We’ve barely even talked about your bullying problem.”

I let out an involuntary laugh. Jamie’s eyes shot towards me at the sound, raising his eyebrows in a perplexed expression. I don’t know why, but his reaction just made me laugh more.

“What?” he said.

“I’m serious when I said I didn’t have a bullying problem, Jamie,” I said, standing up and gesturing for him to follow. “I’ll prove it too.”

“What?” he said again.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ll kill two birds with one stone, shall we? I can introduce you to my friends, and you can see a few fifteen year olds that are much more of a mess than you are.”

As the words left my mouth, I thought about the fact that I’d just condemned my friends to talking to an Otherworlder. From Bran’s last encounter with Jamie, I realised how badly they would probably handle it.

But Jamie was nice enough. Surely it would turn out fine. Besides, I needed some payback for how Bran abandoned me like that when I first brought Jamie to the village.

“Let’s go,” I said.