It was uncomfortable. I suddenly felt like I didn't belong here anymore, on Earth, that is. The smell of gas and pollution was something I never noticed before getting isekaied, but after spending a few weeks in a world without cars, the air had a distinct smell and taste that I couldn't help but notice. The sidewalk beneath my feet felt odd, too flat and smoother than the dirt paths and cobblestone that paved the roads in Astranta, making my gait feel awkward and overly deliberate.

It surprised me to realize how busy Earth was. Even this early in the morning in the middle of the suburbs, it was hard to go more than a few minutes without seeing the signs of another person, whether it was the dim glow of a light shining through the window of a distant house, or an early commuter driving past me. Compared to my short life in Materia, where I could walk for a week without seeing any traces of human life, it was a strange feeling, like I didn't have any sort of privacy.

Though with the existence of the admin, I supposed that was true wherever I went.

I tried not to think about it, trying to distract myself with the sights of my morning commute to school.

Unfortunately, my attempts to ignore the existence of my watcher seemed to summon it instead.

The contents of your memory are being affected to a significant degree. Please lower your head and point your eyes to the ground.

I sighed angrily and opened my mouth to speak, but once again, though my mouth moved, no sound came out.

This was going to be a real pain. Why did I have to look at the ground? I wouldn't be able to see where I was going.

In your memory, you keep your gaze consistently aimed towards the floor. You may corrupt your memory significantly if you refuse to follow.

I frowned. Back on Earth, I knew that I usually kept my head down and shoulders hunched, but I sincerely doubted that looking up would change the flashback that much. Even if I usually kept my head down, it wasn't like I didn't remember what my neighbourhood looked like, so not letting me look up during this flashback would be a pointless limitation.

I continued to walk with my head raised, and when no invisible force took a hold of me and forced my gaze down, I let out a sigh of relief.

I'm not sure if my small victory actually made a difference in the end. I didn't remember anything exciting happening on my way to school, and actually having to relive it didn't change my mind, especially since I wasn't about to experience nostalgia for a place I'd only left less than a month ago.

When I got to school, habit took over and I headed to my usual morning spot, expecting the admin to want me to go there to follow the "contents of my memory". When no dialogue box popped up to stop me, I made my way over to my stairwell.

The stairwell at the furthest end of the school was far away from everything, which made it one of the most secluded spots in the school, especially during the colder months, since the radiator never worked. While it was usually occupied during classes and lunch by couples who wanted somewhere secluded to make out, nobody ever went there this early in the morning. Except for me, of course.

I sat down on the broken radiator and pulled out my phone.

I wondered what I was supposed to do now, not remembering the specifics of how I might've spent this specific morning, but my phone screen started to shift on its own, flipping through different apps and websites before finally landing on a familiar site. I watched as my phone scrolled through a selection of webnovels before finally landing on a familiar title, My Second Life as a SSS-ranked Adventurer.

Even though it wasn't a favourite of mine, it still held a special place in my heart, mostly because it was one of the first webnovels that actually got me into the isekai genre. I was a little surprised by how difficult it was to remember the exact details of the story, but not too surprised. While I'd read the story at least a dozen times over, the I had no problem with admitting or recognizing the fact that My Second Life as a SSS-ranked Adventurer was a painfully generic isekai with nothing specific that stood out about it other than the fact that the fans liked to refer to it as "My Salsa" because the acronym of MSLAASA was a pain to say out loud.

I didn't need any prompting to start reading it again, excited to relive the experience.

It only took about five minutes for me to regret my life choices.

The beginning of the story was standard fare for the genre.

Protagonist gets transported to a generic fantasy setting. Protagonist meets pretty blonde village girl with big boobs. Protagonist follows obvious love interest to her village. Village gets attacked by mindless goblins. Hero slays the goblins and asks the girl to go on an adventure with him. She accepts and they head to the city to register as adventurers.

...

I tried to turn off my phone. It didn't work, and a dialogue box appeared in front of me, but I grabbed my hood and pulled it down in front of my face in an attempt to erase myself from existence.

Unfortunately, I could still somehow read the dialogue box through the fabric of my hoodie.

You must remember.

Yeah. I definitely remembered. Leave me alone.

You must remember.

I held my face under my hood for a few more minutes before I finally managed to calm down to the point where I could exist without cringing to death.

You must remember.

I doubted that I'd ever viewed My Salsa as a work of literary prestige before this point, but the antics of the protagonist held a very unflattering mirror up to my own experiences as an isekai protagonist. Every bit of cringey dialogue made me think of how I had acted during my first few days in Materia, and I couldn't help but want to shrivel up out of existence.

It was even worse when I had to read anything about not-Lena. I tried to avert my eyes from the the overly detailed descriptions of not-Lena's ass, feeling a sense of guilt as if it were the equivalent of ogling Lena herself, but when the dialogue boxes kept popping up and assaulting my eyes with increasing insistences that "I must remember", I settled for aggressively skimming over those parts.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I felt a flush rise to my face whenever I had to read about not-Lena's obvious and immediate crush on the protagonist. After every interaction between the two characters, I had to take a breather, just so I wouldn't explode from the secondhand embarrassment, and the firsthand embarrassment that I felt whenever I remembered that was how I genuinely expected my own interactions with Lena to go when I first met her.

"That's not how people act like in real life," I mumbled to myself, hating the admin for forcing me to read this.

When another dialogue box popped up, the message on it was similar enough to what I'd seen before that I almost ignored it, but I paused my reading to give it a second glance.

You are remembering incorrectly.

I waited, as if staring at the sentence for longer would magically help me make sense of what it was trying to say, but when nothing happened, I scratched at my head.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

A new dialogue box popped up, but not a very helpful one.

You are remembering incorrectly.

"Look," I said. "You gotta be more clear. How could I possibly mess up reading?"

You are reading correctly. You are remembering incorrectly.

I sighed, scratching at my head again. Rather than complaining, I took a moment to think about what that could possibly mean. Fortunately, the admin's "riddle" wasn't very difficult, even if the protagonist of My Salsa might have taken at least a chapter to mull over what the admin was trying to imply.

"Am I supposed to say that that is how people act like in real life?" I asked, remembering what prompted the admin's reaction in the first place.

Yes.

"But they don't," I said.

Why not?

I stared at the box for a few seconds and felt a sigh threatening to escape me, as I quickly grew frustrated by the admin's almost childlike mannerisms. But before I opened my mouth to let the admin know that what it was suggesting was incredibly stupid, I suddenly remembered who I was talking to.

I was talking to the admin. I didn't know exactly what the admin was, but I knew that it was the being that brought me back from the dead, sent me to an alternate dimension, and gave me godlike powers beyond my imagination. By all intents and purposes, I was dealing with a god.

I wasn't religious in any sense of the word, but I didn't need to know anything about religion to understand what a god was. While not all gods were described as being truly omniscient, I doubted that any religion described their gods as being completely clueless, so why was the admin acting like it couldn't understand such basic concepts?

I was starting to recognize what was going on here. A wise figure acting stupid in order to bait the main character into stumbling across a moral revelation about themselves was a tried and true trope that I'd seen many times before in countless movies and comic books. Was that what was happening here?

"People don't act like that," I said hesitantly.

Why?

Again, the dialogue stood out to me as being childlike, like the admin was genuinely clueless about what I could possibly mean, but a small part of me felt like the admin was simply egging me on, to explain my thought process out loud so I could stumble across the revelation it was leading me to.

"They just don't," I said, unsure of what exactly what I was supposed to say here. "It's an OP MC power fantasy. The characters in that book don't act like people do in real life because it's not supposed to be a representation of real life. Life doesn't give you levels, and OP powers straight from the beginning, and pretty girls that fall in love with you because you save them from a goblin attack. That's just not how it works."

False.

I stared at the dialogue box, furrowing my brow. I was getting more and more certain about my theory that the admin was just giving me some sort of moral test, but I couldn't understand how this was the point that I'd failed in. What had I said that was wrong?

You were given levels, power, and a woman to save.

I opened my mouth to protest, but closed it quickly. I don't know how I long stayed there, staring at the dialogue box.

I don't know how long I would've simply stood there for, if I hadn't noticed the way that the world was shifting around me. I looked around, in a panic, as I tried to register what was going on, but nothing I saw made sense, until suddenly, the world snapped back into focus.

I didn't know why the flashback had suddenly shifted, but I immediately wanted to turn and run as I recognized the scene in front of me.

The only thing I could manage was to turn my head slightly downwards and to the side.

I couldn't help but panic, as once again I became a passenger in my own body. I opened my mouth to shout at the admin once more, but the only thing that came out of my mouth was a nervous, "Hi Taylor."

"Hey, Jamie. What did you need from me? And why at the back of the school?" Taylor let out a slight chuckle, though I could clearly hear the confusion that she felt. My old crush's voice made my chest tighten in embarrassment at what was about to come.

I tried to keep my mouth shut, but once more, it moved without my permission, as did my body, as I bent down in a low bow for no other reason than that I'd seen it in anime.

"I love you," my mouth said. "Please be my girlfriend."

After a short pause, my neck craned up and my eyes opened, forcing me to remember the expression of pity and anxiety on Taylor's face that I had tried so hard to forget.

"Oh..." she said.

I let out a gasp as I fell over backwards, unprepared for how I was suddenly given control of my body once more. I heaved, and thought for a moment that I would throw up, to recreate the memory of my confession exactly, but nothing came out.

The rules of your first life were rewritten. You were given the life you wished for. Why are you dissatisfied?

Even through clenched eyelids, I could still read the words.

If your truth applied to the world, Taylor would have fallen in love with you. Your dream would be achieved. Is that not what you want with your Second Life? To be loved? It can be so.

I shook my head.

That's not love.

It isn't?

It isn't.

Then what is love?

So that was the question. What this had all been leading up to. My moment of revelation, defined by however I would answer next. It made sense. That was my wish. My ultimate goal. To be loved.

In my webnovels, this would be the point where I waxed poetic about what the true meaning of love was, how my adventures in Astranta made me realize things about myself that I hadn't known before, that the force was within me this whole time. Unfortunately, no matter how similar my current life was to the plot of a webnovel, I didn't know anything.

"I don't know," I said. Even though I knew the admin could read my thoughts, it felt like it was something I had to say out loud. I was surprised by the sound of my voice. I sounded bitter.

Why?

"Nobody fucking taught me."

Why?

"Why don't you fucking ask him yourself?"

Immediately, the world started to turn around me. I closed my eyes. I didn't know for sure what the admin was going to show me next, but I had a few guesses.

Even as I felt the world settle around me, I kept my eyes closed. When I felt my arms reaching up to pull my hood over my head, I wasn't sure if it was because I was stuck in another forced cutscene, or if my body was just moving instinctively.

"Boy," a voice said.

I don't think I'd ever heard him use my name before.

"Dad," I responded.