“Why are you in such a hurry?” asked Kelima. “And why didn’t you want me to talk to the guild master? Do you know what a wasted opportunity that was?”

“I’m in a hurry because I’m smart. As for that guild master, I don’t know who he actually is, but I do know that we want to avoid annoying him.”

“Since when do you care about annoying people.”

“Since I’m pretty sure that man could kill me.”

Terry took a few more steps before he realized that Kelima had stopped walking. He looked back at her, only to find her staring at him. Except, it wasn’t her usual stare, which was typically composed of three parts bafflement to six parts infuriation. At that moment, she was staring like he’d suddenly become the lead in some artsy foreign film made in a language she didn’t speak and, for reasons known only to God and the film’s director, there were no subtitles available.

“What?” he asked, hoping to move that day’s shitshow along as quickly as possible.

“He could kill you? You, the rank two adventurer who seems to take a grotesque satisfaction in pissing off hugely powerful organizations and everyone with a title? You think he could kill you?”

Terry gave that a two-count before he said, “Yup. Kill me dead. Deader than dead. Super dead. The deadest anyone has ever been deaded. Now, I’ve answered your question. Let’s go!”

He turned on his heel and started walking toward the wall, if not exactly toward a gate. Kelima caught up with him and he could just tell from the look on the teenager’s face that she wasn’t done asking him stupid questions. No, they’re not stupid questions. They’re just stupid-to-be-asking-right-now questions. I think those are different. Not that making that distinction made him any happier about the word bullets she was about to start firing into his taxed patience and questionably stable sanity subroutine.

“How could you tell? I didn’t get that sense from him.”

“You just can,” said Terry, unable to come up with anything better. “Maybe it happens when you get to a higher rank. Maybe I’ve just had enough awful things and people try to murder me in this terrible, horrible place you call home that I’ve developed a sixth sense for it. All I know for sure is that he’s powerful. Scary powerful. I-don’t-want-to-fight-him powerful.”

“It’s not that bad here,” said Kelima.

Terry tried to think of a better word than huffy to describe her tone, but he couldn’t. She was just being huffy. He tried to see it from her perspective. He really did. He spent five, maybe even ten complete seconds trying to put himself into her shoes. Then, he responded.

“You have to be shitting me. Do you not recall how many things I had to kill just to get us here? And that’s not even counting the church dumbass who challenged me to a duel. Or all his minions. Any of whom would have been happy to put a crossbow bolt through my eye.”

“Please don’t say and then there’s the nobles.”

“And then there’s the nobles,” said Terry with faux-cheer. “Every goddamn time I turn around, some noble is trying to make me do things I don’t want to do. Given all those city guards, I’m pretty confident there’s one in this very city looking to force me into some stupid plan. Not a plan to help the people living here. God knows we can’t have that. No, it’s practically guaranteed to be a plan that will end with them becoming a bigger and even more colossally entitled asshole than they already are.”

“Okay. I understand. This world has not been very kind to you, but it’s not some literal level of hell the way you make it out to be. Not everyone has your experience. People live long, happy, productive lives here. Lots of them.”

“Oh really?” asked Terry, not even trying to hide his skepticism. “And just how many of these long-lived, happy, productive people have you ever had a conversation with?”

“Um, that is—” Kelima stumbled over her words.

“Right. I’d be willing to guess that the answer is none. In fact, I’d bet that if you ever did have a conversation with them, you’d discover that they think this place sucks just as much as I do. The difference is that I know it sucks instead of just believing it.”

“This is still my home. It might not be some paradise to your thinking, but I happen to love it. Do you imagine you’d react well to it if someone came to your world and did nothing but say that it was shitty and hellish?”

“I don’t need to imagine that. We had the internet. People said things like that all of the time. I’m not even denying it. My world sucked in all kinds of ways. Even so, I’m telling you, this place is objectively worse. I’m not saying that no one ever got eaten by the wildlife where I lived, but it was damned rare. Here? People expect it. That is, by all objective measures, fucked up. I also never needed to worry that I was going to get killed by some jackhole wielding the magical power of a god that might or might not exist. As for all the attempts at coercion here… I’m not going to lie. That shit happened all the time in my world. For me, it was usually just my lousy boss trying to get me to work for free in my off time. The difference is that I wasn’t going to get killed for saying no.”

“You’re missing my point,” said Kelima. “Or you’re ignoring it on purpose. I can’t tell which.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“What are you talking about?”

“What I’m talking about is that you’re constantly talking about how terrible this place is. How dangerous it is.”

“And?”

“It’s rude. Whether you hate this place or not, it’s still rude to go on about it constantly. Back in your world, would you have walked into someone’s home and talked about how terrible it was directly to their face? Then, continued talking about how terrible it was every time you saw them?”

Terry actually missed a step at that. He knew the answer, and the answer was no. He would not have done that. His mother, not normally a violent woman, might have beaten him black and blue for doing something like that. He just hadn’t been thinking about it in quite that context. He’d never thought of this place as anyone’s home. It was just some isekai hellhole he desperately wished he could escape from. Before he could come up with a response, Kelima kept going.

“Let’s assume that you’re actually telling the truth and not remembering things as better than they were back where you come from. Fine. This place is worse. This world is dangerous for people who live here and can’t leave. What should we have done about that? Maybe, I don’t know, set up something that would let those with the power and inclination help the people and make a living at it? Perhaps we could call it an Adventurer’s Guild and let them manage hunting some of those dangerous monsters?

“What else could we have done? Maybe we should have made those nobles you despise so much responsible for arming and training people to defend their towns and cities. Oh, yeah, we did do that. Since apparently none of that was enough for the great and wise Terry, I’m sure that you have some brilliant idea from your safer, better world that will fix all these problems for us. Right? Please. Share. I’m eager to be enlightened.”

“I… I, uh—” Terry mumbled.

She’s got you there, hero, said other-Terry.

Terry knew that already. He just didn’t want to admit it out loud. It would have been too much like losing the argument, which he had. But it felt wrong to lose that kind of an argument, especially to some teenager, because he should be the wiser of the two. Right? He was older, so that meant he had more experience. Right? Or maybe I’m just being petty and willful about this.

Oh, you’re definitely being petty and willful about it, said other-Terry. Is your man pride seriously so fragile that you can’t bear to lose an argument to a girl?

No, thought Terry way too quickly. Probably not.

Uh-huh, said other-Terry.

Fine. Yes. My man pride is actually that fragile. Happy now?

Why would it make me happy to be trapped inside the mind of someone who’s afraid of being wrong in front of a teenager? It’s not like she’s your kid. So, why do you care? Just man the fuck up and apologize for being a dick. It’s the smart move for your long-term peace of mind.

That’s— It’s— Why are you even butting into this?

I’m bored. I could dress it up and say that you’ve been a complete slackass about learning how to cultivate and survive in this world—which would be true, I might add—but it’s mostly boredom.

Terry was “spared” from addressing that by Kelima’s merciless glare.

“Really?” she demanded. “Nothing to say to all of that? You had plenty to say about what was wrong with my home but not a single suggestion about how to make it better?”

Terry couldn’t meet her eyes when he said, “I guess not.”

All of that social awkwardness and ineptitude from his old life was rearing up inside of him, robbing him of much of the confidence he’d gained since arriving in this new world.

“You’re not even going to apologize, are you?” asked Kelima.

“I—”

“It doesn’t matter. We both know you’re wrong,” she said before obviously changing the subject. “Where are we going? I don’t think this takes us to a gate.”

“I’m thinking about avoiding the gates,” said Terry in relief. “After what the city guards did back at the guild hall, I’m not getting happy feelings about seeing more of them.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “I guess that makes sense, but how are you planning on getting us out of the city?”

“I was thinking about just climbing over the wall. I might even be able to jump it. I’m not sure.”

“And you don’t think that might draw some of that attention that you hate so much?” Kelima deadpanned with a bit too much edge in her voice.

“We’d have to be quick about it,” admitted Terry.

“You do realize that there’s no way I could climb over that wall as fast as you, right?”

He looked at her for a moment and sighed. She was right. Again. He’d been thinking about what he could reasonably do, not what she could do. Goddammit. He ignored other-Terry’s chortling.

“If we go to a gate, there’s going to be a fight,” he complained.

“If we try to go over the wall, there’s going to be a chase and then a fight. Either way, we end up fighting. Might as well just get it over with.”

“I guess that’s true,” said Terry. “Alright. Let’s go find a gate.”

It took a little while for them to reach one of the gates. As they approached, Terry saw a guy in what looked like a uniform standing next to a horse. He was talking sternly to the city guards.

“That doesn’t look promising,” muttered Terry.

Kelima made a vaguely unhappy noise but didn’t actually comment. Much to Terry’s astonishment, the city guards ushered them right through the gate, all while casting fearful glances back at the man with the horse. Once they’d gotten out of the city and away from any listening ears, Terry looked at Kelima.

“What the hell just happened?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” she said with a perplexed expression.

Terry’s eyes narrowed. There was a trope at work here. He could feel it. He didn’t know what trope, but that easy departure had the stink of one all over it. He wanted to take the win and not think about it. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. If someone or something had intervened on their behalf, there could be all manner of invisible strings attached to that favor. Unfortunately, the deed was done. He’d just have to deal with the repercussions as they came. There was something else he had to deal with in the right now.

“So,” he said. “It’s decision time.”

Kelima looked at him askance and asked, “Decision time about what?”

“You saw what happened back there in the city. Despite your constant attempts to get us killed by challenging the universe, all of that was within what I consider the bounds of a normal day for me. It isn’t going to get better, which means that you’re signing up to deal with that shit full-time. This is your chance to decide that it’s not worth it. We’re still on a road, which means that it would still be pretty easy for you to go home. Once we head up into the mountains, there’s no turning back. You won’t survive out there alone. So, what’s it going to be?”

Terry was happy to see that she at least looked like she was really thinking it over. It gave him hope that she might make a good choice. Then, an expression of resignation marred her features and his hopes were dashed.

“I’ll come with you. I have to,” she said.

Terry reached up to massage his eyes and said, “Everyone in this world is insane.”