Nakano Aimi was having a pretty good day. This was the day that her crush would be showing his talent at the school exhibition soccer match. He might not be the most popular boy and he certainly wasn’t the best soccer player but he was the boy she really liked anyway.
They were currently in fifth period, her absolute favorite! Aimi wasn’t very fond of algebra II but there was a bonus. This was the only class that she had with Ryuji! He sat two seats in front of her to the left and at times like this the sun would shine through the window and he would absolutely glow, just the way she always saw him.
There was just one little problem. Aimi had never been able to work up the courage to talk to him. She kept hoping for a chance to bump into him in the hall or something like that. Aimi was a fan of romcom manga and kept hoping that she could get tangled up in one of those kinds of situations with Ryuji one day.
The bell tolled for the end of class and she hurried to catch a glimpse of him as he left the classroom. As she was peeking out from behind the lockers at him down the hall she was scared nearly out of her skirt. Her friend Amane had snuck up on her and grabbed her by the shoulder.
Once Amane finished laughing, she spoke to the now-embarrassed Aimi. “I don’t get it! Why don’t you just talk to him? I mean it’s not like he has a girlfriend or even a girl he likes right? If you just talk to him, I’m sure that he’ll go out with you.”
Aimi might have been flustered but she wasn’t going to take this sitting down. “Oh, what would you know? You’ve always been so pretty with your long hair and you’ve had a big chest since middle school! Hayato approached you on what, the second day of high school? It’s just not fair to compare me to you Amane! If I had half your looks, I’m sure I could just go up and talk to him like you say but I don’t.”
Amane grabbed Aimi by the arm and dragged her off to their next class. “You always sell yourself short Aimi. You are cute! You may not be the ravishing beauty that I am but you’re still plenty cute enough to get the likes of him. I still don’t get why you like Noguchi.”
Aimi rolled her eyes at her friend’s bragging. “Oh shut up. You’re a real pain you know that? Even if you are pretty, I don’t get why Hayato keeps going out with a spoiled brat like you!” With that Aimi stuck her tongue out at Amane and the latter chased her through the halls to their next class with them giggling the whole time. Two different hall monitors yelled at them to stop running in the halls.
Later that evening Aimi was in the stands watching the final qualifying game, the in-school exhibition match between the A-team and the B-team. It had been a very close match with the B-team keeping up the whole time. The A-team looked mad that they hadn’t been able to trounce the B-team like they thought they would.
The last few seconds of the game were extremely tense for everyone watching! Amane was there too but she was rooting for the A-team because Hayato was on the A-team. As the seconds ticked down the two girls got even louder, especially when it looked like Ryuji was about to score a goal just before the buzzer.
Aimi had been holding her bladder for almost thirty minutes now and when Ryuji made his kick she almost peed on herself as she was cheering. It was such a disappointment that they didn’t win she almost wanted to cry. Then she spotted Ryuji on the field and he was smiling and she couldn’t help feeling silly. “Why should she cry if Ryuji was ok with the results? Honestly, he was just so positive all the time it made her want to squeal! But maybe he’s just hiding his disappointment, then I could finally talk to him and comfort him and become his girlfriend! Or maybe I’ll just follow him and wish I had the courage to speak up like I always do”.
She had to go to the bathroom so bad it was starting to hurt. Once that was done, she ran after Ryuji and his teammates. For a long time now, Aimi had been stalking… or shyly following behind Ryuji. She wasn’t sure which way he went and so she had to ask a couple of people to find out.
Aimi was pretty sure that she could hear some of Ryuji’s teammates laughing and talking as she ran to the edge of the alleyway. She cautiously peeked out of the alleyway and what she saw was not at all what she was expecting. There were a bunch of people running towards the far corner of the street. She spotted the team uniforms at the corner that everyone was running towards and she got a really bad feeling all of the sudden.
Aimi ran up and pushed her way through the crowd toward the members of the B-team. When she got next to them, they all looked surprised to see her. She quickly began scanning their faces for Ryuji’s but he wasn’t there. Maybe he hadn’t come with them after all?
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It was then that she glanced in the direction that everyone else was looking and her heart stopped beating in her chest. Lying there bleeding on the street was Ryuji, the object of her every waking fantasy, and he wasn’t breathing or even blinking. That was the last thing she remembered besides a lot of screaming that she was pretty sure she was doing.
Much later that night she found herself in her apartment, somehow. She couldn’t remember walking here nor could she recall anybody bringing her. That’s when the image of Ryuji lying on the street came back to her and she vomited and collapsed on the kitchen floor where she had been standing. Her parents were both in Tokyo with her brother who was in college. The only one in the apartment was her.
As she lay sobbing on the kitchen floor, she vaguely thought she heard the phone ring. She couldn’t bring herself to answer it. She didn’t want to talk to anybody right now. It hit her like a sword being stabbed through her heart, she would never get the chance to talk to Ryuji. It was too much and she couldn’t take it anymore.
She had to do something to make her heart feel better but what? She couldn’t think at all. Her head hurt but it was a dull background noise compared to her aching heart. Still, she needed to take something for it.
Aimi went to the medicine cabinet and got out the bottle of aspirin and got a glass of water to swallow it with. Next thing she knew she was swallowing handfuls of pills and gulping down water to wash them down. There, now she might feel a little better. She sat down next to the tub and began crying again.
Suddenly, Aimi jerked awake. Where was she though? Then it hit her, she had committed suicide by overdosing on aspirin in her apartment. This place looked a little too cramped to be a doctor’s office. That didn’t even consider the fact she was pretty sure that if she had been in the hospital that she would have woke up in a hospital bed. If this wasn’t the hospital then what did that mean? Also, where was she?
She glanced around the strange office until she realized that there was actually somebody sitting behind the desk. It was just hard to tell because there was so much paper on the desk that he was pretty well hidden. Then he spoke in a slightly gruff voice. “I’ll be with you in a second, just let me finish this one thing up.”
She responded without thinking about it. “Oh no, take your time.” That’s when she realized that she could see through the screen that he was typing on the other side of and the characters didn’t look anything like any form of Japanese. Then she spotted his fingers typing and realized they were blue and had golden claws on the tips. She caught her breath and began wondering about the being on the other side of the papers.
She didn’t have long to wonder. “There, that should do for now. Now let’s deal with your situation.” As he said this the absurdly strange person stood up and stretched. He had blue skin and hair. In fact, his entire chest was covered in blue hair to his waist where it stopped at a pair of dress-slacks.
When he turned his head to look in her direction, she saw with a start that he had red, glowing, pupilless eyes and a single short gold horn growing from the center of his forehead. There were several words that would describe somebody like him, Yokai, Yasha, or Youma.
The blue Youma spoke to her again after she had taken in his appearance for a moment. “Yes, I get that reaction a lot. I just had a boy in here yesterday, in fact, he was from your world. I’ll give you the sa…”
It was too much to hope for, but just maybe this Youma was talking about Ryuji. “Please, sir? Was this boy named Naguchi Ryuji by any chance? Please!?” With her final word, she was already breaking down into tears and advancing toward the Youma.
The youma just calmly observed her with a raised eyebrow as he responded. “Hmph, yes he actually was. I take it you knew him then? Well, I had intended to send you to a different world but I can see that’s out. Keep in mind that I can’t send you to the same spot exactly so once you get there, you’ll have to search for him on your own. Fortunately, there’s only one continent on the world I’m sending you to so that should help. Also, he got the same choice of starting gear I’m going to give you so you should be able to find him quick enough if you listen for somebody that stands out.
Aimi practically melted from relief as the Youma explained her choices to her. “You will start over in an adult body and you will have the choice of starting equipment. You can start with a fearsome weapon that can’t be stolen and the skills to use it, an unparalleled spell book that can’t be stolen and the magic talent needed to use it, or an ever-full coin purse that can’t be stolen and the charisma to make use of it. Please make your choice quickly.”
Aimi thought about Ryuji and what he probably took. He seemed to her to be the bold, heroic type who wouldn’t back down from anything. A strong warrior type, so that’s what she chose too. She would have to train hard and earn his respect so that she could fight along beside him in this new world.
Suddenly Aimi found herself standing in a wide open plain. In the middle distance, she could see a clump of bushes and some animals probably gathered around a place to drink. It reminded her of TV footage she had seen of Africa. As she went to step forward, she became aware of the giant two-handed great axe she was holding the handle of in front of her.
As she picked it up, she was amazed by how light it felt in her hands. There was no denying the weight of this thing because it left a big gouge in the dirt where she had pulled it from. As she was busily twirling the axe and marveling at her new strength, she became aware of another fact. When she stopped twirling the axe and looked at her arm, she had fur. Aimi freaked out a little as she looked at her almost orange and black striped fur and sharp claws. “Wait, am I a tiger?” She thought.