Chapter Sixteen

Fruit is a helluva drug. There’s a brand new sentence for you. I don’t know what on… Manami, I was thinking. Putting strange things into my mouth like there wouldn’t be consequences for it. Now I was stuck.

And for the record, it did not taste sweet going back out again. Loysa sighed again as I filled the bucket, her hands held the outside of it rather than the rim, clearly she’d done this before. “I swear.” She said, “I didn’t even know it was possible to eat this many of those things and not just die.”

“I am dead.” I mumbled. It had been at least a few hours by my reckoning. But on drunk hangover time, so in reality it might have been half that. I was fairly sure it was late since it was dark outside. That meant at least a few hours had to have passed.

Or did it? This was all just the first day of my new life in a new world and so far I’d been caught up in a biohazard incident, gotten my tail groped by a foot fetishist, joined the Adventurer’s guild, met dwarves and elves, gotten scammed out of thousands and gotten in good with a bunch of mech pilots and a goblin who might be this world’s version of a mafia boss. Or just a ruthless company executive. But if this world really was stuck with ethics and laws like those of two hundred to six hundred years ago, there wasn’t really a difference.

My head hurt to think of it. I grabbed my ears with my hands, that felt good. That felt right.

I vomited again, and as Loysa pulled the bucket back, she slid another under my face while she went to empty that other one.

“I don’t know if anyone tracks records for alcohol consumption, but if they do then you’ve just set one.” She almost sounded respectful as much as amused.

I was shaking a little, but gave her a weak smile. “Didn’t mean to.” I mumbled. “I didn’t know… fruit. Not like home.”

“Your world.” She said, as if she hadn’t properly registered.

“My world.” I confirmed. I stared down into the bucket. “No family there…” I mumbled. I wasn’t friendless. But if anyone reported me missing, it would be a while, and my absence would quickly be forgotten. Within a few years, I would only be mentioned with the question, ‘Did they ever find Aiko?’ followed by, ‘No, hey can you pass me a cold one.’ And then they would forget. Eventually nobody would say my name again.

But there were all those models I’d now never get to build.

That was when it hit me.

Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was thinking of all those things I didn’t get to do. Not just the models, but the places I wanted to see, the places I wanted to go. All that work. Now it was all for nothing.

Loysa seemed curious, “What was your world like?” She asked. “I’ve only met one other summon before, and he didn’t last long enough to say much.”

Okay, that was concerning.

But I felt the need to say something. After all, it was my world, my home. Every dream I ever had was there, all the things I wanted to read and watch that were now gone for good.

“We build buildings that kiss the sky. Flying vehicles large enough to carry a small town’s population. We launch communication devices, ‘satellites’ into space that let us communicate instantly almost anywhere in the world. We harness the power of the sun, and have mountains that go up into the atmosphere. We can go anywhere in the world in less than a day. We’ve explored and mapped the whole world, and it took us hundreds of years… our civilizations reach back so far that we don’t even really know for sure when they began.” I was mumbling, but even drunken mumbling over a bucket while I listened to her dumping down the waste tube or toilet or whatever they had here, I couldn’t help but think in its own way, my world was pretty impressive.

“We split the smallest objects in existence and made weapons that could destroy cities, or power them all from one single place. We’ve got national parks the size of some countries…the oceans are pretty, they’re so big that they take up most of the planet. There’s big deserts and plains as far as the eye can see where we grow more food than you can imagine…”

“It sounds pretty impressive.” Loysa said and crouched down to pick up the wooden bucket and hold it closer to my face.

“We’ve even sent rockets, special ships, out into space, and gone all the way to our moon, and sent probes out into space beyond the reaches of our solar system so we could see what our planet looks like, and see more of the Universe…”

“Yeah.” I said, my voice echoed a bit in the empty container, I could faintly smell the last remnants of my stomach contents within from when she’d dumped this one before. I added to it again, alerting her with a hideous ‘gulp’ noise before I threw up.

She didn’t waver at the wet plops and splashes.

“So do you miss it?” She asked.

She didn’t move the bucket.

But it wasn’t because I was vomiting.

It was because somehow, some way, as the reality set in and the excitement began to fade, I’d started crying, the tears didn’t run far down my cheeks before they dropped into the big puddle of stomach contents.

Thankfully, she lowered the bucket some so I didn’t have to smell it so much, but the tears just kept coming. I’d never see my neighbors. Never post on social media and talk about my dreams. Never browse the web or stream a show or find out how my favorite series came to an end. I’d dreamed of one day meeting someone and putting a lock on Seoul Tower together as a sign of our love. I’d never see a Broadway show like I wanted. I’d never go to college the way I talked about.

I’d never. I’d never. I’d never.

The nevers kept adding up in my mind and the more they did the more tears fell and the more I shook. I’d lost everything. Maybe it wasn’t a lot, maybe it wasn’t like I had a wife or children waiting for me.

This was the part they didn’t show in isekai genre anime. The realization that everything is just plain… gone.

And now it was hitting me like a fuckton of bricks while I was accidentally drunk off my ass to the point where all I could manage to do was sit up and vomit and cry like a goddamn baby.

I didn’t even have my own body anymore. It wasn’t that I disliked this one, I really did feel more at home in it than I had in the one I was born with. I liked being pretty, arguably even beautiful. And if I had been given a choice, I’d stay happy with it. I might have even picked this myself if I’d had the chance.

But I wasn’t given a choice. I was taken.

I didn’t really resent the scientists or whatever they were, they just didn’t want to die and didn’t know what they were going to get. It was a complete accident, what they did to me.

Accident or not though, it felt violating, and I’d lost everything.

“I was a man, before. A human one.” I said, and Loysa’s eyes widened. She definitely hadn’t expected me to say that. “That’s why I was so confounded about the thing with my tails before. I don’t… I didn’t ask for this! Nobody asked me… every possible thing I mighta done, and I didn’t get to say goodbye to it…”

I was half raging, half mumbling. “Now I’m here surrounded by scammers, thieves, crooks, a party member that can’t wait to get away from me, vomiting and crying into a bucket because apparently even fruit is a trap.” I slapped my hand on the mattress, I was actually surprised I could move my hand that much.

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“There’s no way to ask summons about summoning them.” Loysa pointed out.

“Is that supposed to make it better? To excuse it?” I groused, and she snapped her mouth shut.

“I guess not.” She answered after a moment.

“So what’s it matter then? It’s not better for want of an option. It’s worse because they do it anyway.” I spat a glob of phlegm into the bucket. Though whether in disgust or just because I had to, I didn’t even know anymore.

She was quiet again, then said, “Thank you for giving my ace back.” It was the first actual ‘thank you’ I think I’d heard her say.

“I was genuinely surprised you did that. A lot of people would have kept it and used it as leverage over me.” Loysa said, it was also the smallest voice I’d ever heard her use.

“No… I felt bad enough just getting you to agree to help. If I hadn’t been desperate, I wouldn’t do it at all. Probably doesn’t make it better though. I guess I’m a bit of a hypocrite.” I chuckled at myself and retched again.

She pulled the bucket away and kicked the first one gently along the floor so that it was directly between my feet again.

After she dumped the full one out of view she came back and seemed to hesitate to speak, like she wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure how. Finally she got it out, “I could do worse for a party member.”

I cracked a weak smile. “I managed my first quest too.” She cocked her head when I said that, and I explained what all had happened.

“Rollo left that out when he found me.” Loysa said in return, “That explains the sudden increase to my account. Congratulations. When I take you to the guild next time, I’ll certify you to your first tooth.”

“Thank you.” I mumbled.

Loysa paused. “I do not want to talk about that. Because I don’t. It’s embarrassing! Yes, I can see she’s vomiting into her bucket, she’ll pass out soon and won’t even remember it anyway, so why tell it? Fine. Fine. Slave driver!” She accused her Goddess, and crouched down in front of me again.

“Do you know how you become a priestess here?” She asked.

“You go study at a temple, meditate, and ask for a blessing?” I guessed based off of some tabletop rpg backstories, but she shook her head, denying it.

“No. You’re picked. A God or Goddess just shows up in your head, tells you to go somewhere, to a dying priest or priestess, and you look after them in their last days. Usually three, sometimes five. Never more than a week that I know of. Then when they die, the deity confirms that you’re the next in line to take over for that person.” Loysa’s explanation again subverted my expectations.

That was starting to be routine. For all the familiarity of this world, I had to remember that its cultures predate my coming, its traditions, beliefs, people, weren’t just characters in my story. They had lives of their own that were here before me and would carry on after me.

But even so, this wasn’t the backstory I figured for Loysa.

“Can you refuse?” I asked.

“If you want a string of bad luck to follow you, yes.” She answered.

“So you serve and obey, or are cursed until what, you die?” I asked, “So you’re a slave?”

“Yes and no.” Loysa said with a cracked, almost amused smile. She paused and said, clearly not to me, “See! Even she agrees with me!”

She then continued. “People chosen to serve the gods are people who would otherwise have had nothing. My ‘curse’ would have been the choices I would have made that would have led me to ruin. Sometimes people refuse the call of the gods, and none of them have good ends. My Goddess insists she wouldn’t actually have cursed me, but that I just would have lived a short and miserable life. Maybe chosen a wrong turn in an alley and been vampire food. Or gambled wrong. Or married a bastard who would put me into an early grave. Who knows? Even she insists that she doesn’t know, and obnoxious as she is, she hasn’t lied to me.”

She stopped again, “Yes, yes, I know you haven’t lied, and I admit it, you don’t have to sound so smug about it.”

“So… you answer the call, or just… live with whatever happens next?” I asked.

“Yes.” Loysa replied.

“Do you ever regret doing so? I mean, even if you’d come to a bad end, at least you chose it, right?” I asked, and Loysa seemed hesitant to answer, briefly closing her eyes and taking several slow and steady breaths as she made up her mind. When she opened them again, she seemed resolute and said…

“My Goddess’s voice came to me when I was on a date. I grew up in a small village, there weren’t many boys I could have a shot with, and I was pretty. I was young. I was eager. And yeah… he was very attractive too. His family had a big farm, biggest in the village. I liked him. He liked me. We were holding hands, sitting beside the creek that babbled by the woods, it was a popular spot for young people to go to get away from their parents. Of course we all thought it was some big secret spot. But looking back, our parents probably became parents there. Which is equal parts sweet and gross when you think about it.” She wrinkled her nose a bit when she said that, then gave her head a heavy shake.

“I’d just kissed him. It was my first kiss, our lips met, it was clumsy, silly, innocent, really. Then I heard my Goddess’s voice in my head. Telling me to go into the city to the house of Tenchiro.” She put her hand on my knee to still my coming question.

“You have to understand, we all grow up knowing what that means. I knew right away I’d been chosen, I didn’t know by what goddess, but I knew what it was. I was just a little girl really, thirteen. And he wasn’t much older. Fourteen, maybe fifteen. I told him what I heard, and he said, ‘She can wait.’ My goddess however, was not much for waiting.” She gritted her teeth a little, “Yes I know you’re still not! Will you let me tell the damn story?!”

Loysa rubbed her temple with her thumb and forefinger, “Sorry.” She muttered, “So she told me she didn’t ‘wait’ on mortals or their pleasures and to ‘get my ass moving or I’d be sorry.’ She sounded a great deal like my parents, and being who I was back then, I couldn’t argue. I pushed him away, got up, and went home. My moment with my first kiss, and it was half stolen away by a pushy goddess. The indignity of it all. So I went home, told my parents, and they got me a carriage into the city.”

“And what happened with the boy?” I asked.

“He got married to someone else. Then he made a lot of money during a famine, his wife, nobody sees her anymore. I haven’t been home in years, but the last I heard she never leaves that big house of theirs. Most of the village is his now.” She said and shrugged. “Maybe I sometimes think about a life full of my own choices alone would be like, but I’m not unhappy. I have new dreams and a lot of fun, vomit buckets aside.” She actually laughed, like, really, genuinely laughed.

She had a nice laugh when she let it out, or so I thought.

“And Tenchiro?” I asked.

“He was a grouchy old man and a card sharp. He taught me everything I know about gambling.” Loysa pulled out a deck of cards and performed a complicated set of mid-air shuffles that passed the cards back and forth from hand to hand, even across her body and around in a circle… it was more like a Las Vegas performance, no, it would have made their best dealers look like amateurs. Then she was done and pocketed her cards again back within her robes.

‘The priests here are very different.’ I concluded the most obvious thing in the history of obviousness.

“I kind of liked him. He taught me more than cards, he taught me rituals, magic, the spells I’d need that my Goddess wanted me to know. But really he was more like a short term grandfather than anything. He wasn’t sick, he was just old, stooped and gray and bald, he lasted six days, then went to sleep that night and didn’t wake up in the morning. I buried him, and his house became mine as his final caregiver and as the inheritor of his place among the priests of my Goddess. Then I sold it and joined the adventurer’s guild, met Sami Smain, the receptionist, and the other members of our party, and we adventured together until Sami retired and I had no party left.”

“What about the rest of your party?” I asked.

“One dead. One just ‘gone’.” She answered. “Some things, not even the power of a Goddess can prevent. I can heal the sick and the injured, but my power isn’t limitless. I ran out of mana a few times, at the worst times, and they paid the price.”

Suddenly Loysa began to make a lot more sense to me.

If this had been some anime or manga or light novel or something, she’d have broken down crying with me right then, we’d have had a big hug and bonded like sisters and everything would have been perfect forever. But this? No, this wasn’t a story, this was real life and she’d cried out all the tears she had for her companions a long, long time ago. What was left was a stiff, tight hold on the bucket of vomit and a hard eyed stare down into the mix of stains and fluid.

She cracked a wry smile, “You’re not going to go all soft on me, tell me it’s not my fault and that I did the best I could, are you?”

I shook my head. For once my social awkwardness, I think, was benefiting me. “How would I know if that’s true? I wasn’t there.”

That seemed to spark something in her, as she answered abruptly, “Good.” She got up and carried the bucket away.

And I think, if it weren’t for the fact that I have kitsune ears now, I would have missed what she said next, it was obviously not intended to be heard as she whispered it.

“I can see why you told me to go with her.”

I didn’t really understand much about the religion here, I didn’t even know the name of her goddess yet.

But before I could ask, the room began to spin. I felt her hand on my shoulder before I could topple forward. “Alright, it looks like the last stages are hitting you now. Time for sleep.” Loysa said, “I’ll get you out of these and send them down for a wash so they don’t smell like vomit tomorrow, and then we can see the mechs tomorrow.”

I felt her tugging my shirt up, and then there was only blackness, except for one brief thought that the mattress and pillows in this place were almost as good as the ones back home. ‘So soft…’ I thought, and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.