As the door clicked shut, Alec released a breath that he had been holding in for god knows how long. When he realized the fact that he didn’t know the local language, his dormant social anxiety kicked in, filling his head with countless embarrassing thoughts.

He had tried to subtly signal to the woman the fact that he didn’t understand her words by furrowing his brows. Unfortunately, he didn’t even know if he had been successful. The woman kept talking to him, getting more and more confused and worried with each word. When she saw Alec tilt his head in confusion, she sighed and stormed out of the room, leaving him all alone once again.

Sighing deeply, Alec sat upright in the bed. A pain in his chest, presumably from his ribs, resonated throughout his body, making him gasp and grip the white sheets tightly.

‘Shit...’ He thought to himself. ‘The healing spell didn’t heal me in one go? That’s disappointing...’ Unfortunately, he couldn’t speak out his frustrations, as he had to get used to his role of a person who had forgotten how to talk.

‘It’s not believable at all... Hopefully, these types of severe amnesia are more common in this world.’ Alec wished before leaning against the headboard of the bed and started thinking about his interaction with the perverted book people.

‘First of all, I have no idea why I’m here. They told me to fix my mistake but didn’t tell me what the mistake was...’ Remembering the fact that he had just been cursed at, possibly killed, and got dumped into a world where he didn’t even know the language, Alec didn’t feel angry at all. Putting his hand on his chest and feeling the heart beating furiously inside his chest, he felt his cheeks redden. Short of breath, he came to a realization.

‘I’m... Excited..?’ He thought. It was an alien emotion. It penetrated deep into his brain filled with ways to make money and carved out a place of its own.

‘That book called me a bastard author. Was my mistake... Writing web novels? But...’ He thought to himself. Briefly, an image of him standing atop a hill of struggling, talented authors flashed past his mind. Then, his mouth curled up into a smile as he started doing his best to stop himself from breaking into manic laughter.

‘I knew I would be punished for writing that many shitty web novels to get rich!’ He shouted in his mind. However, as he heard the door click open, the smile on his face quickly disappeared, leaving a clumsy but somewhat convincing poker face behind.

Three people entered the room with steady steps. One was the unnaturally beautiful, white-haired woman from before. The other two were also similar in attractiveness, which made Alec conclude that the people of this world were more attractive on average.

One of the people was a teenage boy. From the lack of any facial hair and the presence of a little bit of baby fat on his cheeks, Alec concluded that this person was around 16 years old. What made him stand out was the presence of two blue-colored floating magic circles above his shoulders, looking like shoulder pads. Those shoulder pads contrasted with the boy’s red hair. His face was aghast with worry as he looked Alec up and down, seemingly looking for something.

The other person was a man with waist-long white hair. There were very, very faint wrinkles on his face, which confused Alec even more in his journey to figure out these people’s ages. Assuming him to be around 40, Alec guessed that he was a professor or a doctor.

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

The book person had told him that he was going to a magical academy, which helped him make these assumptions.

‘I should be inside the infirmary, if I’m still inside the academy grounds, obviously,’ he thought. Although he was curious why his body was as battered as it was, he figured that he wouldn’t be getting answers any time soon.

As his attention snapped back to the three people, he noticed that they were whispering some words to each other.

After talking for another thirty seconds, the three turned towards Alec and tried talking to him again. Seeing that he was incapable of answering, all of their faces crumpled in pity. Especially the red-haired boy, who seemed to be on the verge of breaking down in tears.

As the three started talking amidst each other, this time loud enough for him to hear, Alec noticed that rather English-sounding names were inserted between their incomprehensible words.

From the way they used those names, he understood that the red-haired boy was called Evan. However, none of the other names seemed to be used to refer to the white-haired man or woman. Which made Alec assume that they were using their titles instead of their names.

Amidst their gibberish, Alec managed to barely grab hold of another word, slightly skewed, but obviously different from the rest of the language.

‘Shtattus? Hm...’ He repeated to himself in his mind. Scouring his knowledge as a web novel author, he quickly tried the first thing that came to mind. ‘Status?’

Instantly, a third of his vision was blocked by a blue, semi-transparent holographic screen. Whenever he moved his eyes, it would remain in his vision. His eyes wouldn’t lose their focus on it wherever he looked, making the texts on the screen readable at all times.

‘Just as I expected! The book person back there was telling me that I would get “whatever my soul gives me.” I wonder what that meant? Did my soul give me a system? No no... These people here are talking about the system too. It should be something everyone can use to some degree.’

Putting aside the thought and seeing the three were too absorbed in their conversation, Alec decided to read through his status screen. Or at least he tried to.

‘Oh come the fuck on! I can’t even read the status screen. What the fuck is this!?’ Alec complained in his head. He wanted to facepalm, however, he had to keep his façade of a clueless amnesiac. ‘If the people of this world have systems and I can’t even read what is on there, I’m fucked. Let’s hope that these people are special.’

Alec’s thoughts were disturbed by one of the people calling his name out. Unfortunately, he was distracted and turned his head. Now, the borders of his role were pushed back to: “The amnesiac who at least knows their name.”

After the three talked for fifteen more minutes, the white-haired man and woman left the infirmary, leaving the red-haired boy Evan alone with Alec.

‘This Evan guy looks a bit too... Fiery,’ Alec thought to himself. However, he quickly noticed the bitter smile on Evan’s face. He seemed to be apologetic toward him. ‘Maybe he has something to do with my current situation?’

After patting his shoulder, and presumably saying some words of farewell, Evan left the infirmary. After his departure, Alec’s eyes were stuck looking at the door that had just been closed. Twirling his thumbs, he plopped back into the bed while disregarding the pain from his ribs.

‘Do I really have no other abilities?’ he asked himself. There was a reason the authors gave their main characters golden spoons, superpowers that would be considered unusual even in the magical fantasy worlds they went to. Unless one was absurdly outstanding by some measure, they couldn’t survive being randomly inserted into a foreign society, let alone a completely alien world.

As Alec reveled in his misery, he felt a heaviness settle in his stomach. It was unlike anything he felt before. It was more of a sudden bloating than anything painful as if a new organ had just popped into existence inside his abdominal cavity.

After closing his eyes, Alec tried to feel what was going on inside his body. When he focused enough, the issue suddenly got resolved. Whatever was inside his body seemingly disappeared.

‘What was that..?’ He thought to himself. As he was about to lift his hand and tap around on his stomach to see if he could find anything, he realized that there was something in his hand.

Holding the object higher, on his eye level, Alec got even more confused than he was a second ago.

“A fountain pen..?”