Unwillingly Summoned: Chapter 3 – Meh

The first thing he became aware of when James slowly rose to consciousness was pain. There was a savage ache that threatened to split his skull apart, which was second only to stabbing shriek of agony any time he so much as twitched his jaw. A fact that became increasingly apparent as his recently wakened body forced him to yawn.

“God dammit, that hurts!” he snarled.

He opened his eyes looking for something or someone to glare at and, then, like a ghost ship sailing out of the fog, it all came back to him. The horrible portal thing, the cat girl, captain compensation, and the starlet-angel creature. It all came back to him due in large part to the presence of said cat girl, starlet-angel creature, and floating light crystals. He finally noticed a supremely-guilty-looking Maggie sitting next to his bed and directing the full force of his glare at her. Before he could think of something appropriately scathing to hurl in her direction, words exploded from her.

“I’m really, really sorry!” she almost screamed at him.

“How nice for you,” he said while simultaneously trying to avoid moving his mouth at all.

“James—” she started.

“You punched me in the face.”

“I know,” she said, unwilling to even meet his eyes.

“You punched me in the face,” he repeated, putting special emphasis on the last three words.

“You thought this was all a dream,” she said, trying for defiance but mostly pleading.

“And that was the best way you could think of to convince me it wasn’t?!”

“Not the best way,” she admitted. “Just the fastest.”

James reached up and massaged his jaw but that just made it hurt even worse. Maggie gestured at the starlet-angel creature, who hustled over the bed and cupped James’s face in her hands. For a second or two, his mind raced. Was she going to kiss him? If she was, why was she going to kiss him? Should he kiss her back if she did? Of course, he should kiss her back if she did. At least, he thought he probably should. Maybe. That downward spiral of indecision was mercifully cut short when a surge of warm passed from her hands into his face. Like water rippling out from a stone dropped into a pond, that warmth spread out in rippling waves that seemingly washed away the pain in his jaw and soothed the splitting headache into submission.

As much as James still wanted to believe he was stuck in some hyperrealist dream, that impossible healing ironically made him more convinced that this was all horribly real. He was in another world if not a whole other universe. A place where magic was real and cat girls were real and, the logic followed, monsters and dark lords were real. That was how most of those isekai things worked, wasn’t it? Hapless fools from earth get sucked away and sent out like stupid, innocent cannon fodder to battle some kingdom’s enemies. He supposed it didn’t always work like that, Maggie would know better than him, but this stone room had a very castle feel to it. The reality of it made him feel kind of sick. What about his parents? His brother and sister? Would they spend the rest of their lives thinking he vanished off the face of the earth one day? The whole life he’d been trying to make for himself was…It was just gone.

He felt a swell of anger that he didn’t quite know where to direct. Was he angry about the loss? Was he angry at the people who had brought him here? He supposed that there might be a way home, but it didn’t usually work like that in the manga. At least, not to hear Maggie tell it. The most likely reality was that he was stuck forever in a place he didn’t know or understand, surrounded by strangers, and Maggie as his only tenuous link to his old life. He fixed her with a hard look. He knew it wasn’t her fault. She’d been just as scared as him when that rip in the fabric of the universe opened them up and swallowed them whole. But one look at her, the way she was dressed, told him that she’d already bought into all of this. He couldn’t help but resent her for that a little. He asked the only question he cared about.

“How do we get home?”

She didn’t answer immediately, but she didn’t need to answer. His worst fears were confirmed with a single look at her. There would be no going home. No joyous reunion with friends, family, and all of his old dreams and goals. That had all been stolen from him.

“We can’t go home,” he said, answering the question for himself.

Maggie looked miserable, but she nodded in agreement. James felt an irrational urge to start breaking everything within reach. This wasn’t fair. Maggie must have seen the violence threatening to spill over from James’s heart into the physical world because she grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard.

“Let’s go somewhere and talk about this,” she suggested in a gentle, coaxing voice.

It was the kind of voice that he imagined people used to try to soothe animals that were on the cusp of violence. He almost lashed out at her, but forced himself to take a few steadying breaths first. It would not be wise to alienate the only person he knew in this entire world. He gave a jerky nod and swung his legs out of the bed. He glanced around the room and came up short. The starlet-angel creature and the cat girl were on the far side of the room, pressed against the wall, and staring at him with naked fear in their eyes. He briefly wondered what had gotten into the two of them, but he didn’t have the mental bandwidth or interest to dig into it. Maggie handed him clothes and directed him to a small room.

He stared blankly at the clothes until he realized that all he wore was some loose pants that felt sort of like linen. He took the clothes into the room, where one of those floating crystals came to life to give him light. It was convenient but the pure alienness of it all just made him feel a little sick again. He changed into the clothes, which consisted of a dark pair of pants that reminded him a bit of khakis, something that looked disturbingly like a poet’s shirt with its flared material around the cuffs, socks that were comfortable but definitely not made of cotton, and a pair of soft leather boots that came way to high up on his legs, practically to his knees.

“I feel like a jackass,” muttered James as he trudged out of the room.

“You look good!” said Maggie.

James met that comment with a flat look that immediately shut down his friend’s enthusiasm. She sheepishly gestured him toward a door. Doing his best to keep a lid on his frustration and anger about the whole situation, he walked over to the door and out into a hallway that could have come out of any number of potentially fictional movie castles. At least, it could have if he didn’t look too closely at the details or the people. He mostly just ignored the people and their murmured whispers of hero. After what felt like an unreasonably long walk, Maggie led James into a room where they were at least alone. He looked around at the oddly cavernous room before he lifted an eyebrow at Maggie.

“Over here,” she said.

She led him over to something that looked suspiciously like a religious alter of some kind with an even more suspicious opaque crystal ball resting on top of it. James felt a vague sense of déjà vu settle over him as he looked at that alter.

“Put your hand on the crystal,” she said.

“Why?” he demanded, taking a full step back from it.

“Don’t be difficult, James. It’s not going to hurt you. It’ll do the opposite.”

James gave her a mistrustful look but experience told that her expression meant that she’d dig in her heels about this. It was easier to just go along, and then he could get his answers. If there are any answers, he complained his head. Heaving an intentionally audible sigh, he walked over and slapped a hand onto the big crystal. Five second passed. Ten seconds passed. When thirty seconds had passed and nothing happened, and he turned a dour look on Maggie.

“If this is some kind of joke, I’m really not am—”

He fell silent as a blue box filled will all kind of text and numbers appeared in his vision. He almost instinctively swatted at what had to be a hallucination.

“Go away,” he snapped at the hallucination.

Much to his delight, the box disappeared. Finally, something had gone right. Maggie rushed up to him, her eyes ablaze with curiosity.

“So, what did you get?”

“What do mean?”

“What class did you get?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You got the status box, right?”

“Oh, is that what it was?”

“Yes! So, what did you get?”

James shrugged and said, “Meh. I didn’t look.”

“What?!”