Slow Adjusting

"Hk!"

I shot up from my bed.

"Hurts!"

I clutch my stomach with all my might, it was bleeding really badly so I... wait, why isn't my stomach bleeding?

"Huh?"

I look around me. Instead of the school interior that I was expecting, a normal wodden house was all I could see.

"Ah, it's... just another nightmare."

I plop down on the bed and sigh in relief.

'It's super realistic, just like always.'

I check my condition. I was sweating all over and my heart rate was abnormaly fast, but nothing else was wrong.

My bed was the one who took the brunt of my nightmare. Not only was it completely dishevelled, it was even ripped in some places.

I frown as I look at the holes I had accidentally made.

"I think the last time it was this bad was about 1 year ago, right?"

I sigh in frustration. No matter how well I could fake my emotions and expressions, my mental state was truly in a state of peril, and this was my body's way of showing me just how bad it was.

"I thought I wouldn't get two nightmares in one night, but life is always full of surprises. Pancakes..."

I had actually woken up in the middle of the night due to a different nightmare. In that one, I was eaten by wolves.

'And right after that, I got an even worse nightmare... what a pain.'

I lay in bed for a bit. After all the horrific stuff I saw in my dreams, I needed a factory reset.

I clear my emotions and emptily look at the ceiling. I forcefully insert happy feelings into my mind and then once again clear my emotions. Now, the happy memories were making the bad ones blurry. I repeat the process until my mind completely forgets about how bad I truly felt.

"All good now."

It was a little trick I had come up with to deal with my nightmares. It unfortunately didn't work on memories, only on dreams, so I couldn't just forget all of my traumatizing experiences.

'Well, bad memories are important too.'

I get off my bed and get dressed while wincing from muscle pain.

I look at the sun in the window. It was already decently high up in the sky. It was roughly... ten o'clock, I'd say.

It was pretty unusual for me to oversleep like this, so I'll have to berate Jagon some more today.

'Thank God this world also uses 24 hours 60 minutes and 60 seconds though. That was a massive relief.'

I stretch a bit and sit down on my bed.

"Alright, time for the hard part."

I smile. Then, I thouroughly search for any imperfections in the smile, and fix them. Honestly, doing this with a mirror would've been three times easier, but I didn't have the luxury for that.

Once I am satisfied with the result, I make a poker face, smile again and repeat the process.

Why was I doing this? Well...

I doubted that I was going to be physically strong in this world, and I definitely won't be smart, but I still needed a way to be strong. After not a lot of thinking, I decided that my strength would be... my nasty personality.

I have already taken advantage of Jagon yesterday, in a way that even a warrior like him didn't expect. So its effectiveness was already proven.

For my nasty personality to be more powerful, I needed to have a face befitting of a bastard. In other words, I needed a face that could have any emotion I wanted at any moment.

I needed to be able to act sad with just a snap of a finger. I needed to look weak even while covered in painful wounds, so that my opponents would underestimate me. I needed to look carefree even while plotting something in my mind, so that my opponents would think I lowered my guard.

If I wanted to truly be strong, I would have to be nasty both on the inside and on the outside.

After molding my face for about 20 minutes, I stop and stand up. My stomach was asking for food.

I enter the kitchen and see a lone food bowl on the table. After forcefully shoving the cold meal down, I start working on my face again.

I get lost in making my expressions perfect, so I don't notice how a kid enters the house and stares at me in confusion.

Only after the kid walked up to me and started poking me did I notice him.

I recover from my stupor and smile. My smile wasn't perfect yet, but it was good enough to fool a child, at least.

"What are you doing here, little guy?"

The boy stares at me, completely ignoring my question.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Faun. I'm new around here. Who are you?"

"I'm Kurt."

Kurt was a little boy with brown hair and golden eyes. He looked to be around 8 years old.

"And what are you doing in another person's house, Kurt?"

He smiled from ear to ear.

"Adventuring!"

'Adventuring, huh? Does he want to become an adventurer or something?'

"I see. But you shouldn't adventure in other people's houses, Kurt. It's very rude to do that."

"It's rude?"

"That's right. I'm very kind, so I won't do anything to you, but if you enter a bad person's house, he might punch and kick you. Do you want to be punched and kicked?"

Kurt frowns.

"No..."

"Then don't go into other people's houses without permission, okay?"

"Okay..."

"Good. Then exit this house and go play with the other kids."

Kurt slowly leaves the house and I close the door behind him.

'Talking with children... is such a pain in the ass.'

Kids as a whole are a pain in the ass. Everything about them is just annoying.

'I can't understand how parents can tolerate them.'

Well, that's what makes parents great. Even though children are annoying, ruthless, unapologetic and completely chaotic, they still somehow deal with them.

Well, not all parents are great, but I'm talking about the majority here.

'I got pretty lucky in that regard.'

While I wouldn't call my parents the best, they were definitely good parents. They cared about me and took care of me. They even supported me when I was at my lowest.

'Yeah, I definitely love my parents.'

I sit back down and keep working on my expressions. I had nothing better to do, after all.

***

'No, but like, every ability has to have a cool name, right? That's just necessary!'

I was still sitting at the table even after two hours passed.

Right now I was... coming up with a name for my ability to fake my emotions.

After all, having a cool sounding ability is the dream of every Isekai enthusiast!

Unfortunately... I was very bad at coming up with names.

'[Mask Of Lies]? The meaning is there, but it just doesn't sound cool. Maybe [Mask Of Deceiving] then? It's better, but a mask has the inherent properties of deceiving people. It feels like I'm just repeating the same thing twice.'

I was always bad with names. Not just coming up with them, but also remembering them. Like, I wouldn't be able to name you 50% of my classmates even if you tortured me.

'How about not a mask, then? [Face Of Lies]. That's better, but I don't like the lies part. The idea is not to constantly be lying, but for the person to never know what I'm thinking. [Face Of Undescerning]. That just sounds wrong. Now that I think about it, the idea is not for the person to not know what I'm thinking, but for them to have the wrong conclusion about me. So... [Face Of Misleading]. That sounds good... but it doesn't feel good. It just doesn't have the oopmf.'

As I was thinking that, someone unceremoniously started ruffling my hair. I frown. Getting my hair ruffled hurt a bit.

"Stop ruffling my hair, Jagon."

"Why should I?"

'You asked for this.'

I look him dead in the eyes.

"What? Do you miss the feeling of having hair so much that you have to substitute it with mine?"

His hand freezes in place. After a bit of painful silence, he slowly retracts it.

"Ah, a nasty personality indeed."

"Right? I'm very proud of it."

"To be proud of something like that..."

He nervously smiles and scratches his bald head.

After chuckling for a bit, he shakes his head and puts on a serious expression.

"Alright, so today, you're gonna be learning how to use a knife."

"A knife? Not a sword?"

"A sword will take too long to learn. A knife is much simpler. I want you out of this house as fast as possible after all."

"Ah. You went ahead and said it out loud."

I was genuinely impressed by how brazen he was. I would've just... no, I would've done the same, but many people would've kept quiet about it. It's us who were weird like that. Normal people would think twice before saying something rude.

'I can understand him too, so I'm not really mad.'

I wouldn't want to keep a random kid in my house for long either.

"Let's stop wasting time. Follow me outside."

After a short walk, we ended up in a pretty open part of the village. Suddenly, he threw a knife at me.

I instinctively reached for it, trying to catch it in mid-air, but stopped myself. After all, it was a knife. So I waited until it fell on the ground and only then did I pick it up.

'It would've been cool to catch it, but I like my fingers.'

I looked at the knife. Actually, calling it a dagger would be more accurate. After all, both of it's edges were sharp and they met in a pointed end.

I had no idea why Jagon called it a knife in the first place.

"Now try swinging that around."

I nodded and started slashing the dagger around.

I tried my best to use my hips and make the strikes as deadly as possible, but even I could tell that I looked amateurish right now.

After a short while, Jagon stopped me.

"Hm. Not bad for someone who has never held a weapon in his life, but that definitely won't cut it."

'Was that a... joke right now?'

As I raised my eyebrow in confusion, Jagon continued talking.

"First of all, you didn't make even single stabbing motion. Daggers are used for slashing, yes, but stabbing is one of their main strengths. To not use it would be, frankly, stupid."

"What a roundabout way to say that I suck and that I'm dumb. Now please stop insulting me and help me improve."

Jagon grinned. He seemed to like my straightforwardness.

"Well if you put it like that..."

He started instructing me on how to use a dagger.

***

"What a fast day that was, huh?"

I was already in my bed, the room being softly illuminated by the moonlight.

The day had gone by in a blink, and because of that, I wasn't particularly tired.

Training to use a dagger didn't take up much stamina, since I was just starting out. And since the only other thing I did was improving my fake expressions ― which wasn't a physical activity ― I had ended up with a lot of energy left.

And that meant that I couldn't fall asleep.

'Well, this isn't too bad.'

I had a lot of things to think about, and since I fell asleep right away yesterday, today was going to be the so-called, thinking day.

'Or thinking night, in this case.'

Anyway, it was time to stop letting my thoughts wander and make myself focus on the important stuff.

'For example... let's tackle my forest trauma right now.'

Right now, whenever I looked at the forest that I came from, I couldn't help but get shivers.

The visions of me barely surviving over there constantly flooded my mind, making my heart race and sweat start forming on my body.

I... somehow had to get over that. Or at least, get over it to the point where it won't interfere with my future work as a hunter.

And honestly... if it weren't for my other trauma, I don't think I would've been able to do that.

Yes, the forest was scary. Yes, my legs would probably start shaking the moment I entered it. Hell, I might faint the moment I see wolves.

But you know what was scarier?

Dying.

Dying was so scary, that it couldn't be explained in words. Maybe death itself wasn't scary, but the process of death was way too heart-wrenching.

And the problem was, if I didn't get over my fear of the forest, I would die.

Whether that be because I won't be able to get a job. Or whether that be because I would be too stunned while standing in front of a hungry wolf.

Case in point, it didn't matter how I would die, just that the chances of me dying would shoot up drastically.

And that thought alone was scary enough to make me fight my forest trauma and resist it to some capacity.

'Yeah. Because... I don't wanna die.'

I shifted my attention to my stomach. I raised my shirt and looked at the huge scar running across my belly.

"Yeah. Because... I really don't wanna die."

I shivered. Just the mere thought of what happened back then was making all of my hairs stand on end.

I shake my head vigorously. Thinking about it won't do me any good.

'Alright, let's get back on topic. I still have a lot of things to think about.'

For example, I was pretty sure I was going to have a really big problem with Body-Strengthening in this world. And consquently, I was going to have a big problem with my physical strength.

After all, when I thought back on it, Jagon said that you get better at Body-Strengthening with practice.

What was so bad about that? Well... people in this world have been practicing Body-Strengthening their entire lives, right?

Sure, it was Natural Body-Strengthening, but it still had to count. Jagon himself said that it was basically the same thing.

Which meant that I was going to be severly weaker than other people.

Sure, I would still be stronger than normal civilians due to my muscles, but when it came to people who could actually fight... yeah, I didn't like my chances.

'This also means that I didn't get any superpowers when coming to this world. The only reason I was stronger in the forest was due to Natural Body-Strengthening, something that everyone else also has.'

The fantasy of being an MC in an Isekai novel was slowly becoming more and more distant.

But that was fine for me.

I was just going to have a normal peaceful life, while searching for ways to get back to my old world.

I wasn't going to rush. I wasn't going to embark on a quest of epic proportions.

After all, all I wanted, was a life with no worries.