Chapter 1: Escaping a Stalker to Another World

When he jumped from the third floor of his apartment building, Irumi Sakuma found himself in an unfamiliar foreign city.

He couldn't make sense of what was happening himself, let alone explain it to anyone else. He realized that when a person is truly overwhelmed, all they can do is stand there in a daze.

(No, this isn't the time to space out. I need to remember. Why did this happen…?)

Holding his still-pounding heart and closing his eyes, he tried to recall the shocking events that led to this moment. His memory went too far back, all the way to his childhood.

Irumi Sakuma was the eldest of three brothers. His father was unreliable due to various circumstances, and his mother rarely came home, so Irumi practically raised his two younger brothers himself.

He might have been what they now call a "young carer." Their rebellious phases were tough, but he didn't mind. Pathetic as it sounds, he thinks it's because he was an empty person with no real ambitions of his own. From the moment he could remember, he was always taking care of someone, working part-time jobs, with no time to make close friends, let alone a romantic partner.

He never found anything he wanted to do in the future and grew into adulthood empty. After graduating high school, he immediately got a job at a nearby company, becoming an ordinary, busy salaryman. His brothers went off to university and started living on their own. Just as his role as a caretaker was winding down, he threw himself into work daily to distract himself from the loneliness.

His ordinary life began to unravel a year ago.

A man named Kurosawa joined Irumi's department. Three years younger than Irumi, he had started working right after high school, too. Quiet and not great at communicating, Kurosawa had apparently been shuffled between departments. The people in Irumi's department were harsh to him from the start.

They ignored his greetings, dumped troublesome tasks on him, made him shred piles of documents at the end of the day, and gave him menial chores that bordered on harassment. Feeling sick watching this, Irumi started helping him out, at least by talking to him. Kurosawa was around the same age as his younger brother, and Irumi couldn't just ignore him.

"Don't worry about it. We're on the same team, right?"

From then on, Irumi looked out for him. Kurosawa was deeply grateful, and they occasionally went drinking together. Over drinks, Kurosawa opened up, talking at length about his struggles with human relationships throughout his life. Irumi listened as best he could, but soon Kurosawa began calling him frequently and asking to meet up after work.

Irumi, busy with side jobs to cover his brothers' tuition and exhausted both financially and physically, found it increasingly burdensome. When he declined due to other commitments, Kurosawa would get shockingly angry.

Then, unbelievably, one day Kurosawa confessed to him.

"I love you, Sakuma-san. Please go out with me."

Irumi was stunned and carefully chose his words to politely decline. It wasn't about them both being men; to Irumi, Kurosawa was just a friendly coworker, not someone he saw romantically. But Kurosawa, feeling "betrayed," flew into a rage and began stalking him.

It started with ambushes, phone calls, and lewd messages, escalating over time. Finally, that day, Kurosawa showed up at Irumi's home, demanding a relationship and sex, threatening to kill him with a knife if he refused. Irumi fled around his apartment but was eventually cornered on the balcony railing.

It was the third floor.

Falling could kill him, but it wasn't a guaranteed death. The ground below was grass, not concrete, with trees that might break his fall. Compared to being stabbed to death, it was worth the gamble. Irumi leaped over the railing just as the knife grazed his back.

He braced for the pain of his body shattering, but it never came. When he came to, he was in this unfamiliar city.

"So… is this the afterlife?"

The conclusion felt oddly convincing, and Irumi nodded to himself.

"No, no, the afterlife would be a problem. I haven't finished paying for Yuto and the others' tuition yet…"

He couldn't die until his brothers were employed and financially independent. If this was the Sanzu River, he'd swim back to the living world if he had to.

As he calmed down and organized his thoughts, the terror of having a knife pointed at him hit him belatedly. Goosebumps covered his body, and he crouched down, hugging himself.

(Kurosawa… what happened to him after that?)

How had things come to this? Had he done something wrong in how he treated Kurosawa?

"You acted so suggestive! Didn't you help me with work because you liked me?! Were you just pitying me?! You traitor!"

He recalled Kurosawa's furious words when he rejected his confession.

He'd once heard that the act that inspires the most hatred isn't violence or insults, but "betrayal." Betrayal isn't just about deliberately breaking trust.

They thought he was a good person.

They thought he was kind.

They thought he liked them.

When someone's perception of a person doesn't match reality, they feel "betrayed." The better their impression, the greater the gap, and all the affection they felt can flip like an Othello board into overwhelming hatred.

(But… what was I supposed to do?)

Irumi let out a deep sigh and ruffled his bangs in frustration.

For a while, he wandered aimlessly, half-expecting to find the banks of the Sanzu River. Then, he froze as he passed someone with the face of a wolf. The other people in the city had Western features, and not a single Japanese person was in sight.

"No way this is Halloween in the afterlife… right?"

He kept walking, confused, but everything around him looked like the medieval fantasy settings of the games his brothers used to play obsessively. A thought struck him.

"Could this actually be another world?"

Irumi didn't watch much anime, but he knew from his brothers that there were popular shows about ordinary students or salarymen getting hit by trucks and ending up in another world with overpowered abilities. If the shock of falling from his apartment had sent him to another world…

"If that's the case, don't I get some kind of ability?"

Half-joking, he raised his hand. A strange, flower-like emblem appeared at his feet, and the area was enveloped in warm light. Startled, Irumi quickly lowered his hand.

"S-Something happened…"

The townspeople nearby turned to look, noticing the light. Irumi hurriedly left the scene. He didn't know where he was or what kind of world this was, so he wanted to avoid drawing attention. In some stories, he recalled, acting recklessly could lead to immediate condemnation or imprisonment.

In reality, this was probably just a dream. The shock of the fall likely left him unconscious, hospitalized, and dreaming. Determined to survive, Irumi wandered through this dreamlike world.

But days passed, then weeks, and the dream never ended.