Vassal To Vladimir

As great or as awful a time as it might be, Highschool eventually ends. It's a very hard feeling to understand if you haven't experienced it, but the easiest way to think about it is as a "Fading Summer". You have fun for a while, then you wake up one morning in August and find out that people start to call you an "Adult" and have every responsibility slowly weave its way into your life. Many people I knew already had plans by that point. A few people just tried to find a job, while myself and everyone else was getting ready to go to college.

My score, however, wasn't high enough.

It wasn't as if I was a bad student though. I did the homework on time, became friends with my favorite teachers and enough of my friends told me that I'd helped them get into college themselves. It was common sense that someone like me would get into college.

Deep down though, I somehow knew that I was never going to make the cut, so I just fell back to sleep in my room.

My Mother made quite a fuss. She blamed my friends, my PC, and my Silicon Valley Father for bringing those American games over. My Father chuckled at her every notion when he left the room, but his help was misguided at best. Their love always had felt as empty as that scrap of paper my score had been written on.

I rolled my covers over and over again as if it was my entire world, searching for some sense of place in the patterns I had slept in since middle school. I curled away as they became louder and louder until I was rolling through the covers of every minute of every day.

Then my sister moved out to a military base and everything went silent.

They resumed their normal lives after a few months as if nothing had happened. I didn't want to look at them though, knowing that even the slightest glance would ensure another argument. Every angle in my house became a sniper's nest from which they could attack me at any moment.

Their arguments about minutia always existed, but day by day I grew sick of them.

Eventually I took the train to the city to get away from this life in Japanese suburbia. I introduced myself as someone who could do statistics and found a job at a small firm. I emailed my Mother asking to help out with rent while I managed to get the money coming in, to which she replied:

"I'm so thankful that you finally managed to make your way out of the house! :smile:"

Years passed quietly in my apartment while I worked and played my PC games, but I was running out of RTS games and team matchmaking was exhausting to deal with 90% of the time. Everyday I felt like change was encroaching on all fronts.

Everyday the world felt like it was slipping away once again.

Then, a few days after my lonely twenty-third birthday, the day arrived when I needed to go back home.

It was another summer's day waiting at the train station. It was going to be a long ride home, so getting a seat from the start would be pretty nice. It was off-peak hours, but getting a seat was really going to give someone a good day.

My sister, someone who I'd only known over the phone, was getting married. I honestly hadn't looked at photos since I was already busy enough working, gaming, drinking and learning to code.

Would it be weird to think she might be in a homosexual relationship? I've never known anyone so I have no idea how that would work, or even if my parents would accept it. Hell, I don't think I even have friends anymore, rather just distant acquaintances that I drink and text with on forums. My phone is only useful as a convenient way to look like I need to be elsewhere, so it's not like I can really talk about some of the new gacha games that everyone is interested in nowadays.

And if I were to actually follow that thought I'd end up catastrophizing pretty bad. Shouldn't do it in public at the least.

The intercom chimed out my hometown and anxiety hushed my breath. It was finally time.

It wasn't technically time, since the train would be arriving in a few minutes and even then I wasn't even heading directly to my house. The invite was to a small out of town garden where I think they were planning on doing a traditional Japanese marriage. Mom had texted me about how she and the groom's parents disliked the arrangement, but apparently our aging neighbors liked the idea quite a bit due to how many western ones took place in the area already.

I was ambivalent about the matter.

I had no idea if I even wanted to skip out on the whole thing, walk out of the station and just sit back in my room and get back to training my coding skills. I'd gotten the day off from my manager so I definitely could and just nod and bullshit my way out of their inquiries about how I had not gone to my sister's wedding, the only sibling who I got on with. I knew nothing of what she thought of me and whether this would piss or worry or if she just not even notice or even care. I didn't even want to check if I had ever sent her a text message.

I felt an urge to itch my middle finger. A small minute spot was forming, a tiny bubble under the skin that no one would notice unless you were actually looking for it. I usually got this sort of thing when I get stressed out so this was definitely not out of the ordinary considering the circumstances. I scratched it slightly.

Ow. I think it just popped. I guess that's unexpected though…

A liquid- no, some ecto-plasmic miasma seeped out from the spot.

Then it ignited.

The eldritch flame roared its way up through my finger and into my veins, passing through my wrist and underneath my suit. I panicked, trying to pat the flame off with my other sleeve in an attempt to put it out, but the viscous mix only spread there too, quickly setting it ablaze as my entire body burned from the inside out.

I felt eyes on me, but at this point my mind was screaming from the pain. If someone had tried to help me I didn't notice it. Can they even see this absurd prank that's happening?

Is this how people are Isekai'd?

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts! It Hurts! It HURTS IT HURTSITHURTSITHUR-

I felt my footing slip, my body briefly airborne, then the steel tracks in front of an incoming train.