Interlude: Adrift in Another World
Merely an hour before Rio arrived at the grasslands, and just as he discovered the spot where ode and mana had been disrupted by time-space sorcery, three Japanese people dressed in peculiar outfits for this world were standing around in the grass.
“...Miharu?” A middle school girl dressed in her uniform timidly called out to Miharu, who was a high school student that wore her uniform, too.
The girls were unaware of the fact that several pillars of light across the Strahl region had pierced into the heavens less than a minute ago. They had no idea what had happened, nor how they had come to this place.
“Ah, erm... It’s out of range here. M-Maybe it’s broken?” Miharu replied. She had been staring at the “Out of range” display on her phone screen in a daze when she realized her name was called. She put on the best smile she could.
“B-Broken...?” The middle school girl’s expression clouded with worry.
“Did we... warp, or something?” The primary school boy, dressed in his casual clothes, muttered doubtfully in confusion. The modern townscape they were standing in moments ago had changed to a grassy plain before they had realized it.
In a word, it could only be described as “impossible.”
“No way, this isn’t one of those games you always play.” The middle school girl shot him down point-blank.
“Then how would you explain this situation?” the primary school boy objected with a pout.
“I-I don’t know. A-A dream, maybe...”
“That’s not much different than my idea.”
The primary school boy and middle school girl started bickering with each other in somewhat irritated tones, most likely feeling aggressive after being placed in such a bewildering situation.
Miharu took a deep breath and consoled the two children. “Aki-chan, Masato-kun. Let’s calm down and process the situation, okay? Do you two remember where you were before you came here?”
As the eldest, she had to keep herself levelheaded.
“Where we were... Didn’t we all meet up after the opening ceremony at school?” The boy named Masato sighed glumly.
“But weren’t Satsuki-san and Takahisa-kun with us too?” Miharu asked without missing a beat.
“Yeah, they were,” Masato nodded with certainty.
“What about you, Aki-chan?”
Prompted by Miharu, the middle school girl named Aki nodded. “Yeah... We were all together in the residential area.”
“Did the two of you feel anything strange before the landscape changed? Anything you noticed at all. I was talking to Satsuki-san when my vision suddenly looked like it distorted,” Miharu said, explaining the series of events from her own perspective as she questioned the other two.
“...I was talking to my brother when the landscape distorted, I think,” Aki answered with a murmur.
“Now that you mention it, my view also warped...” Masato tilted his head with a hum.
“If the three of us saw the same thing, then it couldn’t be a hallucination... right?” Miharu muttered.
That didn’t change the fact they didn’t know anything about their situation. After all, the peaceful residential area they had been walking through only a short moment ago was now a field of grass, leaving nothing but rocks, hills, and mountains in their view; not a single man-made structure was in sight. In the location they were originally at, a sight like this wasn’t possible no matter how many kilometers they moved.
Thinking about it calmly, the entire situation was so unscientific that it was starting to feel eerie. Perhaps they actually had warped, like Masato said.
An indescribable fear ran through Miharu, making her shudder faintly.
“Hey, did we really warp after all? Is this even Japan anymore?” Masato asked Miharu and Aki, looking suspiciously at their surroundings.
“We have no way of knowing that, since there’s no phone reception out here.” Aki shook her head bluntly.
“L-Let’s make a decision first,” Miharu suggested to the two. “Do we stay here, or do we move?”
The conversation was going around in circles, so she decided to raise her question and change the topic.
“But if we moved, we wouldn’t be able to return here anymore. Someone might come to save us... Are you sure?” Aki asked worriedly.
Despite having no evidence to the contrary, she had the vague belief that they could suddenly be returned back to where they came from if they remained here. Her reasoning to stay put and wait for rescue during times of disaster wasn’t entirely wrong, either; there was a higher possibility of being saved by preserving their stamina, rather than walking around blindly and using up energy.
However, that would increase the possibility of rescue only when they had the supplies for an extended stay — for example, when climbing a mountain, you would inform someone of what day you plan on returning in advance.
“There’s no guarantee anyone will come save us. There aren’t even any roads here. Does anyone even know that we’re here?” The questions Masato was asking were indeed of sound reasoning.
“That’s... true, but...” Aki said, pressured into agreeing.
“Even if we stay here, there aren’t any walls or a roof to shelter us. It’s kind of cold, we have nothing to protect us from the rain, and we barely have any food or water...” Miharu noted, listing all of the disadvantages of remaining where they were. The more she spoke, the more despair she felt for their situation.
“I don’t have any food or water.”
“Me neither...”
Masato and Aki both paled at once.
“I-I have some tea and biscuits. It’ll be fine!” Miharu hurriedly opened her schoolbag, taking out the bottle of tea and the homemade biscuits. She showed them to the other two with cheery encouragement. However, the amount wasn’t enough to ease their concerns.
With such limited supplies, even if I gave it all to the two of them, we’d run out of food and water in no time... I have to do something before that happens. While she somehow managed to calmly analyze the situation, impatience was slowly rising within Miharu.
“Hey, let’s try to find someone. If we stay here, we’ll either starve to death or freeze to death,” Masato proposed anxiously. Seeing Miharu’s composure had helped him keep his own cool, but he could still keenly feel the precariousness of their current situation.
“What do you think, Aki-chan?” Miharu asked.
“Y-Yeah. I agree... But which way should we go?” Aki nodded hesitantly, looking around the grassland with a worried expression. Miharu didn’t know the answer to that either.
“Let’s try heading that way, since the other side has mountains in the distance.” Miharu stifled her worries and pointed south.
Once they decided the direction in which to proceed, the three of them started to silently move. They walked for about ten to twenty minutes, but there was still no sign of anything man-made. On the contrary, there wasn’t even a single sign of life.
The air was chilly and dry; simply walking parched their throats. After walking for an hour, Miharu made the other two take one sip each of the tea in her bottle. Since this was all the water they had, they needed to ration it economically, but regularly. After all, it was important to keep hydrated when moving.
If only there was a river or something... Miharu thought earnestly as she led the other two, who followed her without complaint.
“...Ah, it’s a person... —Hey, isn’t that a person?!” Masato suddenly said.
“Huh? ...Y-You’re right! It’s a person, a person! Miharu!” Aki’s voice bounced happily.
Far in the distance where Aki and Masato were looking were human-like figures. While they couldn’t tell how far away they were, it looked like a large group of people moving in a line. Upon further inspection, creatures that looked like horses were pulling something among them.
That’s a horse... right? The inconsistency of the sight with the time period made Miharu pause in shock.
“Hey, Miharu! Aren’t we going?! There are people there!” Aki pulled on Miharu’s sleeve.
“Y-Yeah. That’s... right,” Miharu nodded slowly, all while wondering with unease as to where in the world they really were. But it wasn’t just unease in her heart, though — there was faint caution, too.
“Heeey!” Unaware of how Miharu was feeling in her heart, Masato yelled loudly and drew attention to their position.
“Heeey!” Aki followed after Masato.
“Heeey!” Masato and Aki’s voices eventually overlapped with each other. There were people there; placed in a completely unknown situation, the mental relief that fact brought to the two was immeasurably huge.
The two children waved their arms desperately in an appeal as they shouted. Then, having noticed Masato and Aki, several figures left the line at the other end. There were three of them, and they approached Miharu and the others at an oddly fast pace.
Masato and Aki noticed that fact and waved their arms happily.
“...Huh, a horse?”
They soon froze, because they had noticed the figures closing in were on horseback. As Masato and Aki were frozen, the mounted figures came right up to them.
“**** **!” The man riding at the front shouted. The three Japanese students couldn’t understand what he was saying at all.
“***, ****!”
When the leader-like man riding first yelled, the other two came to a halt at once.
The men riding on horseback all had rough facial features, and were clearly not Japanese. They were dressed in light leather armor with dreadfully solid metal swords that were sheathed at their waists.
The men calmed the horses they had just halted and glared down at the three. Aki and Masato backed away in fear.
Miharu was also fearful, but she stood in front of Aki and Masato to protect them.
“Ah, umm... D-Do you understand Japanese?” She opened her mouth to try and say something, then blurted out the first question that came to mind with a trembling voice.
“****’* ****, *** ***?” The apparent leader cocked his head suspiciously.
“Do you know where we are? We seem to be lost...” Miharu asked in English next, refusing to give up.
“*****.” The man shook his head as though he was giving up on communicating.
“Huh? English is no good, too? Then, umm, what should we do... M-Maybe my pronunciation was bad.”
Unable to come to a mutual understanding, Miharu finally faltered, and her unease continued to increase. She was overwhelmed by the unpleasant throbs in her chest.
Behind Miharu, Aki and Masato had completely shrunken in on themselves in silence. They had never spoken to any foreigners in their lives, so they were frightened.
It was understandable — the other party was equipped with swords, after all.
“****, ***’* *** ***** **** *** ** ****? **** ** **** **** *** ****.” One of the men on horseback stared at Miharu’s face and body with a grin as he said something to the leader. There was no restraint in his gaze, making Miharu fidget slightly.
“****, ***’** *****,” the leader replied to the man with a grin on his mouth. His gaze was also fixed on Miharu.
“*** ***** *** ****’* ** *** ******. *** *****, *** ***** ***** ****.” The third man also said something, his line of sight on Aki and Masato as they stood behind Miharu.
“W-What?”
“Hey, isn’t this kind of bad?” Aki and Masato said as they looked up worriedly at the men holding their conversation between themselves.
“*** *****, *** ****.” The man who appeared to be the leader said something, and the other men immediately dismounted from their horses. They all started casually walking toward Miharu, Aki, and Masato.
Miharu spread her arms before Aki and Masato to protect them, placing herself in the line of fire. Like Masato had said, she had a bad feeling about this... but, really, she knew it was already too late.
The three of them slowly backed away.
“D-Don’t come any closer!” Aki suddenly yelled from behind Miharu. Her voice trembled, most likely from fear.
She glared at the men threateningly, but it was like staring down the barrel of a gun.
One of the approaching men burst into cackles at the sight of Aki’s bluff. Then, the leader suddenly drew his sword from the sheath at his waist. No matter how they looked at it, that gleam and thickness of the blade couldn’t have been a fake.
“***’* ****!” The leader-like man suddenly yelled at Miharu, Aki, and Masato.
Aki gave a small shriek. “Eek!”
Masato flinched, too. A bad feeling gnawed away at Miharu bit by bit, paralyzing her legs. It was as though someone had a fist clenched around her heart.
“L-Let’s run! Quickly!” Masato said.
“Y-Yeah!” Aki nodded vigorously.
“Don’t run, you two!” Miharu returned to her senses with a gasp and grabbed Aki’s and Masato’s hands in a fluster.
The men had weapons and were on horseback; she highly doubted they would be able to run from people like that, and running might urge them to kill instead.
More importantly, the air around the men felt abnormal.
“Eh? Ah, but...” Aki tried to say something, but trailed off.
“Don’t run. You don’t know what they’ll do, so obey them quietly. Please?” Miharu muttered, raising their grasped hands to appeal her willingness to go along without resistance. Both of her hands were trembling with fear.
“****.” The leader snorted mockingly at Miharu and the others’ lack of resistance, then gave some kind of order to the other two men from horseback. The two men suddenly moved to obey him, tying Aki and Masato’s hands with rope. They collected the schoolbags the two of them carried, and brought the two children over to the horses, attaching the ropes to the saddles.
Aki and Masato were upset, but quietly obeyed them as Miharu had told them to. The two of them anxiously watched Miharu, who was the only one left behind.
Then, one man stood by Aki and Masato to watch them as the other man approached Miharu. The man looked at her with perverted eyes and let out a jovial whistle, then reached for Miharu’s body with a lecherous movement, when —
“****! *** ****, *** ****!” The leader yelled angrily, making the man retract his hand in a hurry. With a click of his tongue, he snatched Miharu’s schoolbag and tied her hands in an impersonal manner.
Miharu froze as her body shook with an indescribable fear. The thudding in her heart didn’t cease, but when she made eye contact with a worried Aki and Masato, she forced a smile onto her face. Then, Miharu was dragged to the horses and tied to the saddle just like Aki and Masato.
...Was this the right choice? Miharu thought as she saw the despair in Aki and Masato’s expressions.
If Aki and Masato had tried to run earlier, the men might have killed one of them, and that was something she couldn’t allow. While being alive didn’t mean having hope, dying was most certainly the end.
“**** ***!” The leader gave a new order, and the men swiftly mounted their horses.
Miharu and the others were pulled along by the rope attached to the horse saddles and taken to the main party the men belonged to.
Miharu and the others were taken to a run-down road that was clearly not maintained. On it were over ten wagons with horses that formed a line of two rows; they were surrounded by armed men who were protecting their contents.
Most of the wagons had their covers rolled up, exposing their interior platform to the open. However, the framework was made of a metal as sturdy as a jail cell, and inside were countless numbers of people in raggedy clothes.
For Miharu and the other two, who were raised in modern society, it was clear at this point that this was a different world. They could see the clear division of worlds between the imposingly armed men surrounding the wagon and the lifeless people inside the wagon. Miharu, Aki, and Masato could practically feel and see the bizarre aura hanging in the air about the group.
When the men — those who had broken off from the group to retrieve Miharu and the other two — returned, all the attention turned to them. The three were clearly wearing outfits that were out of place, drawing suspicious looks from the men. However, once the attention on their odd clothing died down, the men’s gazes were gradually drawn to Miharu’s appearance.
With her outfit and physical features (like her hair color, for instance), it was clear to the men that she was a foreigner. Her face was cute, with beautifully refined features, and her feminine body was truly charming — she was slender, but well-balanced. From her soft aura that managed to be both graceful and meek, her upbringing seemed to be on par with the nobility of this world.
A deceivingly gentle wind blew, ruffling both her checker-pleated skirt and glossy black hair that extended down her back. The men’s eyes widened at the sight.
Miharu could keenly feel the presumptuous gazes glued to her, and she stirred uncomfortably, averting her eyes.
“****?” A well-dressed man who had appeared from nowhere addressed the men who had taken the youngsters with a question. His eyes landed on their bindings and narrowed sharply.
“**********. ******, ****, *******? ********.” The leader looked at the three as he said something boastfully to the well-dressed man, then showed him the schoolbags that they’d been carrying.
“**, *******.” The well-dressed man took the schoolbags and inspected them, before voicing an impressed grunt.
He looked at the three of them, and with a gloating grin, he approached them with an appraising look in his eye. He examined their clothes fixedly from point-blank range, touching each of the fabrics and widening his eyes at the quality.
Next, the man set his eyes on the group, before he moved right before Miharu. When he saw her fearful face, a sadistic smile flashed across his own. “****, ******?” he asked, but Miharu couldn’t understand his words and only tilted her head timidly. In response, the well-dressed man put on a vulgar smile.
“*******. **********.” He pointed at Miharu, and jerked his chin at the men around him to follow his order; they jumped to respond promptly.
They pulled Miharu’s bound hands by the rope, leading her away. The wagon she was led to was of better quality than the others, having a proper cover that could serve as shelter from the elements.
Unable to bear the sight of Miharu being dragged away, Aki screamed. “Miharu, wait!”
“Aki-chan, I’ll be fine. You too, Masato-kun... Kya?!”
Miharu had turned around while being led away to smile at Aki and Masato, but the rope was violently yanked, making her lose her balance and nearly trip.
“Miharu!” Aki shouted in a panic.
“Kya?!”
“Whoa!!”
A sharp cracking sound echoed forth, making Aki and Masato shrink in on themselves. The source of the sound was from a whip, which the well-dressed man was controlling skilfully with his overweight body. He continued to swing the whip as a threat toward Aki and Masato.
“Uhh...” Aki had shriveled up completely.
“****. ** **** ***** *******.” The well-dressed man looked at Aki and Masato’s fearfulness and huffed through his nose with satisfaction, lowering his whip, then giving the men nearby an order.
The armed men stirred into action, this time dragging Aki and Masato to a wagon that was different than the one Miharu had been taken to.
With no other choice, Aki and Masato boarded the wagon; it had its platform exposed, and there were hordes of boys and girls around the age of ten gathered on board.
“M-Miharu... What should we do, Masato? What should we do...” Aki asked Masato. She stood in the wagon and grabbed the metal lattice, extremely upset.
“A-Aki, I know how you’re feeling, but it might be better to stay quiet,” Masato whispered to her, worried about their surroundings.
“What are you talking about...” Aki started to object in a sullen tone when she realized the other children on the wagon were glaring at them. She promptly shut her mouth.
There wasn’t an ounce of energy in their faces, but it was clear that they were admonishing Aki and Masato. Perhaps they wanted to tell them not to make a fuss and anger the guards.
“Let’s just sit down quietly for now. We don’t know what they’ll do if we cause a racket,” Masato whispered in her ear, before reading the situation and sitting down in the wagon. With that, Aki had no choice but to sit down next to Masato and hang her head in gloom.
Not long after that, the wagons that Miharu, Aki, and Masato were on departed. However, in no time at all, an uproar ensued. One of the guards at the side of the wagons pointed off the road and yelled something.
“...What?” Aki murmured, raising her head.
She nervously looked around the outside of the wagon and listened carefully. While she couldn’t understand their words, she figured some kind of disturbance had happened; at the same time, she felt a faint tinge of hope that she could use this chance to escape, despite the fact the door of the wagon was locked.
At that moment, Aki saw a figure approach from the side of the road, just next to the wagon where Miharu was. The figure looked to be a boy in his mid-teens.
“...Huh?”
The boy was dressed in an overcoat that she imagined served as travel gear in this world, but when the boy’s face entered her field of view, Aki gasped. His hair was gray, and he had an extremely refined face, but Aki’s attention wasn’t drawn to him because of that.
She had gasped because he seemed the closest to her — racially — than anyone else she had encountered in this world thus far. If she had to describe it, he looked like he was half-Asian.
The aforementioned boy came up to the wagon and started to say something to the guards. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the men were clearly being cautious around him.
Soon after that, the well-dressed man appeared to see what was going on. The boy said something, to which the well-dressed man shook his head bluntly. They seemed to be arguing about something.
The gray-haired boy then briefly cast his eyes over the convoy of wagons, and the well-dressed man looked over at the wagon Aki and Masato were on. He soon looked away again, but his eyes had met with Aki’s for a second.
Did he come here to save us? Aki thought to herself hopefully, a strange uneasiness in her chest. The hope that sprouted in the midst of such a desperate situation might have only been that of pure optimism, but it was growing at an accelerating pace.
Aki was staring at the boy with a yearning gaze when, suddenly, the men around them hurriedly began to lower the cover of the exposed wagons. The cover of the wagon Aki and Masato were on was also lowered.
Why are they hiding us?
Aki felt a strong sense of suspicion. Should she take action and seek help? What if she had misread this situation? Doing so could cause her to face dire consequences later.
Would he even believe her circumstances to begin with? She didn’t know.
However, this could be the turning point in their destiny — the last possible chance for them to be saved. If that was the case, she couldn’t just sit around and wait.
Unable to withstand it any longer, Aki stood up with great vigor. “H-Help us!” she cried out desperately, seeking help from the boy.
The boy’s gaze met Aki’s eyes, and a beat later, the cover of the wagon was lowered before Aki.
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