Daiki woke to find the morning sun shining down on him through the window, and Natsuki sitting on a chair by the bed, watching him.

    Daiki rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

    “You said that you’re a second year biology student at Osaka University,” Natsuki said. “And aside from your name, I think that is the only true thing you have told me since you got here.”

    Daiki stiffened.

    “No more lies,” Natsuki demanded. “Why are you here?”

    “I told you, I was in town for a cosplay event, and I lost my belongings,” Daiki said.

    “A cosplay event hosted by the Japanese army?” Natsuki said. “I thought they were more into guns and tanks.”

    “You’d be surprised,” Daiki said.

    “I think I would,” Natsuki said. “And having come from Osaka for this cosplay event, and discovering that the only thing you had to your name was your costume, you walked all the way across Tokyo to a private school.”

    “I was having a bad day.”

    “At which point you borrowed my phone and discovered that the Japanese army had never heard of you or this Major Atria Silversword person. And then, you spent the entire day hanging out with us, without once trying to borrow so much as a single Yen to get home, despite my repeatedly mentioning that you had lost your wallet. And then you spent the night here.”

    “I know what this looks like, and–”

    Natsuki frowned. “It looks like you’re a terrible liar. I was calling myself ‘Detective Natsuki’ in front of you all day yesterday. Did you really think I wasn’t on to you, or trying to tell you as much?”

    Daiki sat up. He regretted what came out of his mouth as soon as he said it. “Maybe I’m just secretly a lolicon.”

    Natsuki grinned. “Really!” she said, unbuttoning her top to reveal the swell of her breasts underneath. Daiki looked away.

    “Either ‘lolicon’ doesn’t mean what you think it means, or you’re the most incompetent lolicon in history,” Natsuki stated. “Don’t worry, I’ve put the big bad breasts away.”

    Daiki looked down. “I’m sorry.”

    “I like you, Daiki Yamato,” Natsuki said. “I don’t know why, but I like you. I’ve gone out of my way to make sure you didn’t go hungry and had a warm place to sleep. Now, please, all I ask is that you tell me the truth.”

    “I’m not sure you’d believe it.”

    Natsuki’s hands clenched into fists. “Just tell me what kind of story I’m in!” she demanded, her voice quivering. “Please, I’ve figured out none of this is real and you’re an isekai protagonist, just tell me the truth!”

    Daiki stared at her in shock. Then he took a deep breath. “I think it’s a romantic comedy,” he said. “There’s probably a male lead and his friends who will be showing up soon, and you and your friends may be competing over him.”

    Natsuki choked back a sob. “Thank you. Thank you for telling me that at least.”

    “How did you figure it out?”

    “I read light novels,” Natsuki said. “Your armour is real – you can tell it’s been used in actual fighting. Your sword is a real magical sword too. I tried to look at it while you were sleeping, and it disappeared from my hand and reappeared in its scabbard right in front of me. So, I thought maybe you’d actually been to another world, and all those things in the light novels can actually happen in reality.

    “But you didn’t act like you were in the real world, or like you had somewhere you needed to get to. You acted like this was just a story you were passing time in, waiting for something to happen. And when somebody who is just like a light novel isekai hero walks into your world and acts like it’s not actually real, then it probably isn’t.” Natsuki hung her head and started crying.

    “I’m sorry,” Daiki said. “I never wanted to burden you with this.”

    “Well, better to know the truth than to be ignorant, I guess,” Natsuki said, taking a deep breath and drying her eyes. “Does this mean that anything we do matters?”

    “I think it does,” Daiki said. “If it matters to us, then it’s important, and that’s all there is to it.”

    “Even though we’re fiction.”

    “It’s hard to explain, but I think that our worlds are as real as the world of the creators. For us, anyway.”

    “So why are you here? The truth, this time.”

    Daiki took a deep breath. “I’m trying to get home to my fiancee. A while back I fell out of my story world into the world of the creators. I wasn’t the only one – there was a war between those of us who were trying to protect the creators, and those who were trying to kill them. Our side was led by Major Atria Silversword – she’s a mech pilot. We won, but my creator, Akari Soto, was killed.”

    “What are they like, the people who created us?” Natsuki asked.

    “They’re just people,” Daiki said. “Most of them don’t even know that a story world can become real like this.”

    “So they’re just gods by accident?”

    “Something like that.”

    Natsuki stared at him, and then said, “Right, so you won your war, and then what happened?”

    “Before she died, my creator taught me how to use my sword to move between the story worlds. I was supposed to just open a portal and go straight home to Athena, but something went wrong, and I came here instead.”

    “And Athena is your fiancee,” Natsuki said.

    Daiki smiled. “Yes. She’s a half-wolf demi-human. I’d be lost without her.”

    “And you were waiting for your sword to recharge.”

    “This time, the portal should take me to her.”

    Natsuki nodded.

    “Tell me this,” she said. “What happens when my story ends? Am I just going to meet the boy I’m supposed to fall in love with, have my first kiss and then wake up at the beginning again, without remembering any of it?”

    “I don’t know,” Daiki said. “It’s possible, I guess, for the stories to be a time loop.”

    “Did any of the other creations you met come from after their stories had ended?”

    “No,” Daiki said.

    Natsuki looked like she was about to start crying again. “I wanted to go to law school after I graduated. I wanted to get married, and have kids. I don’t want to spend eternity in a loop repeating three years of high school.”

    “I don’t think it’s a time loop,” Daiki said.

    “Don’t lie to me again,” Natsuki said. “I’ll know if you’re lying.”

    “There was this person on our side,” Daiki began. “Her name was Princess Stellaria, but everybody called her Stella. She started off as a video game character, but after she fell into the world of the creators, she started studying quantum physics. From what she told me, the story worlds are created by these ‘information streams’ that come from the minds of all the people who read the story. But, once they come into existence, the story worlds have their own reality, and keep going once information isn’t being transmitted anymore. So, I think it’s more like time travel – somebody can only travel along an information stream to a story world during the time that story is taking place. But once the story’s done, the story world continues.”

    “So I have a future,” Natsuki said.

    “Probably, yes.”

    “But not for certain.”

    “Stella told me that the more they learn about quantum physics, the less they realize they know,” Daiki said. “Or something like that. I think I only ever understood half of what she tried to explain. It didn’t help that her pronunciation was terrible.”

    “This world you’re going back to, it’s a world at war, isn’t it?”

    Daiki nodded.

    Natsuki took a deep breath. “Then stay.”

    “Sorry?”

    “Stay here!” Natsuki cried. “I’ve seen your thousand-yard stare, and the damage to your armour. It’s not hard to see what all the fighting is doing to you. You said it yourself – this story is a romantic comedy. There’s not going to be any war here. Stay here, be at peace.”

    “It’s not that simple,” Daiki said. “Athena is waiting for me. I need to get back to her.”

    “Then go and fetch her, and bring her back here! You can both be transfer students, she’ll just be the student with a tail! You can be the married senior transfer students!”

    “You know I can’t,” Daiki said. “I’m an isekai protagonist. I’ve got a family waiting for me, back in my Japan. That’s where Athena and I are going to go.”

    “Please don’t make me face all of this alone,” Natsuki pleaded. “This is too big for me.”

    “You’re not alone,” Daiki said. “You have your friends. They seem like good ones, although I’m a bit worried about Yukari.”

    Natsuki chuckled. “Yukari is an acquired taste. But, she’s the sort of friend who will always be there when you need her.”

    “Good.”

    “If I wanted to come with you,” Natsuki said, “to see these other story worlds myself...”

    Daiki frowned. “All the creations I met in the war had special powers from their stories. And I think there are a lot more story worlds at war and filled with monsters than there are like this one.”

    “Somebody like me wouldn’t last very long, then.”

    Daiki shook his head. “Probably not.”

    “How long before you can leave?”

    Daiki checked the Black Sword. “About two hours.”

    Natsuki took a deep breath. “You should go. I’ll tell the others that you borrowed enough money from me to get a train ticket to Osaka.”

    “Thank you.”

    “Speaking of which,” Natsuki said, pulling out a wad of thousand Yen notes and pressing it into his hand, “take this.”

    “You don’t need to do this.”

    “Yes I do,” Natsuki said. “You really don’t listen very well sometimes, do you? I told you I like you, Daiki Yamato. And if things have gone as wrong as you’ve suggested, I don’t think this next portal is going to take you home, or the one after that. I think you’ve got a long journey ahead, and you shouldn’t be left cold and hungry because you didn’t bother bringing some money with you. I can’t have a future with you, but Athena can. So get back to her safe and sound. For me.”

    Daiki pocketed the money and nodded. “Thank you for everything.”

    “You should leave before the others wake up,” Natsuki said. “They’re late sleepers, but even they don’t sleep that late on a Saturday.”

    Daiki stood and wrapped his cloak around him. “Again, thank you.”

    “Just don’t forget me, okay?” Natsuki said.

    Daiki grinned. “How could I ever forget you? You’re Detective Natsuki!”

    With that, Daiki headed off to find some quiet park in which he could open a portal to the next world.

NEXT: “Supervillain”