Five voices cried out almost simultaneously.

“Kyaa!”

“Itai!”

“Nani kore?!”

“What the f-”

“Nani!?”

I looked around, rubbing my butt. I’d been sitting at my desk in my room on my tablet, playing CasuRo, when suddenly everything went dim and my chair was gone—thus the sore butt. Around me were four equally startled looking girls of seventeen or so, about the same as me. One of them was wobbling, her hands in front of her like she’d been walking while on a tablet or phone, the small heels she wore with her baby blue sundress not helping her balance in the least. The other three were on the ground like me. I looked past them as I went cautiously to my feet, finding a simple stone room. There were no visible doors.

“What the hell?” I murmured. The other girls were getting to their feet as well, dusting off skirts and looking around in confusion.

One of the other girls turned to me. She was golden skinned with black wavy hair and almond shaped sapphire eyes, easily the tallest of our group. She was the one who had been standing up from the start. “What is this place?” She asked in heavily accented English. I blinked. Why was she asking me? Another glance around the room and I realized. The other girls were all very obviously of East Asian descent—Japanese, I thought, recalling the exclamations they had made when we fell. I refocused on the girl in front of me and shrugged. “No idea,” I said in halting Japanese learned from a combination of anime, Duolingo, and one year of after school classes. “I was just sitting in my room, playing the gacha on CasuRo, and then I was here.” I dropped my hand helplessly.

She blinked. A momentary pause of the sort that comes from mentally translating a language you’re not quite fluent in. Then: “You play CasuRo?” She asked. It was short for “The Glittering Castle 〜 ōkyū no romansu to mahō 〜,” which roughly translates to “The Glittering Castle ~Romance and Magic in the Royal Palace~” a newly released otome game I was playing.

“Yup, just started in on Heinrich’s route.”

The taller girl clasped her hands together in excitement. “I loved Heinrich! He’s so sweet.” She smiled dreamily.

“Not really my favorite so far,” I said contemplatively. “The sweet-type character routes are usually to fluffy for my taste.”

Her mouth dropped open. “But that’s why they’re the best!”

Another voice piped in. “No, I’m with American-san on this one. I preferred Merrick’s route myself.” The speaker was the shortest of the five of us, hardly five feet tall, in a Japanse school girl uniform right out of an anime. She had her hair pulled back in a no-frills ponytail.

“Merrick? He’s the mature-type character, right? I didn’t get to him yet. I only finished Sid’s route so far,” I said, referring to the cool and intelligent type glasses wearing character. This was becoming surreal. I was in an unknown room in an unknown place talking about otome games.

Another of the girls let out a squee before I could reply. “Sid is my number one favorite character of any otome game in history.” She was only about an inch shorter than my five foot five, making her about the same height as the last girl who had yet to speak up. She had her hair cut in a basic bob with a plain maroon headband that matched her skirt. Like the Merrick-lover, she had on a school uniform, but hers was the more modern blazer variety.

The final girl, dressed casually in jeans and a pastel yellow blouse tossed her hat into the ring. “No way! The best character has to be Klein,” she said defiantly. Klein was the serial flirting playboy character. Personally I wasn’t a huge fan of the type—even though they’re fun in-game, real playboys are pretty much bound to cheat eventually. Chances of a real happily ever after? So, so low. 

All five of us quickly dissolved into a heated argument full of halting English broken up with Japanese as we tried to make sure we were understood by all. From CasuRo we moved on to discuss IkeKoi and then MagiAi, fangirling and arguing in turn, and proving that we were all avid otakus in the process. A few times the conversation slipped to manga, but somehow we kept finding ourselves back on otome games. I was bemoaning to my very sympathetic audience the difficulties of living in America as an otome game addict, having to wait years for translations and pay ridiculous shipping for merch, when a bemused male voice cut into our fangirling.

“You know, I had thought leaving you five alone for a while would give you time to stress and stew and be desperate for answers when I arrived.” All of us fell silent at once, whipping around to look for the source of the voice. “I guess I should have known it would turn out like this.”