A game character had popped out into reality.
To be honest, it was an extremely old-fashioned premise, the kind you barely saw used in comics or web novels these days.
So naturally, I had no choice but to be suspicious first.
‘Am I dreaming right now?’
In truth, the real me might have hit the back of my head on the floor when the chair tipped over and passed out from the impact.
Looking at my favorite character standing before me, that thought crossed my mind, so I pinched my own thigh to check whether this was a dream or reality.
“Gaaah!”
It hurt.
It hurt enough to bring tears to my eyes.
The pain that shot through my thigh was brief and intense, strong enough to blow away what little alcohol still lingered in my system.
Having watched the entire ridiculous one-man show I’d put on, Tachibana Saori crouched down in front of me and asked,
“Are you okay, Sensei? You didn’t hurt your head when you fell, did you?”
At first, she’d laughed as if I were still being absurd, but after I kept acting strangely right in front of her, it seemed she had started to worry.
“Uh, yeah. I’m fine.”
I answered that I was fine without thinking, and I realized I was treating her comfortably, as if we’d known each other for a very long time, even though this was clearly the first time I had met her today.
‘She called me Sensei.’
Maybe in her eyes, I looked like the protagonist of Red Asterisk, “Sensei.”
“That’s a relief, then.”
Hearing my answer, she smiled faintly as if reassured, then stood up with an “Up we go,” and looked around the twenty-four-pyeong apartment I was renting on a jeonse lease before asking,
“Is this where you’re living now, Sensei? It’s not that different from the teachers’ night-duty room you stayed in before. Are you eating properly?”
Like a mother visiting her son’s place after a long time, she suddenly asked whether I was eating properly.
I was about to answer, Of course, but then my eyes happened to land on the convenience store lunchbox sitting on my computer desk, and I closed my mouth.
Saori naturally followed my gaze and turned her head. When her eyes fell on the convenience store lunchbox, she gave me an incredulous look, then rolled up both sleeves and said,
“First, I’ll make you something to eat. We can say what we want to say after that.”
What? She was going to cook for me all of a sudden, at a time like this?
Faced with one completely unexpected development after another, I could only feel bewildered.
***
She entered the kitchen with a confident air and used up every ingredient in my refrigerator to make miso soup.
And, as if to prove she was Japanese, it was miso soup made in a Japanese style, with the soybean paste smoothly dissolved.
The moment I took a sip of the warm miso soup with steam rising from it, an exclamation escaped my mouth before I knew it.
“Wow.”
Though it couldn’t compare to my mother’s kimchi stew, it had been a very long time since I’d eaten food someone had made for me personally.
The only solid ingredients were some tofu and a bit of seaweed, but when I devoured the miso soup she’d made together with rice as if it were a feast of delicacies, Saori, who had been quietly watching me eat with her chin propped on her hand, asked casually,
“How is it? Is it good?”
“Yeah. Good enough that I’d want to eat it every day, if I could.”
I answered like that with my face practically buried in my rice bowl.
“Hehe.”
After hearing that answer, she smiled in satisfaction, and when I polished off a bowl of rice in the blink of an eye, she even peeled an apple I’d received as a Chuseok gift and served it to me for dessert.
Once I had filled my stomach so well, I regained some composure and thought while spearing the rabbit-shaped apple she’d cut for me with a fork.
‘What am I supposed to say now?’
To be honest, even now, it still didn’t feel real.
I had worked at the company as usual, dragged my exhausted body home, and was watching YouTube when an ad came up, so I installed the game—only for my favorite character to suddenly pop out of the monitor.
If I explained this story to someone else, it was so absurd they would ask if I’d dreamed it in my sleep.
At that moment, Saori, sitting across from me, was the first to speak in a playful tone.
“Sensei, you look like you have quite a lot you want to ask me.”
“Uh, yeah. Was it that obvious?”
When I scratched my cheek awkwardly, Saori shrugged and said, “I understand how you feel. If there’s anything you want to ask, ask me anything.”
In any case, since she seemed willing to cooperate, I asked her directly.
“So… you really are Tachibana Saori, right?”
At that, she placed a hand over her chest and said,
“That’s right. I am Tachibana Saori. Or do I look like an alien or a monster in your eyes, Sensei, instead of a pure and delicate beautiful girl?”
“No way.”
Long hair with a faint violet tint, red eyes that could never be seen in reality.
Her consistently confident attitude, and even the aura of a ruler to match it.
She had become a little more mature, but the person in front of me was undoubtedly Tachibana Saori, one of the students who appeared in the game Red Asterisk.
The student council president of Übermensch Alliance School, one of the three prestigious schools of Academy City, and a special-class ability user, of whom there were only twelve in all of Academy City.
It was information I already knew, but hearing it from her own mouth was different, so I gulped and asked my next question.
“How did you come to this world?”
Then Tachibana Saori placed a hand over her chest and said proudly,
“I don’t know either.”
“…What?”
When I stared blankly at her, completely blindsided by the answer, she explained with a calm expression.
“I was doing my work as usual when something like a white window suddenly appeared in front of me. And beyond it, I could see your face, Sensei. As if I were possessed by something, I tried putting my hand into the window, and then I was pulled straight in. That’s the end of it.”
“Then the way back is…?”
“I don’t know.”
It was one problem after another.
At that moment, Saori, having finished her explanation, seemed to realize something belatedly and asked me in return,
“But what do you mean by this world?”
Ah, so she didn’t even know that much.
After hesitating for a moment, I decided to tell her only part of the uncomfortable truth.
No matter what, it would be hard for her to accept the fact that she was a game character.
“This isn’t the world you lived in, Saori. There are no megacorporations with power rivaling nations, no ability users, and no Academy City. So, to put it more simply, it means this is another world.”
“Another world?”
Just as I had been at first, it seemed it was now her turn to be shocked.
The one fortunate thing was that, befitting a girl whose setting described her as one of the greatest prodigies in all of Academy City, it didn’t take her long to accept the cold reality.
After some time passed, Saori asked with a composed expression,
“So this is a world different from the one I lived in, and you, Sensei, were actually someone who crossed over from another world?”
“That’s right.”
“No wonder I couldn’t find even a trace of you, no matter what methods I used.”
Muttering that, Saori took a smartphone out of her pocket.
Seeing as it was a model I had never once seen in my life, it was probably an electronic device made in Academy City.
“There really is no data connection… Then where exactly is this? More importantly, is this even Japan?”
I explained it to the confused Saori.
“It’s Korea, the neighboring country. Of course, Japan exists here just fine too.”
“Dimensional travel… I truly can’t believe it.”
With a resigned expression, Saori turned off her smartphone screen.
It seemed she had tried various things in that brief moment, but since it wasn’t an object made in this world to begin with, there was no way it would function properly.
As I quietly watched her, one question suddenly occurred to me.
“By the way, when did you learn Korean? You seem really fluent.”
During our conversation, I hadn’t sensed the distinctive accent of a foreigner even once, so to be honest, it wouldn’t have been an exaggeration to say she was practically native-level.
“What are you talking about? I’ve been speaking Japanese the whole time.”
But Saori looked as if this was the first she’d heard of it.
“Huh?”
Realizing that something about our conversation wasn’t lining up, I asked her to say it again just to check.
“だから、私はずっと日本語で話していたんだよ？”
Now that I was listening consciously, it definitely sounded like Japanese this time.
‘Why was I able to understand what she meant so naturally?’
I didn’t know the principle behind it, but it seemed some unknown force, like an automatic translator, was at work between her and me.
And it seemed I wasn’t the only one who had experienced this phenomenon, because Saori also reacted with curiosity.
As the two of us continued talking about this and that, before I knew it, the clock hands were pointing to twelve, so I stood up first.
“Sorry, but it looks like it’s gotten too late, so I think we should sleep now.”
Tomorrow wasn’t a holiday but a weekday, so unless I was going to use annual leave, I absolutely had to go to work.
And when I explained that situation, Saori readily agreed with my opinion.
“Understood. Then let’s stop here for today.”
Once we wrapped up the conversation like that, I realized there was yet another problem.
Until we figured out how to send her back to her original world, she would need somewhere to stay for the time being, and there was a high probability that place would be my home.
‘At least it’s a relief that there’s a spare room.’
I could clean out the small room I’d been using half as a storage room and give it to her, but that would only be possible over the weekend.
There wasn’t nearly enough time to clean it up right now.
‘It can’t be helped.’
Clicking my tongue, I said to Saori,
“You sleep in my room tonight. I’ll lay out a blanket and sleep in the living room.”
“Wouldn’t that be too uncomfortable for you, Sensei? I’ll sleep in the living room.”
“There’s a saying that the guest is king.”
“I don’t think that saying was meant for situations like this…”
Saori looked unconvinced, but in the end, she yielded to my stubbornness.
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow, Sensei.”
Saying that, she waved her hand and went into the main bedroom where my bed was.
After confirming that she had entered the room, I lay down on the bedding I had spread out in advance to bring this chaotic day to a close.
Because tomorrow, I had to be at work by nine in the morning again.
‘The life of an office worker is hard.’
Something that could have happened in a comic or novel had happened in reality, yet the first thing I had to worry about was going to work tomorrow.
Lamenting my lot in life like that, I closed my dry, gritty eyes.