This is a story about regrets, second chances, and answering the question "why?"
Certainly everyone has their metaphysical demons and their psychological shortcomings, this is a story of a man's quest to fix both of these in a journey to another world through the power of a strangely familiar deity.
I decided to start writing this. I'm hoping it will be good, but I can't make any promises since all I have so far is a prologue and an idea of where to go with it.
This is a story about second chances, regrets, and answering the question "why?".
After binge reading a couple of light novels (sooo many volumes), I have decided that the online format of these books is pretty comfortable to read. You will find no translation errors here though, since I speak English. I have no intent to publish elsewhere at this time, so I don't care if there are some little grammar errors or minor spelling errors.
Fair warning, this prologue may be depressing and dry. I think that's okay though, because the rest of the story shouldn't really refer back to this chapter without explanation.
Prologue
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It is an old memory...
“Go away! Why don't you leave me alone?!”
I had no idea why she was so mad. 'We were good friends' is what I thought, and yet the girl from down the street somehow decided that I was no good and announced it in the hallway at school. It made me sad, but I couldn't cry about it despite being only 7 because I couldn't even understand why.
I ended up doing nothing afterall. It only made sense that I did, she could hurt me in ways I didn't know people could and I decided that it was best to avoid that kind of pain.
I don't think I made many friends after that. I don't even know if she might have said some awful and untrue things about me that made the other kids disdain my existence, but I was an ignorant child anyway.
That event was soon forgotten and I went on living my life with few friends that really meant much to me. I was always the one that stayed in this town, and my friends always moved. I wasn't some timid kid that just took bullying to the face either. Even though the horrible proverb 'nice guys finish last' rang true to me, I never even wanted to be mean to people who weren't already oozing with malicious tendencies. I gave what I got.
I might have had few friends, but not for lack of trying. I occasionally found something to laugh about to my classmates that tended to be interested in immature humor.
A graphic in the textbook had a fruit vending machine.
'This is comedy gold!' I thought, and showed it to the student next to me while laughing through my nose like an idiot during the lesson.
It stopped being funny almost immediately when this traitorous cockroach turned to another student and told him that I was referring to his mother with that picture.
The simpleton he talked to immediately rose from his seat during the lesson and approached me with his fists while yelling “I'll kill you!”
Perhaps I should have let him hit me in hindsight. I was not trained to fight, but this guy was both irrational AND an idiot with the same amount of training.
I was not an idiot and I was definitely not irrational. I just had no friends in most circumstances and every time something like this happened, I lost trust in others. While being both rational and lacking in true idiocy, I managed to ensnare the irrational idiot's limbs and hold him until someone showed up to cure his stupidity. This was another new and horrible experience for me. Unfortunately for me, the one to arrive to cure the young man's stupidity was an old man with the same terminal condition. The vice principal with the horrible crossed eyes saw me restraining the young idiot and told us that we were going to be suspended.
'Suspension?!' I thought, 'I can't get suspended! I'll get punished for defending myself!'
It was unacceptable to me. I didn't even hurt the poor idiot, but he was an idiot after all.
“He threatened my LIFE!” I yelled honestly. The chain of events was making my heart race and I was becoming angry enough to shout my defense at the idiot vice principal.
I knew that this was the only way out of there with my figurative skin intact. Threatening other students was itself a suspendable offense and it gave reason to allow my permanent record to remain untarnished with the black mark of suspension. The idiot was removed from that class permanently and was given a weeks worth of out of school suspension. I got a weeks worth of detention and my parents didn't even know about the event.
I sacrificed the idiot to save myself, but the criminal antagonizer remained. I didn't speak to him after that, and in hindsight, it was more that I wasn't spoken to by anyone. Whether it was fear of my brutal retaliation or the typical air of ignoring the unpopular me, I was perhaps more alone than before.
I couldn't deal with people. Most of them were awful anyways, so what was the point? I got along with teachers and maintained a mostly sociable attitude toward my classmates.
Cases occurred multiple times where people decided to mess with me. Nothing amounted to physical violence due to either my quick thinking or quick feet, but there was definitely some attempts at bullying mixed in. The bullies who used verbal abuse usually ended up more hurt by my words than I was by theirs. I once remarked on the quality of a horribly mean girl's horribly flat chest just so that she would never want to say anything to me again. She was hurt more by this because I said these things in the presence of others who thought ill of her.
Some occasions were obviously friendly. The kid in the wheelchair was always friendly and I helped him (and anyone else that struggled) in the class we shared. He decided it would be fun to try and run me over playfully. Being a nonviolent and rational person, I quickly moved to the stairs. Somehow I felt that it could be considered taunting as he could not climb stairs with his condition, but I didn't care enough about his condition to let him jab my ankles with his metal footrests.
I hated being messed with whether it was in good fun or with some malicious intent. Nobody took me seriously either because I always tried friendship through humor.
I lived this way until my classmates started 'growing up'. I wanted to have more than my one or two friends that I could count on. I made friends with one guy that like acting like a delinquent although he was really just a nerd with a bad attitude. I made friends with a dorky kid with a permanently clogged pair of nostrils. I made friends with a kid whose parents wouldn't let him grow up. I made friends with a fat kid whose father was ironically a manipulative drunkard and a Baptist.
I wasn't friends with them all at once. I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't even like each other. When the mouth breather moved away, I had no friends. The fat kid betrayed my trust and told a girl I thought was attractive that I liked her (I had no basis upon which to like her). The delinquent nerd continued his delinquent behavior into the latter years of high school and I stopped encountering him as a friend. The kid whose parents never let him grow up never grew up.
The kid that never grew up and I are still friends.
Unfortunately, we are both in the same circumstance - I live with my parents and he lives with his... still.
I had moved out. I had earned money. I got fired because I hated my job and didn't wake up for work a few too many times.
I am stuck back at home with my parents now. I'm back in school trying to earn a bachelor's degree – it is not enjoyable at this time and I would gladly walk through a rift in time-space to get away.
I am finding that I have nothing to look forward to whenever I wake up. Possibly because I'm alone.
I wonder if there could be a way that nice guys could finish first.
I wonder why she decided to hate me. I didn't do anything to deserve it.
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Thanks for reading. I intend to throw some genre deciding action at you in Chapter 1.
End
