Teaser: This is what happens when an isekai world fails to load properly. The chosen hero? Still stuck in the tutorial dungeon, The goddess? Rage-quit three years ago
and Mira? She's here to recruit a glitch
``The first thing Mira saw was a sword lodged in a rock. The second was the guy sobbing next to it.``
"Are you... crying because you can't pull it out?" she asked.
The guy looked up, sniffling. He had the standard look: messy dark hair, bland but handsome face, a cloak that screamed *"I'm the protagonist but I hate it."*
"No. I'm crying because the game never started," he said.
Behind them, the trees buzzed with a low hum—textboxes trying to spawn but failing. Glitched flowers blinked in and out. The sky shimmered like a bad loading screen.
Rion kicked one of the floating dialogue bubbles. "Yep. We're in Failed Isekai Zone. Dead data."
Mira squinted at the boy. "Name?"
He wiped his nose with a potion label. "Yuto. Hero candidate #121. I've been here for... I don't know. Feels like 800 chapters."
Mira exchanged glances with Rion. This was why they came here—to find the ones stuck, forgotten, or abandoned mid-script.
"Do you want out?" Mira asked.
Yuto blinked. "Can I?"
"You want out, or you want revenge?" she pressed.
(There was a pause. Then Yuto stood. The tutorial sword dislodged with a wet *pop*. For the first time in years, the sky didn't flicker.)
"Revenge sounds nice."
---
Back in the campfire zone—technically a broken inn copy-paste scene—Rion unfolded the patch map. "Next zone's worse."
Mira poked the edge. "Worse than a crying hero in a frozen tutorial?"
"Yup. We're entering the Otome Dump."
Mira groaned. "Let me guess—abandoned love interests with too many flags and no routes?"
"Bingo."
Yuto squinted. "Wait, what's an Otome?"
Mira patted his shoulder. "You'll learn. Fast."
---
But before they could warp out, a flare exploded above them—bright pink, laced with glitter and the smell of cheap perfume.
Rion's face dropped. "...Oh no."
Out of the glitched woods walked three women. Tall, pretty, dead-eyed. Their eyes blinked out of sync. They wore half-rendered academy uniforms.
"NEW FEMALE CANDIDATE DETECTED," one of them said.
"INITIATING ROUTE COMBAT."
Mira hissed. "Route combat?!"
The three girls raised shimmering fans like weapons. "Villainess slot: occupied. Eliminate."
Mira pulled out the empty patch tag from her pocket. "I swear, if these bitches break my narrative again—"
---
Chaos erupted. Yuto screamed and ran. Rion threw debug smoke. One of the girls exploded into a rain of golden hearts screaming, "REJECTED FLAG!"
Mira dove forward and slapped her tag onto one of them mid-air. For a split second—freeze frame.
Everything stopped.
Then the system groaned like a dying Windows XP install.
"ERROR: MULTIPLE ROUTES COLLIDING. INITIATING SAFE EXIT."
With a blast of light, the glitch snapped shut.
The three of them dropped into silence. Flat ground. Blue sky. Clean UI.
Yuto gasped. "Where...?"
Rion smirked. "You made it past the tutorial."
Mira cracked her neck. "Let's crash a genre next."
---
(Next stop: the Otome Graveyard.)
(Where heroines wait for a choice that never came.)
(And Mira's not ready to play by anyone's script.)