"Fucking Bullshit"
Rain slid down the windows of the city bus, cutting the neon reflections into jagged, liquid light. Ejay Schwartz leaned against the cold glass, headphones dead, backpack soaked, muttering every curse he knew under his breath.
"Finals week, broken umbrella, and the vending machine ate my last dollar," he grumbled. "If this isn't a sign to end it, I don't know what is."
It had been an ordinary, miserable day. Classes, caffeine, stress — the usual cycle of a college student surviving on willpower and red bull. He stepped off the bus, hood up, sneakers splashing through puddles as he crossed the empty street.
That's when he saw it — the girl.A flash of pink hoodie, a phone in her hand, stepping off the curb without looking.
Truck-kun came around the corner fast. Headlights flared. Horns screamed.
Ejay didn't think. He just moved.
One shove. One instant.The girl hit the ground hard, her phone clattering away — but alive.The truck tore past, braking too late, swerving into a pole.Ejay staggered, breath ragged, heart trying to hammer out of his chest.
"You— You okay?" he gasped.
She nodded, dazed, staring at him like he'd fallen from the sky.He laughed — a shaky, absurd sound — and waved it off.
"Next time, look both ways before almost becoming an isekai protagonist."
He turned, shaking, adrenaline burning through him. It should've ended there.
But something didn't feel right.
The world… shifted.
The air grew heavy. Sound dropped out, like someone had pulled a plug from reality. The raindrops hung suspended for half a second too long.And inside Ejay's chest, something clicked.
It wasn't pain — it was pressure.A deep, inward pull, like gravity trying to drag him into himself.
He stumbled home through the rain, disoriented, feeling like every step twisted the streets around him. Time vanished, when he opened his apartment door, he wasn't sure if he'd walked the same route twice or ten times.
His head spun.The lights flickered.
"...I'm just tired," he muttered, dropping his soaked backpack to the floor.
But the moment it hit the ground, something metallic clinked inside.
He froze.
Carefully, he unzipped it. Inside, resting on top of his notebook and half-eaten protein bar, was a ring — thick, black, and metallic, with faint grooves pulsing dim blue light.
"What the hell…"
He picked it up. It was warm.It vibrated faintly, like a small motor was running inside it.When he turned it over, the glow shifted — and the space around his fingers bent.Like heat shimmer, but… wrong. The edges of the air folded, tiny and silent.
"Okay," Ejay whispered. "Either I'm hallucinating, or my backpack just turned into a sci-fi loot box."
He set the ring on his desk, watching as it spun by itself once… then stopped.
The hum in his head grew louder. His eyes darted around the room — the corners seemed closer than they should be, the ceiling a little too far away. His sense of distance broke, like he was standing inside a funhouse mirror.
And then — the sound came.A low, rhythmic thump.Not outside. Not upstairs.Everywhere.
He pressed his palms to his ears, but it didn't stop.
The ring lifted off the table, rising slowly, revolving in the air like it was orbiting an invisible sun.
"What the—"
The walls stretched.The lights shattered.The floor split open beneath him, and reality came apart like glass struck by a hammer.
He didn't scream — there wasn't time.The world folded inward, swallowing him in blinding white static.
Pain flared in his chest. The same pressure he'd felt before—the pull inward—twisted into heat, then release.
The world shattered around Ejay.Sound vanished. Color bled away.He was falling through white static — not air, not light, just noise.
Then came the voice.
[First Nightmare — Complete.]
Ejay's body froze mid-fall. The words didn't echo in the air; they vibrated inside his skull.
[Defiance of Predestined Fate Detected.][Statistical Outcome Deviation: 99.9987%][Evaluation: Impossible Act.]
The light around him pulsed. Symbols spun across the void like circuits of fire.
[Performance Rating — S Rank.][Reward — Sacred Aspect Manifestation.]
A ring of black metal formed before his eyes, carved with faint blue sigils. It drifted toward him, humming with quiet gravity.
[Aspect Granted: Spatial Outsider.][You exist between worlds. Your soul no longer belongs to one reality.]
[Flaw determined: Directional dyslexia.][You have the sense of direction as Zoro.]
[True Name Assigned: Wayfarer.][Definition: One who crosses impossible distances.]
He tried to speak, but the words dissolved. The light folded tighter, compressing until it became a tunnel of motion.
[Nightmare Concluded.][Welcome to the Other World.]
The voice faded. Gravity returned.
Ejay fell through the last layer of light——and slammed into dirt and sunlight, coughing, gasping, alive.
Two suns burned overhead.The ring hovered beside his shaking hand, spinning in slow, perfect orbit.
He lay there for a long moment, staring at the alien sky.Then he laughed weakly, voice breaking.
"What the fuck?"