If anyone had bothered to ask Jake how his day was going, he would have answered with a single word: miserable.
Not the dramatic kind of miserable either. No sudden disasters or life changing revelations. Just the slow, grinding kind that wore you down piece by piece. He had spent the entire afternoon refreshing scholarship listings that never changed, rereading eligibility requirements he almost met, and sending applications that vanished into inboxes without so much as a rejection email.
Then his phone buzzed.
A short message. Cold. Professional.
He was fired.
Budget cuts. Effective immediately.
Jake stopped walking for a moment, staring at the cracked concrete beneath his shoes. His chest felt hollow, like someone had scooped something important out of him and left nothing behind.
And worst of all, he still had to go home.
Home was not safety. It was not comfortable. Home was where Bob waited.
Jake shoved his hands deeper into his hoodie pockets and kept walking. The neighborhood was quiet in the unsettling way that made every footstep sound louder than it should. Streetlights flickered weakly overhead, casting long shadows across empty sidewalks.
"Damn dickhead," Jake muttered under his breath. "I should tell Lily to find a place to crash tonight."
He already knew how this would go. Bob would sense the bad news the moment Jake walked through the door. Ever since Jake's mom passed away, something inside Bob had gone wrong. Grief had twisted into bitterness. Bitterness into rage. Small inconveniences became excuses. Bad days became violence.
Jake had thought about leaving more times than he could count. Reporting him. Running. Fighting back. None of it was simple while Lily was still trapped in that house. As long as she was there, Jake endured.
The sidewalk stretched on ahead of him.
Then the exhaustion hit.
Not the normal kind. Not the kind that came from staying up too late or working too long. This was sudden. Crushing. His limbs felt heavy, as if gravity itself had doubled. His vision blurred at the edges.
"Seriously?" he muttered, blinking hard.
The world tilted.
For a split second, Jake thought he had blacked out.
Then the pavement vanished.
His next breath filled his lungs with damp, earthy air. Moss and unfamiliar flowers clung to his senses. Jake froze, staring at towering trees that stretched impossibly high into the sky. Their trunks were dark and thick, their leaves an unnatural shade of turquoise that glimmered faintly as if light lived inside them.
"What the hell," he whispered.
His hand flew to his pocket.
Nothing.
No phone. No keys. No wallet.
His heartbeat quickened. Panic crept up his spine. "Okay. Calm down. This has to be a hallucination."
He turned in place, searching for something familiar. A road. A sign. Anything.
There was nothing.
Just endless forest and the distant sound of movement.
Then he felt it.
A pressure at the back of his neck. The unmistakable sensation of being watched.
Real. Focused. Intent.
Jake did not wait to confirm it.
He ran.
Branches scraped at his arms as his shoes pounded against soft earth. His breath came fast and uneven, lungs burning as adrenaline surged. His mind raced faster than his legs, desperately trying to piece together what was happening.
"Am I dreaming?" he gasped. "This does not feel like a dream."
Despite the fear clawing at his chest, part of him stayed strangely calm. He had learned that skill long ago. Staying level headed when things went bad. Staying quiet. Staying alive.
Another thought forced its way in.
"Did I get transported to another world?"
The idea made his stomach twist.
"Am I an isekai protagonist?"
He nearly laughed at how ridiculous that sounded. Jake was painfully aware of how he looked. Shaggy hair that never behaved. Slumped posture. Pale skin that told the world he spent too much time indoors. He was not strong. Not brilliant. Not special.
Isekai protagonists were supposed to be chosen.
Jake was just Jake.
He read manga and manhwa in the scraps of free time he had. Sometimes a light novel if he felt ambitious. He knew the tropes. He knew how these stories worked.
Reality was not supposed to follow those rules.
His legs finally gave out. Jake slowed to a stop, bending over with his hands on his knees as he sucked in air. Slowly, he straightened and forced himself to look around.
That was when it truly sank in.
The trees were wrong. Not just their color. Their bark carried faint natural patterns, spirals and veins that pulsed gently, almost like living things. Strange plants dotted the forest floor, some glowing softly at the edges.
Jake looked up.
The sky stole his breath.
Two moons hung overhead.
One was large and pale, casting a silver glow across the forest. The other was smaller, tinted faintly red, hovering beside it like a watchful eye. The sky itself was neither day nor night, caught in an endless twilight.
Jake let out a shaky breath.
"Well," he said quietly, "shit."
There was no denying it anymore.
He was not home.
He was not dreaming.
Jake had been dragged into another world, and whatever was watching him in the forest was still out there.