A numb sensation burned my right cheek. It was cold, I could tell, but I've been pressing my face against the floor for a while, since I couldn't really feel it anymore. I shook off the disordered thoughts and the oppressive weight of sleep to open my eyes. Did I fall off the bed on to the floor again? Damn it, I bought a king-size just to prevent that. The murky haze, that one brief moment of when you wake up but can't really see, faded; only for me to be completely and utterly stupefied at what I saw.

I was in a vast chamber of sorts. It was dark with the exception of a strange blue glowing circle on the floor. The floor was marble, I couldn't tell what color or the type of marble due to the circle painting everything in blue. What I could tell was limited to the circle, eight elaborately carved columns, and the other people around me. 

Including me, we numbered seven. The oldest was a woman in her mid to late 30's. The youngest was a boy in adolescence. A guy with blonde hair around my age was looking after two high schoolers, a boy and a girl, who were still unconscious. The last man kept his distance from everyone while looking around in an excited state. 

"The fuck is going on!" he shouted. He paced around the chamber, conspicuously avoiding yet never straying from the circle, the only source of light in the room. 

"I don't know, just calm down and we ca-," the blonde guy said with an accent. He was trying to get the guy to stop panicking, but was cut off.

"Fuck you! Don't tell me to calm down! How do I know that you ain't the one that fucking kidnapped me!?" he exclaimed. 

"I did not kidnap you. I'm just trying to get you to calm down so that we can assess the situation," he was remarkably in control for a guy in our predicament. The preteen was hugging his knees, jumping at every curse from the panicking man. The woman was in a daze, as if trying to gauge whether this was a dream or not. I wasn't much better myself. I was staring off into space while slowly examining my body to see if I was injured. After verifying that I was unharmed, I started to separate myself from the others and study our surroundings to understand what happened.

The shouts from earlier awoke the two high schoolers. They too were scared and immediately pressed me and the others for answers.

"Okay. I know everyone has a million questions, but I'm as clueless as you are. So, let's all just collect ourselves and compare what we know. My name is Henry. I am 23 years old. My last memory was in my college classroom," Henry said after getting everyone to quiet down. He was handsome, outrageously so. Easily the tallest in the room with blue eyes and blonde hair that seemed messy yet stylish. I found him to an amazing individual. Seeing that he was this level-headed and already assuming a leadership position.

"I'm Joshua, I'm 25. I was... driving to my part-time job," I struggled to remember my last clear memory before I woke up here. I only remembered when I looked down and saw that I was wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt with a logo. This was the uniform of a coffee shop I worked. A friend of mine managed one and asked me if I can work there for a bit while he was short on hands. 

"...I-I'm Lucas. I'm 11. I was playing a g-game on a computer," the boy stuttered and needed a bit of coaxing. He was small for his age. With light brown hair that looked black in the blue light. 

"Maria, I'm 15. I was shopping with my family," the high school girl answered. She was dressed casually, in a colorful floral shirt and slacks. Her hair reached her shoulders and was a bit of a mess as she just woke up. She still had a bit of baby fat in her cheeks and was slender as if she was still developing, but I could tell that she would be a splendid beauty when she matures a bit more. 

"I am Hitoshi, I'm 17. I was walking back from school," the other high schooler spoke up. Like me, he was Asian. Normal looking and wearing some formal clothing that put me ill at ease for some reason. He stared at us as if he couldn't believe we were real. 

"I am Annalise. I'm 36. I was locking up my office and heading out to lunch," the mature woman said. She had black hair tied up in a tight bun. She was dressed in a formal business suit and skirt. 

"I'm Dominic, 26. I was in a pharmacy, picking up a prescription for my son," the panicked man finally cooled off, but refused to get near us or the circle. He was a tall black man wearing a white button-up shirt and khaki pants.

"So, none of us know anything... Ah yes? Go ahead," Henry spoke, but stopped when he saw Hitoshi raise his hand. 

"Yes, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I have a question for everyone here... Do any of you speak Japanese?" Hitoshi asked with a strange look on his face. 

A universal question mark seemed to pop from everyone's heads. 

"...I do not, why do you ask?" Annalise questioned him.

“Other than Joshua-san, none of you guys are Asian, I don’t know any other language other than Japanese, and… I don't mean to offend, but you guys are way too fluent in Japanese, and Dominic-san even sounded like he had a Kansai dialect…” Hitoshi petered off in the end, but everyone looked at each other.

The uncomfortable feeling from earlier now made sense to me. Hitoshi was wearing a Japanese School uniform, blazer and all. Something I’ve seen a million times in anime and mangas. Either he was a Japanese American with some dull but very detailed cosplay; or he was a native Japanese person, but was able to speak English perfectly with hardly an accent.

“…N-No, no, no. Everyone is speaking French right now?” Annalise was the first to voice her discomfort. Only to immediately realize that she was wrong when everyone looked at her in shock.

“Everyone, what country or nationality are you from?” I ordered. I was a bit terse, but the situation was odd enough that nobody cared.

“Edinburgh, Britain,” replied Henry.

“Nicaragua, but my family have roots in Honduras,” said Maria.

“Botswana, in Africa,” said Dominic.

“…Montana, US,” whispered Lucas.

“Virginia, US,” I groaned, my fears coming true. When I became level-headed enough to think properly, I started thinking about what where we were and how we got here. There’s a number of possible scenarios, ranging from mass kidnapping to a medical emergency where we were quarantined with a neurological pathogen (it would explain the fainting and gaps in memories of how we got here, unlikely as it was). The most ridiculous one came to mind when I studied the circle and I dismissed the idea as a joke, but now…

“Tokyo, Japan,” Hitoshi met my eyes and I saw that he had the same idea as me. Asia was overrun with stories of this genre after all.

“…Nice, France,” said Annalise with an off look on her face.

The room was silent for a while.

I raised my hand and pinched the space between my brows with the thumb and index finger. I did this when I got headaches, annoyed, or to hide my face when I get emotional and don’t want others to see. I did so this time because I was utterly terrified about the ramifications of this discussion. Half of us were from a country that didn’t speak English as the dominant language, yet everyone here was speaking it perfectly and fluently despite the accents. This wasn’t realistically possible.

“…Okay, raise your hand if you’re hearing English when I speak,” I requested dismally.

Lucas, Dominic, and Henry raised their hands timidly, everyone else  kept their hands down.

“If you’re hearing a language that is not English, raise your hand.”

Hitoshi, Maria, and Annalise all raised their hand.

This clinches it, either mankind has spontaneously evolved the ability to comprehend all languages, or...

“It happened… didn’t it?" Hitoshi asked with a scared look on his face. I nodded solemnly.

Should I be relieved? I’m aware of such stories and of its fan base. There was a literal army of people who'll give anything to be in our positions right now. At least Hitoshi was sensible enough to realize the risks and dangers of the situation we were in. If I was dealing with an otaku who immediately went into Main-Character mode, I don't know what I would do…

“What happened? Do you know something!?” Dominic immediately grew agitated and Maria drew back from Hitoshi in suspicion.

“Wait, hold on. Look, if you guys have a clue on our situation, please say it,” Henry once again tried calm Dominic and urged us to share our theory.

“… In Asia there is a very popular genre of books, video games, and anime known as Isekai. Basically, the gist is a person from our world is summoned to another world for some reason. The most common reason is that an evil force is threating the destruction of the world,” I replied. I was blushing. I knew how impossible and delusional it sounded.

“I know it sounds crazy but our situation matches the basic template. A person sees a burst of light and is sent to a mysterious chamber. That person gains powers and magical abilities. The most common is language comprehension. So that the person may communicate with whoever he meets in the strange world,” Hitoshi nods to my explanation and the suspicion on everyone’s’ faces ebbed away and replaced with disbelief.

“You're saying that we were summoned here, with magic?” Maria asked as if I was crazy.

“The alternative is the language barrier is just gone and the glowing circle that's floating over there is a hallucination,” I replied.

Yes, the creepy glowing circle was floating an inch or two off the ground, I tried my best to not mind it, but considering that I might be in a fantasy world, I couldn’t deny the reality of my situation any longer.

“So, we were kidnapped by wizards?” Dominic asked.

“Either that or a god, a lot of the stories involve a god or goddess choosing someone as a hero,” Hitoshi replied.

Dominic scowled at the comment. I could guess his thought process. He thought if it were a bunch of wizards, then it would be possible to negotiate or threaten them into sending us back. Personally, I question the logic of threatening people with magical powers when we don’t know the full extent of their might, but that’s just me. Instead, we may have been kidnapped by a deity, which made threatening rather difficult.

“How do those stories usually end? Do we get to go back to our world if we just do what they want?” Maria questioned.

“These are all fictional stories so it’s hard to draw precedent. But most end with the person living in the new world happily with superpowers and a multitude of lovers. They're just power fantasies written by the authors after all, but still a lot have the basic idea that the world travel is a one-way trip,” I answered. I'm aware that it’s bad news, but I believe that rather than lying to make someone feel better, it’s always better to have all the facts and cards on the table to find the best choice available.

“…mierda…” muttered Maria, I recognized the word, so the auto-translating was redundant.

After that, Hitoshi and I answered further questions they had while taking stock of our situation. We all had our phones, but circuits were fried. Annalise had an old-fashioned watch, so we were able to tell that roughly an hour passed since we all woke up. By the end, Dominic was back up and pacing. I remember Dominic saying that he had a child and he had despondent look on his face. Annalise, being the eldest out of us, took care of the Lucas and the two high schoolers. Lucas beamed with an excited look on his face. Which worried me greatly. I don't want to deal with a preteen Isekai with adolescence disease, especially one that may have superpowers.

Henry kept himself busy, he would come by and talked to everyone individually, to make sure everyone was alright. He would also ask me a few more questions about what usually occurred in an Isekai story and other possible scenarios.

After another thirty minutes have passed, a great big set of doors opened.