Cent. Calendar 07/05/1639, Hyogo prefecture, Japan,  15:00

“Shit!”

Pestered by the incessant ringing of her home phone while tending to her daughter and her homework, one Izumi Hikari had inadvertently tripped on her matting.

With the ringing telephone mercilessly blasting away its annoying chime in endless repetition, Izumi recovered from her fall and fixed her now messy chestnut hair. As she traveled to the other end of the room where the telephone was, her tracks were then stopped by another noise coming from behind her.

“Okaa-san! What does ‘shit’ mean?”

Her 4-year-old daughter had now learned how to curse. Irked and completely out of it, she simply cursed herself for her blunder as a single mother.

“I’ll hafta get back to ya, Sayaka!”

Kicking that proverbial can down the road, she went on to finally pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

Another annoying voice clawed at her ears from beyond the phone before she could even complete her hello.

“Yo, Hikari-chan! ‘This a bad time?”

Instantly recognizing the voice on the other end of the line, Izumi let out a loud, hopefully audible-to-the-other-end sigh. Coupling it with a facepalm, she finally responded to the other person’s greetings after two gritty seconds of asking herself, “why the fuck...”

“What is it, Kita? It’s our scheduled break from the mandatory labor program... Curse my luck!”

The person on the other end, Kita Michi, was a close friend of hers.

After having gone through middle school and high school together, they then went their separate ways when Kita was held back a year in high school while Izumi moved on to Keio University in Tokyo, taking up Archaeology and then later a Masters Degree and a Doctorate in History. Kita followed suit, taking up Archaeology at Hiroshima University and later moving to Keio for her Master’s Degree and Doctorate. Both of them ended up teaching undergraduate courses at Keio, much to the chagrin of the more senior Izumi. After the transfer, at which point higher education institutions were either closed or forced to operate at reduced capacity to redirect labor towards urgent and important sectors, Izumi returned to her home city of Kobe in Hyogo prefecture. Since then, she hasn’t spoken to many of her colleagues in Keio, including her long-time friend.

“Same ‘ere! Anyway, did’ja receive an email from yer department?”

“My laptop broke after the transfer, and I can’t get it fixed since most shops have closed down.”

“Yer phone?”

“Sayaka has been playing on it, and I don’t really get the time off to check it...”

After a momentary pause, Izumi finally realized what receiving an email from the department may entail. Hot on the heels of this realization, she quickly broke the silence.

“Wait, we’re being called back???”

“Nah, Keio U’s still closed... Anyway, I’ll be forwardin’ the email over to ya, so check yer phone!”

Hearing her phone notification chime go off, Izumi quickly walked over to pick it up. Unlocking the simple swipe lock on her phone, she then opened her email and checked the newly forwarded one on the topmost part. After opening it, she read out loud the subject title.

“Recruitment for a commission from the government regarding Asheran archaeological sites?”

“Yeah! That’s da one!”

“Not gonna lie... I have been interested in the cultures of this supposed new world. If only there weren’t so many pressing problems at hand!”

“True that. Anyway, I beckon ya to read further. There’s a shitton more to it than just archaeological sites.”

Egged on by her friend, she scrolled down to read the main body of the email. Scrolling past and ignoring the formal introduction from their department, she went straight for the juicier parts below.

“They’re recruiting archaeologists, historians, linguists, and those from related fields?”

“Not just any frickin’ archaeologist! Read deeper, dammit!”

Blissfully ignoring her friend’s friendly banter, Izumi looked further into the recruitment details; finally getting to the weirder parts.

“Hm? The fuck? Are they looking for historians with expertise in Japanese military wartime records? Why? Are they also looking for those with expertise in infrastructure from the early Showa period? This is too niche and specific, don’t you think?”

“Yep! Sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? The commission, assembled from the good ‘ol government, for studying their Asheran archaeological sites, and they’re looking for those with Showa-era expertise? Like... It sounds hella interestin’!”

While the prospect of the commission coming from the government warranted more than enough suspicion on its own, the details of the recruitment were equally sketchy, if not even more so. Her curiosity, now undeniably piqued, had her clawing for evidence to quell her own suspicions. In this pursuit, something came to mind.

“Hey, Kita. Remember that elven princess showing a rising sun flag in the Diet last week? Maybe it has something to do with that?”

“Yer onto somethin’ there! So does that count that’cha wanna do it?”

Investigating archaeological sites in a new world felt like an otherworldly opportunity. However, her own pressing issues close to home kept her down to earth.

“I don’t think I can...”

“Didja even read it all? It says ‘ere that the government will pay us fair compensation, which is up for negotiation, and that they’ll provide lodging and basic necessities! Ain’t that a steal?!”

That did sound appealing. Izumi had been struggling with helping her daughter through her preschool, having spent the majority of her time in Tokyo, with Sayaka having to stay with her grandparents back in Kobe. While she felt obligated to help her as her mother, she did want to have an escape from her motherly duties and her obligations as a citizen. Taking what she still assumed to be bait from Kita, she relented.

“Alright, I’ll consider. I need to know more about the details, though.”

Greg. Calendar XX/04/1945, somewhere in China

The ground rumbled underneath my feet, next to my body, and up above my head. The dim orange of the antiquated lanterns danced wildly as they flickered on and off to the rhythm of the quaking earth. This underground tunnel that I, Private 1st Class Sagami Hajime of Saitama, have found myself in felt like the inner guts of a massive earth serpent that has swallowed us whole, bouncing up and down as it tries to digest us. The atmosphere made even more humid and moist by the recent spring rains convinced me more than I’ve already been consumed by the monster that is this unforgiving planet.

“They’re coming!”

Silent hushes from my fellow platoon mates reverberated across the length of the tunnel, a testament to a saying from my older sister that a hundred hushes can drown out a scream.

The ground ceased to shake as the sound of artillery shells mercilessly cratering brick, mortar, and the earth started to move somewhere else. Replacing the disheveling orchestra of explosions was the incessant screaming of people and the mechanized clanking of caterpillar tracks. Footsteps accompanied as background noise while the unintelligible screaming started to sound familiar yet still unfavorably alien.

“Those Chinese dogs! I can see them!”

One of the more eager privates was looking out of a drainage grating, his well-lit face giving us more than enough clues that he was itching to take the fight to them.

“Not yet! Wait for the signal!”

Another one chided them, although this hardly discouraged the man.

I hunkered down, resting my aching buttocks on what dent or hole I could find along the moist, cold wall. It had been a long, grueling, tiring war. Despite having only been here for around a year, made to participate in the arduous offensives against the Chinese, weather, and fate, as well as digging up trenches and building fortifications against their counterattacks, it feels like I’ve already lived a lifetime. I’ve seen countless people, comrades and Chinese alike, die in the most gruesome but also disappointingly mundane ways. Their faces and how they met their fate are both seared into the depths of my mind for me to carry to the grave.

I clutch the rifle I’ve been given, the -nth one issued to me, as my boney, quivering hands fastened a dulled, rusted bayonet next to its muzzle. It has been weeks since it was last fired, with what little ammunition we have left given to those who have better aim so as to make every bullet count. The rifle, losing its bark for a long time, was now reduced to a glorified spear with me as the unfortunate spearman. With high command not expecting us to come back alive, our superiors have committed us to this one final show of defiance.

A pointless life pointlessly consumed for pointless gains in a pointless war.

My brief 20-year stint on this forsaken earth has been met with nothing but bad luck. With no more family to call my own, there will be no value lost as I water this foreign land with my blood.

The silence in the tunnel has reached a deafening point. I could now hear with amazing clarity the crusty crumbling of small pebbles underneath the boots of passing Chinese conscripts. It was only a matter of time until...

“NOW!”

The voice of our superior cracked open the tension that had built up, and like a sort of reflex, I felt my body transition into action. Pushing out of the way the panels that had kept us hidden, our entire unit rushed out of the tunnel and emerged into the light, poised to storm the advancing column of Chinese that were making their way down this street. Carrying with him the banner on which the striking red of the rising sun is emblazoned, one of my platoon mates rushed into the foray.

“Long live the Emperor!!! Tennō heika banzai!!!”

Bayoneted rifle in hand, I ran full speed into the mass of Chinese soon-to-be-corpses.

Unsurprisingly, despite their initial surprise, they reacted swiftly to our appearance, turning their rifles against us and opening fire.

A chaotic shootout and melee ensued as our swords and bayonets met theirs. I could spot them scoring hits on several of my comrades, causing some of them to stumble and fall, but the others remained undeterred. As for me, I ran as best I could in spite of my hunger and weakened legs. I kept my bayoneted pointed at one of the conscripts whose appearance put him in the same age and greenness as me. 

Our eyes met. The quivering darkness in his pupils felt like it mirrored my own, birthing thoughts in my head and doubts in my heart that maybe he, too, did not want to be there. Even as he stared down the sights of his rifle and pointed it at me, possibly driven to fight and kill by circumstances beyond his control, there was a moment where it felt as if he hesitated to put me down. In a situation where he had the loaded rifle, and I didn’t, he was going to win. However, if I continued to close the distance, he would lose that advantage.

At this point in time where fate dictates that only one of us must emerge victorious with our life as a reward, it cannot be helped that we would be killing each other for it. As soon as I thought I could snatch that away from him, I saw his eyes snap, and with it...

Bang!

In that last moment of sensation, all I could hear besides the loud bang that came from the front was the clashing of bayonets and screaming of men clawing at each other’s throats. One last thought flashed through my mind before things started to feel distant.

If this is how agonizing the world of the living is, how much more so is the world beyond?

- - -

“Hmph. Interesting question.”

What???

Despite having lost all sensation and consciousness, I still managed to pick up the angelic voice of someone–a woman at that! Wasn’t I supposed to have died on some bombed-out street in China in a failed banzai charge? Why am I hearing a Japanese woman?!

“I’m not Japanese, just so you know.”

The voice responded to my thoughts, and I was even able to discern some laughter beyond that.

Then, the darkness that had come with my death parted to reveal a shining light far into the distance.

“Can you see me?”

Is the voice referring to that light, perhaps?

“So you can. Excellent.”

What’s going on? Is this the afterlife? Am I meeting the reaper?

“Greetings, Sagami Hajime. For simplicity’s sake, I will introduce myself as a god.”

A god?

“Listen. As a god, I have chosen you, among others, to go on a valiant crusade against a persisting evil in another world.”

What? But why me?

“That world and its people are at risk of imminent extinction at the hands of this evil. Drive them back. Should you succeed, I will make sure that your death on this Earth will give you a glorious afterlife.”

Fight against evil to save a world and its people? But I can’t do that alone!

“You will not be alone. Nor will you come unprepared.”

The light started to fade away. I still have so many questions, but it feels as if I could not ask them in time.

“Worry not, my beloved emissary. All your questions will be answered soon.”

Like an electrical light switch, the eerie, divine-like light suddenly vanished with a click.

Then, after going through what felt like an unnerving, ominous nightmare, I started to feel the sensation all over my body, from the sweat-drenched hair follicles on my scalp to the unstoppable quivering of my toes. Never before have I felt so heavy, so feverish, so scared to open my eyes... and yet I did.

“Gah!”

As light flooded into my eyeballs, forcing my pupils to adjust and limit the amount of exposure, I saw a gray, steel ceiling above me. Using the nerves on my back, I realized that I was lying on a cold, steel floor, as well as the fact that it was swaying ever so slightly. My nose picked up the scent of salty sea air as the sound of squawking seagulls tickled my eardrums.

Using this information, I deduced that–for some reason–I was in a ship on the high seas.

I mustered what energy I could find and directed it towards my vocal cords and mouth. Then, my crusty voice broke the peaceful ambiance.

“Where... am I?”