Quote:“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” – Friedriche Nietzche

One word to describe this world: monotonous. Shin looked out of the window; the voice of the teacher was nothing more than ambient noise. Black and white. The world was devoid of colour, filled with lies. The bell rang and class came to an end.

“Catch you tomorrow Shin! Remember to send me the history homework tonight!” a student called out as he left.

“You should really try studying,” Shin replied with a fake smile.

“Nah man, I got a game to catch today, see ya!”

Packing his bag, Shin walked to his part-time job at a small convenient store at a street corner. Shin lived alone since he was 12, his parents were never home. On the rare occasion his parents do return from their business trip, they pretended to be what they thought were a perfect parental figure. There was no warmth, only cold, hard acting. Liars.

After Shin finished counting the money in the cash register, he quickly greeted the manager as he left the store. His apartment was dark and empty. No hint of love nor warmth, a reflection of Shin’s mind. It was 9:30pm; Shin put the kettle to boil and made cup noodles. Seeing how late it is, Shin finished the noodles and forgone doing any homework and went straight to bed. As the darkness took over Shin’s mind, he fell asleep. Monotonous.

The dream came again, Shin was not surprised but the dream still gnawed at his heart. He was in an empty classroom, the lights were off and only darkness could be seen outside the windows.

“You are nothing but a liar,” a voice rang out from the darkness.

“You hold no ambition,”

“You could have done something,”

“In the end you’re the same as them,”

“Have you no shame!”

“Liar!”, “Coward!” one by one, the voices rang out, directed at Shin. Shin just stood silently, knowing full well what was going to happen next, the final blow. A silhouette of a person came out from the shadows. It was Nana. No matter how many times Shin has experienced the dream-it still hits him like a brick. No sound came out of Nana’s mouth; her eyes are covered by the shadows. But Shin knows what she is saying.

“Why? Why didn’t you do anything?”

“A coward, a liar, a faker,”

Each word stung like a knife. Shin flinched at each letter; he knew that she was correct. He’s nothing but a coward and a liar, the same as everyone. He had no right to speak back, he couldn't. It felt like eternity as he was pelted by the words of disgust, when Shin woke up, he’s back was drenched in sweat. But that wasn’t a shock, what surprised him was the foreign looking people and room around him. Next to him lays three of his classmates that are equally confused. The floor was covered in strange patterns and priest-like men surrounded them. Slowly the priests parted to reveal a man in his 50s wearing extravagant clothing and large amounts of jewellery donned his limbs. Next to the man was the prettiest woman that Shin has seen, she wore a simple silk dressing gown and exerted an aura of natural beauty, unaided by cosmetics, that’ll put many models to shame.

“O welcome heroes to the human Kingdom of Estad, I am the king of this country, currently we are facing grave dangers and we beseech thee to aid us in our fight with the demon kind,” the king announced.

Shin glanced at the three other students next to him; Jason, an extremely popular American transfer student, Steven, who’s also popular and was the captain of the Archery club at school and Lori, a quiet girl that Shin rarely sees without a book in her hand. They were all students that were in Shin’s class, thus they all knew Shin quite well, at least they thought they did. No doubt about it, Shin has seen this scenario many times in games and books: they have been transported to another world.