I had regained consciousness some time ago, but I had yet to get up. Laying there contemplating what I saw was enough work for the time being.

"Was that real?" The question kept ringing through my head, fear and doubt kept me from answering it for myself. "If it was then I should get up and begin my new life. Then that would mean how I lived in my last life would have been wrong. But I worked too hard for it to be wrong. And if it wasn't real then what should I do now? There really is nothing that I would live for." I was stuck and didn't know how to proceed. A contradiction to my thinking, that I had relied on for my entire life, was flipping my world view upside down. It's a hard thing to get through.

The sound of the door creaking open had filled the room. A sad and timid but familiar voice spoke "I don't know if you can hear me but, we can't wait any longer. You'll be safe here for a while until you figure out what to do. We have to leave here, I hope you can find your way." As the door closed once more the answer was clear. "Whichever it is, real or fake, there is reason to keep going. There are people here that care and people here that are very real." At this point I still did not have a solid motivation for myself but I knew that at this moment the right choice was to move forward.

I opened my eyes to see the wooden ceiling above my head. The room had curved ceiling supports decorating the middle and corners of each wall. There was a cheap patchwork scratchy blanket thrown over me. As I sat up I threw the blanket to the side, landing half on half off the bed, which was indeed a rough straw work bed. It was still unsettling looking down as I sat there and seeing the body of a 13 year old but that didn't matter right now. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, my body felt light and nimble, as if it had been waiting for me to get moving already.

There was a nightstand next to my bed that had a glass of water on it. I smiled when I saw it and drank it quickly out of duty. Standing up was a bit disorienting for a moment. The fireplace had died down from its previous blaze and cast very little light on the room, but now there was sun streaming through the window lighting up the room. It looked to still be early morning by the brightness and color of it. It had a faint orange glow remaining in it from the recent sunrise.

I opened my door and began running down the hallway past multiple other doors to rooms I assumed were similar to mine. The place seemed to be an inn of sorts. Reaching the staircase to the main floor I rushed down it two steps at a time, the stairs creaking with every step. The main floor had a small bar area with a service counter on the same wall the stairs were on. The exit was directly across the room from the counter. None of the people from that group were inside the building. I approached the counter immediately.

"The group of adventurers that brought me here, do you know where they went?" I asked frantically. The man behind the counter was very bulky and intimidating but I hardly cared at that moment.

After looking me up and down a few times he responded, "They actually just left, kid". I initially felt disappointment when I heard those words, but I quickly picked myself up and ran out of the front doors dodging through tables to get there. I threw the doors open with full force and stumbled a bit. I caught myself and found that I was now in the middle of a street. There were no cars or bicycles on this street though, there were only people walking and one horse drawn carriage that I could see far down the road. The best houses were three story tall wood frame houses with slightly smoothed cobblestone walls on the outside. I could see there was a higher quality part of town far down the road where the houses were made of cut stone and more elegant looking designs. It was an unreal scene, little tent shops, big stores, all sorts of trading and services everywhere, very busy and loud. this time instead of feeling bad it made me a little excited.

I looked around at the people trying to see if I could find the ones I knew. Initially I thought It would be easy to find a group of people with deadly weapons on their backs and waists. It turns out that ninety percent of the people on the street match that description. As I had no way of knowing where they went, I just picked a direction and went, hoping that I would run into them. Jogging down the road trying to avoid bumping into people while looking around I surprisingly enough heard a familiar voice. Despite how loud it was with all these people and shops, I heard them before anything else.

A deep and powerful voice spoke not too far from me. "I feel bad, it just seems like it's our fault he ended up like that." It was Oraki! I looked around trying to pinpoint his location, then I saw that big battle axe handle sticking up from the crowd attached to the back of that gigantic man.

I ran in his direction, pushing past people, calling out. "Oraki!" He looked around confused for a moment then he saw me running to him. When I came up next to him I was out of breath.

"Kid! Are you doing alright now?" He looked happy to see me up and about. Considering the last time he talked to me I went into a daze and then passed out it was warranted. Arika was there with Oraki and they seemed to be looking around the shops looking for items.

"Yeah I was just worried you guys left me, I didn't get to say goodbye yet. Is everyone ok?" I wasn't sure how I was going to proceed from here but I felt like I should try and stay with these guys for a while longer.

"Yeah there ok, no one got hurt bad enough that Tobi couldn't heal them, he was quite tired afterwards though." He laughed as he finished his sentence.

Arika was looking me up and down. I couldn't read her face, and had no idea what she was thinking.

"Where did you guys go?" Trying to shift the conversation in a way that would allow me to follow them.

"We ended up completing our job, Koshi and Shina went to cash it in and look for a new one. Me and Arika are looking for some basic items like food and survival supplies. We don't get too many opportunities to stock up."

Out of nowhere Shina piped in "What's your name kid?"

"Oh… uh my name is Senki" It hadn't occurred to me that they didn't even know my name. Yet it felt like we had been through so much already.

Oraki joined back in "OH don't worry about her, she just can't handle referring to people by anything other than their proper names, it's pretty funny at times."

She turned away as she muttered "Useless…" but then continued louder "We got the things we need so we should get going. See you a round Senki"

Oraki elbowed me a bit as she began to walk away "See told you, I would still call you kid there." He laughed and began to follow "But anyway…"

I grabbed onto the bottom of his shirt to stop him "Could… Could I stay with you guys? I don't have anyone else I know and I've never been in this place before, I'm totally lost." I gained confidence throughout the sentence convincing myself that this was ok. I had never relied on others like this before so it was quite hard but I knew I needed them.

He thought for a moment before answering. "Hmm, I don't know how long you can stay with us, but for now you can come I guess."

"Thank you very much!" With that I had managed to not be left behind for the moment

_____________________________________________________________

We had walked quite a ways and were getting closer to the center of the city "are we gonna go into the nicer area?" I wondered. We eventually got close enough to see a gate and a moderately sized wall. It was a security checkpoint that led to the inner city. There were not a lot of people using it, I only saw a few people going in or out.

"Where here" Arika stated. I turned to see what she was talking about and saw the building in question. I realized at the same time that I couldn't read the writing of this world. There was a sign above the door probably containing the name of the building but I couldn't read the words.

“That's gonna be a problem” I realized that I would need to learn how to read if I wanted to get anywhere in this world. I don't know if it's normal for someone of my age to not be able to, I'll have to try and figure that out before I expose myself.

“Let's head inside to see if they are still here.” oraki proposed as he began walking toward the entrance, we both followed after. The noise inside grew as we got closer, the sounds of talking, laughing, and fighting? The chorus of noise made it hard to discern what was going on inside. As we entered we saw that there was a large crowd inside that seemed to be surrounding a main desk of sorts. Everyone was talking over each other trying to get their words through. They definitely seemed angry at something, and they were taking it out on the guys running the front desk.

Turning to Oraki I ask “What are they angry about?”

“It’s rare for this many people to get angry at the guild staff, I'm not sure.” He looked confused but also quite worried at the same time. “Let’s find out what's happening.'' He stepped forward and grabbed the shoulder of one of the guys that was near the back of the large group.

“Hey, what are you doing!” he yelled at Oraki, surprised and confused that he was being grabbed at from behind.

“Sorry kishota, I just wanna know what's going on here.” He responded quickly to calm the guy down.

“Oh Oraki? You gotta get in there man, it's the Water Goddess Church again. They strong armed the guild into taking Shina!”

The two people next to me, Oraki and Arika, began to feel very different. “They what?” they both say in unison as the aura around the two of them seemed to grow explosively. The air around them felt like it was charged with electricity and gave off an insane sense of danger. At the same time the room began to fall quiet as everyone that had been arguing with the workers turned to look at what was happening, they parted ways to the desk at the same time. The workers at the desk looked relatively weak now that I could see them properly. Both of them began to move towards the desk. Before they could cross the room, a single person walked out from the crowd and got in their way.

He had a perfect smile on his face as he spoke “Woah woah woah, slow down there guys, you know the rules,” He let out a fierce menacing aura that felt thick and suffocating, it overpowered both of them instantly, all while holding that unsettlingly perfect smile. “No converting in the adventurer's guild ok?” he said calmly in a friendly tone while suffocating half the people in the room with the power he was displaying. I had fallen to the floor and could just barely keep my eyes on him.

Oraki and Arika were still standing strong and began to fight back against his overwhelming power. “Weston,” Arika began, “Step away.” The killing intent in her voice was palpable. I had slid away from them because being as close as I was was physically painful, it felt like I was naked in a blizzard. I was fighting to stay conscious as these three stood off in the middle of the room.