The Meeting
“A refrigerator? What’s that?”
“This is.”
I opened the fridge door, fully expecting those blue eyes of hers to go round.
Sure enough, the cold air that spilled out made Kayla’s eyes widen.
“That… isn’t magic. But how did anyone even think of something like this?”
“Because cool is nice?”
I pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and poured her a glass. She drank slowly, then looked startled all over again.
“The water’s so clear and cold. This is the kind of luxury only a king can afford. A king has a personal mage to freeze and purify it for him. Is water like this common here?”
“Very. Pretty much every house has one.”
“Sounds like something that would only have been possible in the age of the Magocracy. Does this place just overflow with energy?”
“Uh… if you put it that way, I guess it does?”
I wanted to say yes, but thoughts of oil running out and nuclear power and all the rest of it made me hesitate. Maybe it was because she was a mage, but her questions never felt light.
As an otherworld guide, I’m going to have to play a little dumb.
“And what’s that machine?”
“This is a TV.”
Hoping once more for a change in her expression, I switched it on. Right on cue, her mouth fell open in a daze.
“…Wow.”
Of course. That’s the face anyone makes the first time they see a television. Any human being would agree.
“The full explanation’s a bit long… want me to go into it?”
“Tell me. Please.”
And so two hours passed.
Kayla took an interest in everything in my room, and I explained every last thing. I would have liked to rest somewhere in the middle, but every time I tried she looked at me like the world was ending, so stopping simply wasn’t an option.
Her curiosity, which had seemed bottomless, finally ran dry once I got to computers and the internet. Partly because there was nothing left to cover — and partly because she seemed to have formed at least a rough framework of this world.
And so had I, of her.
She wasn’t a witch. She wasn’t a demon. She wasn’t some invader from another world.
“I’d like to learn the language of this world… how do I do that?”
Just a mage with a bottomless well of curiosity. In modern terms, a workaholic researcher, maybe?
I didn’t feel the slightest threat from her. She was a nuisance, sure — but that nuisance was currently being covered by her looks.
“Learn the language? That’ll take three or four months at the absolute minimum… aren’t you planning to go back?”
“Me? Why would I?”
“Well, family, friends…”
I almost finished the sentence myself, then stopped. I could already hear the answer.
“I don’t have any.”
Of course.
Maybe none of this was going to deviate from my expectations at all.
“Or a master, then.”
“Dead.”
That cliché too. At this rate, who could possibly drive her out of this world?
“From what I’ve seen so far, I like this world a great deal. So for now, I’d like to stay a little longer. Besides, there doesn’t seem to be any clear way back.”
“No way back? Can’t you just snap your fingers with magic?”
“Magic can’t cross dimensions. That’s why Gates exist. This world seems to have Keepers as well — you don’t know much about that?”
“We don’t have anything like magic here, and Gates only appeared about thirty years ago.”
“Only thirty years? From everything you’ve told me over the last two hours, thirty years should have been more than enough. Or is it just that you don’t know?”
“Huh? Is that…?”
That… actually had a point. In an age this obsessed with experimentation, thirty years ought to be enough to figure out just about anything. Maybe I was simply the one who didn’t know.
“So — would it be all right if I imposed on you for a while?”
“Yes— wait, no!”
Coming right after a persuasive argument, the answer almost slipped out before I could stop it. Get a grip. No matter how beautiful she is, I’m not about to be a free meal ticket.
“…You’ve already imposed plenty. If you want to impose any further, it won’t be free.”
“What a harsh world. Or is it just that you’re in harsh circumstances right now?”
“Keep up the personal attacks and the price goes up.”
“Fine, I understand. So what do I pay with? I’m not interested in freeloading either.”
“Then…”
Wait. What was I even supposed to take?
Money? Someone who’d just tumbled out of another world wasn’t going to have cash. She didn’t look like she was wearing any expensive jewelry either.
Could she earn money, then? She was beautiful enough that she could probably make a living off her face if she wanted — but she didn’t seem the type.
…No. Why was I the one fretting over this?
“You go first. What can you offer?”
“Money, or labor.”
“I don’t need labor. And where are you getting money?”
“You said there are Gates. I’ll go in and work.”
Oh. That was an option?
Except she was only saying that because she didn’t know how things worked on this side.
“As you may have gathered, not just anyone can walk into a Gate. You need a verified identity first — how do you plan to handle that? What do you think happens if they find out you’re from another world? And what happens to me for getting mixed up in it?”
“Is there no Eternal Gate yet?”
“Eternal Gate? What’s that?”
“A Gate that’s always open. Thirty years is early enough that there might not be one. In that case, I’ll just rob people.”
“Excuse me?”
I asked again, half expecting her to be joking. Kayla didn’t so much as blink. She was serious.
If I thought it through carefully, it wasn’t incomprehensible. She and I came from different worlds, and we’d lived by different rules. Crime and violence seemed to mean nothing special to her. Murder, maybe, too.
Oh god. Does that mean I could die at any moment and it wouldn’t even be weird?
All I had was a frail body worn down by studying. Kayla had magic.
I’d thought I was the one holding the cards. Was I actually the subordinate here?
“Don’t worry. I don’t kill just anyone.”
She’d clearly said it to ease the tension that had suddenly seized me. It only made her scarier.
“R-right. But robbery won’t be that easy either. There are eyes everywhere here…”
“Eyes?”
“Surveillance equipment. Especially in Korea.”
“Then how about this?”
Kayla raised her staff and began to speak. The language that came out wasn’t translated. She was casting a spell.
When the incantation ended, she vanished from in front of me.
“…Invisibility magic?”
No answer. No breathing. No presence at all.
Had it been teleportation instead of invisibility?
I let out a breath.
“Hah—!”
Kayla appeared behind me without warning and blew into my ear. I nearly toppled forward in shock. It was an entrance I could never have imagined.
“Well? Good enough even with plenty of eyes around?”
“Ahem… yeah, that should work.”
I could have raised infrared sensors and the like as a counterargument, but there was a more fundamental problem first.
Could I live with someone for whom crime was routine? No — my house would become a criminal base of operations. Was that really okay?
With my personality, I’d be a nervous wreck every single day.
Should I just kick her out? I’m busy enough surviving on my own.
“Good. So I can stay here for a little while, then?”
Kayla’s mysterious blue eyes fixed on me. Looking into them, my resolve went soft.
I couldn’t exactly dump the first otherworlder humanity had ever met out on the street, could I? We already had a connection of sorts.
I wasn’t taking permanent responsibility. Just for a little while — just until she could stand on her own. That would be fine, right?
And I was absolutely not thinking any of this because she was beautiful… wait.
“Hold on. What’s going on with your neck?”
“My neck?”
“It looks a little… transparent.”
Kayla’s skin had been clear and pale from the start, veins faintly visible beneath. But now it was so translucent that the silhouette of whatever was behind her neck was starting to show through.
“Huh?”
She drew a hand out from her robe, and it became even more obvious. The color had almost completely drained from her skin.
“What is this? Are you being pulled back?”
“No. This is what happens when mana runs low.”
“Mana deficiency? Then what happens?”
“In this case, I die.”
“What?”
Kayla said something catastrophic as if she were discussing the weather. There was a slight shift in her expression, but compared to when her curiosity had been on full display, it was practically blank.
“I can’t recover mana right now. Probably because this is a different dimension… do you have anything to eat?”
“Food? Eating restores it?”
“Normally, yes.”
“W-wait a second.”
I did not want to watch someone die in front of me — especially not by fading into transparency. How was I supposed to sleep in this room after that?
I yanked the fridge open and looked for anything edible. True to a single man’s refrigerator, it was nearly empty. Beer, cola, bottled water, and a half-eaten chocolate bar. Even the chicken breast packs that should have been in the freezer were gone.
I had no choice but to pull out the leftover chocolate bar.
“…This is all I’ve got for now. Will it be okay?”
“It’s fine. Do I just eat this as is?”
“Ah — like this. You eat this part.”
I stripped off all the packaging and handed her only the bar itself. She might not know what plastic wrap was and eat the whole thing, wrapper and all.
Crunch.
Kayla took a bite, and her eyes went round. Dying didn’t faze her, but a first chocolate bar was apparently worth being surprised over.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
She demolished the bar in seconds.
“…How is it?”
“It’s delicious! Is all the food here this good?”
“Probably? No — that’s not the point right now. Your mana? Is it recovering?”
“Give me a moment.”
Right. Digestion would take time. But did we have time? She looked like she was getting a little more transparent.
As if confirming my observation, her answer was bleak.
“It’s not working.”
“What? Already? You just ate it. Don’t you need to wait a bit longer?”
“It has nothing to do with digestion.”
“Then what do we do?”
“There is one method worth trying.”
“Which is?”
Instead of answering, Kayla looked at me. Not casually — she scanned me from head to toe. Her expression didn’t change, but something about the feeling was off. Like I’d been stripped bare. Was she using some kind of x-ray magic?
“Sexual intercourse.”
“What?”
Se— what? Had I misheard?
“It’s a traditional method. Intercourse with an intelligent being of another dimension is a great help in adapting to that dimension.”
“What kind of porn-plot nonsense is that?!”
“Mana is life force. That mana would be born from intercourse — the beginning of life — is only natural.”
Ah. A crystal-clear explanation that made me nod along… no it didn’t!
“Even if that were true, who exactly are you planning to have sex with right now?!”
“You. What, you don’t want to do it with me?”
Kayla’s tone hadn’t shifted at all. Compared to when her curiosity had exploded, the difference was night and day — she sounded like she was handling routine paperwork. Except the content was whether or not to have sex with a peerless beauty.
“That’s not…”
Of course I didn’t mind. I didn’t have a girlfriend, and I wasn’t some lifelong virgin with a reason to refuse. And Kayla was, without question, stunning. Her figure was hidden under the robe, but with a face like that, did the body even matter?
But the world had procedures, and I needed mental preparation. I’d just met an otherworlder and my head was still spinning — and now sex? Instant sex?
“I’m in a life-or-death crisis, so I’m asking. Finding someone else isn’t realistic either. There’s no time, and if we’re going to do this, it should be with someone who might be the master of a Gate. That’s the surest way.”
She stepped toward me as she spoke. I retreated on instinct — and my calves hit the edge of the bed. Nowhere left to go.
She pushed my shoulders, and I toppled naturally onto the mattress.
“W-wait. Doing this all of a sudden is a bit—”
At some point, my voice stopped working. Magic?
I tried to get up. That was impossible too. Some powerful force was pinning me down. More magic?
Then, with a soft rustle, my pants came off.
I was already fully hard — had been for a while.
“What’s this? You’re completely ready.”
Kayla’s voice was still calm, but somehow it felt like she was teasing me. My face went red on its own.
No, I mean — that’s — this is embarrassing!!!
I screamed it in my head.