445"That'll be fifteen silver in total." Copper, silver, gold. Normally, that's how it'd be in most fantasy settings. Sometimes, the conversions might be different, such as 29 copper to silver, and 17 silver to gold. Completely arbitrary, and in most cases, these conversions are pulled straight from the author's ass. That's why I can appreciate the simplicity of this world's system. Only ten of each currency to the next. Clean, easy to remember, and most certainly logical. Though, the addition of sacred gold felt like a bit overkill.
As a merchant, those three things are what I live for.
"I've only got two gold. Got any change?" The man in front of me wore a lot of white. Yeah, I know you riajuus want to stick out, but wearing white in a medieval fantasy setting? This place may have a sewage system, but this place is still as filthy as ever! How many times have you had to wash the literal shit that clung to that uniform of yours, I wonder?
"Yeah, here." I handed over five pieces of silver. Damn, I'll need to go get some change at this point. Got too much gold and not enough silver. Ah, if only my office slave parents could see me now. Suffering from success indeed.
"Thanks. I'll be back within the week." The man, knight, turned around and headed for the door, even as I started to make my way to the back, "...and Hikigaya?"
"I know, I know. You tell me every time you come here, Juukulius." I brush off the knight for the umpteenth time, "I'll think about it." The knight, riajuu that he is, completely ignored the obvious annoyance in my voice, to the point where I could practically hear the smug smile in his.
"Very good. Lady Hoshin will be glad to hear that." The small chime of a bell signaled that he'd finally left.
Man, I hated that guy. Not because he did anything, no. I hated him for the same reason I hated tomatoes. I just did. Were some anime protagonists to hear me now, I had no doubt that they'd chastise and tell me to get along with Juukulius.
Ha! Fat chance of that happening. The only person that can hear my thoughts is me. And maybe psychics. But those guys don't count.
Hm? Why was Juukulius even here? Well, to answer your question, me, it was because he wanted another order of the finest blades in the land!
Is what I would have said if I was in some isekai where I was answering the protagonist in order to further plot development.
I wasn't. No, this is all for me. Even this entire rant of mine is to just keep myself from facing the worst enemy I've fought, and kept fighting: boredom. Yes, I can get bored. Yes, it's pretty easy to be bored when the people who come into this shop can be counted on two hands.
No, the catboy that just entered was most certainly not a way to stave off that boredom. Yes, catboy, not catgirl. Yes, that is just as creepy as you imagined.
"Nyahallo, Hikiganya!"
Not to mention that he'd somehow taken to using Yuigahama's greetings, but even made it somehow even more cringe-inducing. I never imagined that it could get worse, but to my dismay, it did.
"What do you want, Argyle?"
"I couldn't help but nyotice that ol' Julius came by again. You thinking of finally taking him up on his offer?"
The catboy in front of me was of the same class as Juukulius. Of that, I have no doubt. What was eyebrow-raising was that he was wearing a dress. A summer dress, if I had to guess. Anyone who didn't know him would most definitely mistake him for a her. Not me, of course. Ever since I met Totsuka, I've been careful to see whether or not people are what they say they are.
Unfortunately for Argyle, I had him figured out the moment I first saw him in a dress. Which was also the first time I ever met him, come to think about it. The reason I knew he was a he was simple - he was way too flat.
Call me a horny teenager, but there was no way that any female would be that flat, bar Yukinoshita.
I feel like that comment is going to bite me in the ass someday, but today is not that day.
Okay, I believe that that's enough about Argyle's non-existent breasts.
"What makes you think that?" I tried to play it off, but Argyle just stared at me, in a way that made me feel like an idiot.
"Hikigaya, tell me why Julius would even enter the front door, when you're the one that tells everyone to just leave their order at the mailbox?."
...I'm an idiot.
Throughout history, knowledge has always been a deciding factor when it comes to survival. The first thinking organisms probably didn't know a lot, which is why we have nothing to show for them other than their fossils. They didn't know what berries were and weren't poisonous, what water was safe and wasn't, what animals were more likely to maul you to death or better to keep as livestock.
Eventually, they did. The remnants of these early beings, because they certainly weren't what we would consider people yet, figured out that copper was better than rocks. Then that iron was better than copper. Then steel. Then they would go to war, undoing years of work, just because they wanted more than what they had.
In essence, I can conclude that knowledge will always lead to war. Be it a war fought by swords, a war fought by words, by guns, or by staring at each other and waiting till the other makes a move. War is inevitable in any society, as society needs knowledge to be considered a society.
And, for whatever reason, I'm smack dab in the middle of one.
Indeed, here, I am considered a prodigy. To the people of this world, education is a privilege that only the brightest, or the richest, could afford. Not unlike medieval times, where the lowest common denominator was peasantry that only knew how to work the fields.
In this world, counting from 1 to 100 was seen as a mark of some decent home schooling. Addition and subtraction was seen as advanced, only truly used by merchants and heads of families. Multiplication and division were two skills that many would consider the pinnacle, only surpassed by military engineers who used trigonometry and more advanced mathematics.
As a highschooler from the 21st century, I could easily multiply and divide in the thousands. And that alone made me an attractive opportunity for merchant guilds.
Especially one as large as Anastasia Hoshin's.
As a foreigner, some locals didn't like the idea of Hoshin taking one of their own and using them to further her status in the merchant scene. Nevermind that I'm also a foreigner.
Of course, this prompted another person of renown, one Crusch Karsten, to start pressuring me to join her side. This wasn't exactly a shock, since Karsten and Hoshin were both currently candidates for the Royal Selection, and both wanted more influence than the other.
What better way to start that than a trade war?
Currently, the west side of the merchant district was well within Hoshin's pocket, having been absorbed into the greater Hoshin Trading Company. Meanwhile, the east side was drafting a new treaty for a coalition of merchants, a sort of union not unlike those in my modern world.
Unfortunately for me, I was literally right in the middle of the two sides, as I had picked a location that I had thought, at the time, to be tucked away. Thus, my life of blissfully being ignored was over, as the two sides found a modern teenager among medieval peasants.
"I'm guessing then that you're making a counter offer as well?"
"Yep!" His chipper attitude came back in full swing. Please leave. I don't need that vibrancy in my distinctly non-vibrant den. It's really ruining the atmosphere.
"I'll think about it." My voice was dry. Had this been Juukulius, he would have smiled and left, like he already did. Unfortunately, this wasn't that riajuu, but another, more dangerous riajuu, as Argyle had something that the former didn't have.
A brain.
"You knyow that won't work on me Hikiganya!" Oi, that's my name, and it's precious to me. Don't add your creepy cat noises to it, please, "Julius may be a blockhead, but I know that just means 'No'!"
"Yeah, probably after your mistress told you about it, huh?"
...Stop blushing, this is making things even more uncomfortable than they already are.
"You don't knyow that!" Argyle, I may be a moron, but while you actually have a brain, you're still a bigger moron than I am.
"I do now. Now leave. I don't want to hear anything more about job offers."
Argyle stared at me, still in that same pose of having his arms tucked in his chest, with cheeks puffed up in a pout. Had he been a girl, I would've fallen right there and there. Except he wasn't, and the spot Argyle would fill up was already taken by Totsuka.
Sorry, Argyle, but Totsuka is just better than you in every way possible.
Finally, the catboy dropped the act and sighed, "You really are a piece of work, Hikigaya." He rubbed his temples in a way that reminded me of an exasperated parent, "Anyone else would have been over the moon about being offered to work for either Crusch-sama or Anastasia-sama, and here you are saying no to both!"
I kept quiet as he spoke.
Argyle gave one more sigh before he turned around and headed for the door.
"Just...Hikigaya, I know that you have your reasons, but whatever they are, I'm sure that Crusch-sama would gladly help you out if you joined our camp."
He left shortly after. I, again, was alone in a dingy old shop. Still, I couldn't help but mutter to the closed door.
"You think I don't know that?"
Think about your favorite isekai light novel, anime, or manga. How do the characters act? How good is the worldbuilding? The plot of the story any good? Maybe it's happy go lucky, where the characters live a life of eating and drinking in a tavern of fellow adventurers. Maybe it's dark, where people fear the thought of being murdered by assassins at any point.
All of that doesn't matter, if they don't end.
How many isekai stories do you know that end? Where the main character finally makes it back home? Goes back to their family? I'll give you an answer: barely any. And even then, they're shown to be bittersweet, where the protagonist leaves behind everything they'd worked hard for. Where everything that happened may have been nothing but a sweet dream.
Bittersweet endings like that are rare, because no one buys a book where the character goes back to being a normal nobody.
And yet, they're not the worst offenders of isekai endings. No, the worst may just be the stories that end with the characters accepting that they don't want to go back home. That those that care about them on the other side don't matter as much as those they're already with. That the time you spent in their original world was nothing short of useless.
Disgusting.
You would abandon your family for a world that took you from them by force? You would let the people who took care of you think you're dead, mourning the thought of you while you yourself happily prance along with all the powers you inevitably gain?
I didn't want an ending like that. I had people that I cared for that I didn't want to abandon. I wanted to see my parents, who worked hard to the point that they were never home. I wanted to see Komachi, who would always wake me up with a smile on her face. I wanted to go to school, and have Hiratsuka-sensei berate me for being late, because that's the only way that she showed her worry.
I wanted to go back to the Service Club, where Yukinoshita, Yuigahama and I would work to fix whatever inane reason Isshiki had for calling out to us.
None of that would happen if I were the protagonist. Instead, I would be forced to follow whatever plot was laid out until I didn't want to leave. I would be one of those disgusting protagonists who abandon everything they knew to live a life built on a lie.
That's why I've denied each and every offer that Karsten and Hoshin have sent me. To do so would drag me into whatever plot was brewing. A plot that I didn't care for. That someone else can follow up on. Someone who wasn't me.
...Maybe I am a fool. Maybe whatever brought me here already planned for me to deny their offers. Maybe I already am part of the plot and I just don't know it yet. Maybe all the effort I've put into trying to find a way back was meaningless. Maybe I am doomed to be stuck in this world until the day I die.
Maybe.
But if there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that my actions ever since I've been brought here were made by my own will, and not the whims of some puppet master from up high.
And I can live with that, at least.
A/N: Posting this earlier than normal since I'll probably be gone for the rest of the day.
To those interested, I've mad reon, over a (slash) Almistyor. Just remove the spaces and replace the dot and slash appropriately. Any support, even just a read of any of my stories on here, is appreciated.