Chapter Text
Subaru Natsuki was not a special boy.
At least, that’s what he would tell you. Not out of humility, but with the dull certainty of someone who had long accepted the absence of anything extraordinary in his life. He would’ve shrugged, maybe offered a forced smile, and said something like, “I’m just your average shut-in,” as if trying to undercut his own existence before anyone else could.
But that conversation would never happen, because Subaru didn’t really talk to people anymore. Not unless it was scripted dialogue on the glowing screen of a visual novel, or a message board thread between anonymous usernames.
Most of his days, no, most of his life, passed in the dim, flickering glow of a monitor. His room was cluttered with unopened figures, half-finished novels, and instant noodle cups long since drained of flavor or warmth. The days didn’t pass; they just stacked up behind him like forgotten save files.
And yet, every so often, he emerged. Like a ghost testing the world of the living, he would step outside. Sometimes it was for a newly released visual novel, sometimes for a rare figurine he’d seen online and just had to have. More often than not, it was for snacks, a pilgrimage to the nearest convenience store, a sacred rite in the religion of solitude.
It was late. The kind of late that wraps the world in hush, where even the sound of your footsteps feels like it might wake the stars. Subaru had thrown on his usual tracksuit, a second skin by now, faded and too comfortable to retire, and slipped out of the house under the guise of hunger. The air was mild, a gentle warmth lingering in the breeze. It was the kind of night that pretended it wasn’t lonely.
The kind of night that hovered between seasons, still and soft. Not a single cloud threatened the sky, only the full moon hung above him, casting silver light down upon the quiet streets like a distant god too polite to interfere.
He stopped walking.
The moonlight pooled at his feet, spreading across the empty pavement. Everything looked ethereal under its glow. The worn bricks of the sidewalk, the leaves rustling gently in a late-night breeze, the glint of dew on the store’s glass front. All of it shimmered like something out of a dream.
Subaru tilted his head up and stared. The moon looked impossibly full tonight, round and luminous, like it had swallowed the sun and kept the light for itself. Its radiance reminded him of a truth he rarely acknowledged:
The sky never looked like this from inside his room.
“…Huh, maybe I should come out more,” he muttered to himself. “When the sky looks like this.”
He exhaled, letting the breath carry some heavy thought with it. A part of him -not the sarcastic mask he wore online and not the sheepish self deprecation- felt the weight of that beauty. It struck him with the cruelty of a kindness too rare to trust. He wanted to believe it meant something. That this, this, was a sign he could change. Maybe if the moon always looked like this, he’d go outside more. Maybe he’d start living, even a little.
But the moon wouldn’t stay full. Not forever. Nothing ever did.
“Too bad,” he muttered, a sad little smile forming on his lips. “It won’t always be this bright.”
He resumed walking. The soft crunch of gravel beneath his shoes was the only sound accompanying him. The streets were empty, and the quiet made the world feel like it belonged only to him, for better or worse.
The convenience store was just around the corner. Familiar neon lights buzzed lazily above its sliding doors, as if they too were half-asleep. Inside, the cool air smelled faintly of bleach and overripe bananas. Subaru wandered through the aisles with no particular urgency, letting his mind drift.
He passed by the magazine rack and paused.
A risqué cover caught his eye, ridiculous, over the top, the kind of thing meant to embarrass and tempt in equal measure. Subaru scoffed and turned away, muttering, “Man… this is how they get you.”
But the amusement didn’t stick. His eyes moved along the shelves without focus, and his feet eventually carried him to the ramen section. He grabbed a chicken-and-vegetable pack, a bag of potato chips, and two bottles of water. Cheap comfort. That’s all he ever seemed to buy.
At the counter, he gave a soft "thanks" to the clerk who barely talked to him, if it could even be called that. The man didn’t look up from the register, and Subaru didn’t try to force small talk. The beep of scanned items and the crinkle of the plastic bag were the loudest part of the entire interaction.
He stepped out once more into the quiet night, holding the bag in one hand and shielding his eyes from the store’s artificial glow. The moon was still there, waiting for him. A strange emotion flickered in his chest. It was soft, like longing or maybe grief.
He looked up again.
Would anything he did ever matter?
That question wasn’t new. It had haunted him before, usually in the dead hours between midnight and dawn when everything felt hollow. But tonight, under this serene moon, it felt more dangerous.
Was his life worth living? In a universe where stars burned for billions of years and entire galaxies collided and danced across an infinite cosmos, what place was there for someone like him?
What value did a hikikomori with a head full of anime and a heart full of regrets really have?
He closed his eyes.
No, don’t think like that. Not tonight. Not when the sky is this pretty.
He forced himself to breathe slowly. His mother’s smile drifted into his mind. Uninvited, but not unwelcome. If he spiraled now, she would cry. If he did something irreversible, she’d never stop crying.
That, more than anything, tethered him.
Subaru exhaled. He rubbed his eyes, suddenly aware of a sharp sting beneath his eyelids. It started subtly, like the ache that comes after staring at a screen too long. But it grew quickly. Too quickly.
A headache bloomed behind his skull. Pressure. Heat.
“Ugh… what the hell…”
His vision blurred. The moon above him smudged and stretched like wet paint. He squeezed his eyes shut, instinctively bringing his hands up to rub them. The sensation deepened, not pain, not exactly. More like movement. Like the world beneath his feet was shifting.
And then… sound.
Not the distant hum of traffic or the soft rustle of leaves. This was something else. Voices. Shouts. A crowd. A market, footsteps and…
Sunlight?
He felt it for a heartbeat: warmth against his cheeks, an alien sensation at this hour. The moonlight was gone. In its place, the feeling of warmth and sunlight was ever present.
But it was gone a heartbeat later. Like a dream remembered too late. Like something was pulling him backwards through layers of water, through time, through space, through self.
When he opened his eyes again, the moon was still there. Full, beautiful and bright, gazing down with the same indifferent glow.
But everything else was wrong.
He wasn’t in front of the convenience store anymore. There was no sidewalk. No streetlamps. No convenience store clerk looking. The world had shifted, unceremoniously and completely.
He stood in the middle of a field.
Not a peaceful one. Not at all.
All around him were bodies, well not bodies but empty armors, collapsed and blood-soaked. The metal glinted under the moonlight, reflecting a war that had long since ended or only had just begun.
Subaru blinked, slowly.
No... this isn't Japan. This isn't...
“I’VE BEEN SUMMONED TO ANOTHER WORLD?!”
The words tore out of his throat like a reflex. Raw, giddy, almost triumphant. He laughed, almost. It felt too good to be true. A battlefield, medieval armor, magic in the air. Every cliché from the stories he devoured in his room had bloomed into reality.
But something was wrong.
His voice.
Too soft.
Too smooth.
Too foreign.
He blinked, chest rising too quickly, too lightly, and looked down.
That wasn’t his body.
The hands trembling before his eyes were pale and slender, with long fingers and nails too clean for someone who had supposedly just woken up on a battlefield. They were delicate. Feminine. Alien.
“Wh…what...?”
He took a shaky step back. The motion was too fluid. His heel caught on uneven ground, and he stumbled, falling hard onto the cold earth. His palms met dirt, but it felt like the sensation passed through a filter. Dulled, muffled, one step removed from real. He tried to orient himself, to catch his breath, but even breathing felt mechanical. Like the body was doing it for him.
His back struck something solid. He turned and found himself leaning against rows of standing armor. Immobile but imposing. Soldiers in formation. Statues of steel. They didn’t have a helmet, or a head. They were empty, without a person inside them. Not a breath moved them, yet they stood at attention, as if waiting.
Waiting for him?
He reached up, desperate to feel something familiar, his face, his hair, anything to ground him.
His fingertips brushed his cheek. Sharp jawline, smooth skin.
Then metal, or was it something like a bone?
He flinched, fingers grazing the shape of a… wait horns? The weight of it pressed lightly against the top of his head. His hair fell around his shoulders, too long, too heavy. He caught a glimpse of a lock in the corner of his vision.
Purple.
What the hell?
He pushed himself up again. His movements were too graceful, as though the body moved with the practiced ease of a dancer, not the awkward scramble of a shut-in. No soreness in his joints. No ache from falling. No hesitation.
His panic should have been mounting. His heart should have been pounding. But instead…
Nothing.
Or rather, calm.
A cold sort of clarity was taking hold of him. His thoughts moved too fast, flicking through possibilities with clinical detachment. He noticed the battlefield again. This time not with wonder, but with assessment.
The bodies weren’t bodies. The armor on the ground was hollow, the same as the standing ones. Empty husks. Puppets without strings.
He looked down at himself again. A strange red cloth hung from his waist like a sash or a cape, split in the front to reveal long, pale legs inside long black boots. Not a skirt exactly, but something regal. Formal. Powerfully feminine.
A waist cape belt?
Subaru felt the word demon surface in his mind, unbidden.
Before he could question it, a sound reached his ears, a fight.
He turned, and there she was.
A girl, or perhaps a woman, with flowing twin-tail white hair that trailed behind her. She was fighting the hollow armors with swift, elegant motions, her staff gleaming with magic, her feet barely seeming to touch the earth. She spun, struck, stepped, every motion was deliberate and beautiful. Effortless.
His eyes locked onto her. Something stirred in his chest. Wonder, yes, but also longing. She looked like everything he wasn’t, strong, composed, purposeful.
And then she noticed him.
She turned, slowly, her green eyes finding his with quiet calculation. Her expression was unreadable. Her face, emotionless. Her features sharp and inhuman.
Pointed ears.
An elf.
Holy crap, a real elf. Subaru almost grinned.
Maybe, just maybe, she was the one who brought him here. Maybe this was still going according to the script. Maybe he was the hero.
“Hey! Yes, you over there!” Subaru called out, lifting a slender arm to wave. “Could it be that you were the one who summoned me to this world?”
His voice rang out, light and clear, no longer strange to him. Almost beautiful in a way that unnerved him.
The elf’s gaze sharpened. Like a hawk. Or a blade just before it was drawn.
She raised her staff.
Subaru’s excitement stalled. His smile faltered.
Wait.
“Hey, wait! I swear I’m not trying to do anything! I just wanted to ta-”
“Zoltraak.”
The word was spoken like a sigh. Resigned. Impersonal. As though she had already determined the necessity of killing him and found no reason to question it.
Light surged toward him, pure and searing. A column of magic ripped through the air and struck him in the chest, dead center.
There was no time to scream.
Just the brief sensation of his body evaporating. The disintegration of flesh, the hollowing of soul.
He fell backward. Or maybe he simply ceased.
His final thought scraped across the edge of oblivion
“Wh…why…?”
He didn’t even get a single day. Not even a chance to enjoy this new world.
“I don’t wanna die...”
And just like that black filled his vision.
Nothing
And then
Everything.
Pain ripped through his being like barbed wire dragged across bone. His soul thrashed, not within a body, but against the edges of something vast and wrong. His mind cracked. His sense of self screamed. It was as if he were being stitched back into form, against the fabric of his will.
And then, moonlight.
The first thing he saw was the moonlight.
He was alive.
He was back.
Same battlefield. Same place. Same body.
The same moonlight.
Untouched. Indifferent. A silent observer of his resurrection.
Bright. Full. Cold.
Moonlight, Gazing down with the same indifferent glow.