Chapter 1

Where is this?

Why am I in a place like this?

My last memory was of being on my way home on the last train after my fourteenth straight day of work, indulging in a fantasy about slamming down my resignation and quitting, when I accidentally stepped out at a red light—

While my confusion still had not settled, I was dragged into a large stone mansion and made to stand in the courtyard.

And when I was handed a strange purple stone, I remembered being forced to do a party trick at a new employee welcome party.

But the ones staring at me were not grubby middle-aged men with thinning hair.

They were two girls with such perfectly arranged features that they made me catch my breath.

Both looked to be in their mid-teens. One had fluffy curls as her defining feature, wore clothes like a dress, and alone sat in a chair.

The other stood at her side as an attendant, glaring at me with sharp green eyes beneath silver hair like a snowy mountain on a cloudy day.

This mansion belonged to them, and the curly-haired girl sitting in the chair was, unbelievably, the local lord.

But the reason I could not help shrinking back was neither because of their overly perfect features nor because of the old-fashioned title of lord.

It was because beast ears grew from their heads, and tails could be seen behind them.

“――, ――!”

The sharper-eyed girl standing beside the fluffy-curled girl said something in words I could not understand. Even if I could not understand the language, I could tell her tone was harsh.

Her slender figure and tail, combined with that cold-looking hair color, made her seem like an ill-tempered cat.

She was probably urging me to hurry up.

I looked at the stone in my hand.

It was a small fragment of some kind of ore, with a pattern carved into it.

What I had been handed at the new employee welcome party had been some cheap magic prop.

But this was not a budget izakaya.

“…Another world… an isekai, huh.”

I muttered that, took a deep breath, and steeled myself.

It did not seem real in the slightest, but if this was a dream, then it was an absurdly realistic one.

And if I said it did not make my heart race, that would have been a lie.

At the very least, I had escaped my unimpressive working life with no prospects in sight.

I raised my hand and put strength into it.

Apparently, this world had magic.

That, more than anything, made it seem like another world, but what kind of thing was it, exactly?

Or rather, a scene flashed through my mind where I displayed some overwhelmingly amazing power and everyone went, Oh? No, no, no, wait, wait, wait.

It was not that I disliked that sort of content, so I could not help getting my hopes up.

And then—

“…”

No matter how long I waited, no magic came out, and no matter how much I groaned or strained, not even a wisp of smoke rose.

Before long, I heard a loud sigh.

The fluffy-curled lord stood up from her chair and briskly returned inside the mansion.

The attendant girl, who had been looking at me as if I were trash, strode over, snatched the stone from my hand as though ripping it away, and went after her mistress.

There was no describing how miserable I felt, left behind in the courtyard.

As I stood there in a daze, a hand was placed on my shoulder.

That heavy hand shook my shoulder.

Just like a senior coworker had done for me when I failed at work for the first time.

“Let’s do our best and survive, fellow ordinary guy!”

The comfort offered by that guy, who had come to this world just a little earlier than I had, truly struck home.