If you tied me down to a chair, put a gun to my head, and told me to confess to my worst quality, there's no doubt about what I'd say.

  "I really, really, really despise women," That's it. That's all there is to it. I wouldn't mention anything about my nicotine addiction, the fact that I spent all my time in my parent's house watching anime and playing games, all I'd have to say for myself is that I had an extreme aversion to the female sex.

  I tried to get over it. Multiple times, in fact. Did some real deep soul searching. But about it, there was nothing doing. I just hated girls, and probably would until the day I died. Until my body rotted to the bone, all my skin and muscle got eaten by worms, and my horrible girlish face that brought me nothing but torment from those of my fellow sex was unrecognizable.

  What a cruel joke. What a cruel twist of fate that the first person I'd seen in the afterlife was a girl...

  Oh, by the way, I was killed, don’t get it twisted. In these kinds of scenarios, the person (technical term is isekaijin, by the way) normally gets whisked away while trying to push some idiot trying to cross the street without looking out of harm’s way. I didn’t get into an accident. I didn’t die trying to save anyone. I was just another victim in a serial killer’s unfortunate killing spree. A statistic. A headline in a local newspaper, maybe.

  Jack the Dripper. What a stupid name.

  But the scenario I described just a little while ago was kinda how it went down. Just replace a gun with an eyedropper full of acid, hung directly above my head. Have you ever heard of Chinese water torture? It was kind of like that, except I could feel my brain burning away the entire time until I died. Very, very fucking painful.

  We were in a seedy back alley place in what looked to be a fantasy village from a JRPG. Twilight muffled the sky and everything was still. Nobody milling about outside from what I could see, at least (though it wasn’t very much). The only two people were me and the girl. We had been arguing for the past twenty or so minutes about nothing important.

  “I’m actually a woman, you know!” She pouted.

  A lovecraftian tentacle thing (I am great at describing things…) came out from god-knows-where under her blacker-than-black robes and commandeered my head. She made me look down at her face, meeting her eyes as she addressed me. The tentacle was slimy and it smelled as pleasant as you’d expect an evil tentacle to smell like (hint: not very).

  “…and you don’t look very manly yourself, mister. Are you sure you’re actually a guy?”

  “I won’t have my manhood questioned by someone who looks like they’re still in middle school!”

  “You otherworlders always come with your heads full of the standards of your old world. I’ve never even HEARD of that, idiot! Stupid! Moron!”

  “You even talk like one—!”

  “YOU shouldn’t be talking to ME like that. I used to be the Dark Lord~~~you know, like THE Dark Lord, Nyarla Paporplastic. Capital THE.”

  “That doesn’t even make any sense…and you were just coming at me about forcing my world’s ideas onto you, but you’re acting like I should be awed at that! For all you know, I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”

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  “That’s why I emphasized the THE, stupid. Anyway, you’re living in this world now, so you better catch up. The current Dark Lord’s my big brother, so don’t make me sic him on you.”

  I sighed, annoyed. I wanted to get my head out of this headlock. I wanted to be at least fifty miles away from this lady. I wanted to hit my vape. There was a lot that I wanted, actually, huh.

  “I can see that look in your eyes…nuh uh. You’re not getting out that easily.”

  “Oh, and what exactly would I be getting out of, huh?” I struggled. Maybe the slime would act as a lubricant and let me slip out? Like how people say that you can use butter to get your hands out of cuffs if you get arrested…in a place with easy access to an inordinate amount of butter. Like maybe if the CEO of Butter Inc. got arrested.

  She tightened the tentacle’s grip around my head. Futile, no dice. Snake eyes? But snakes were only vaguely tentaclelike…not actually tentacles. It’d be like saying that—actually, that wasn’t important! I needed to get out of there, and FAST.

  “There’s a dead guy in my room, and I need someone to figure out who did it.”

  ??????????????????????????

  “Huh…?”

  “You heard me. Dead guy. Room. Now!”

  “Do I look like some sort of detective to you!?”

  “Mmmmmmm….nope. You look like a girl. But you look smart. Oh, no, wait, a smartass! Hehehe!”

  “You think you’re so clever…what if I refuse? What then?”

  “Oh….um. (thinks really really hard for a minute) Well, I’ll make it so you can’t refuse.”

  “You’ll pay me?”

  “No! That’s stupid. I’ll just brand you as my thrall.”

  “?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!”

  “But I don’t really like doing it…it’s actually a real pain…siiiiiigh…can you just do what I asked? Please?”

  She turned her eyes up at me like a small animal. I actually didn’t like animals, either, but I didn’t consider that as bad of a quality as hating half the population. Unlike animals, women were conscious, had sentience.

  “No.”

  “Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. Okay…you leave me with no choice….”

  “Don’t sound so pained when y—” A searing pain looped around my entire face. Was her tentacle growing purple? What the f—AGH. No time for sardonic remarks.

  It felt like all the nerves in my face were being violated. As if every pore in my face had grown a cavity ridden tooth and was aching something terminal. I wanted to bite her fucking tentacle off.

  “There, all done…you’re my thrall. Now carry me to my room.”

  “What?”

  The tentacle retreated back into her robe and she flopped down onto her knees by my feet. Somehow, my face wasn’t in searing pain anymore. Was it because the source was magical?

  “I’m tireeeeed…carry me…”

  “Absolutely not.”

  She whined a little, begged me, tried to convince me. I refused. I refused again. I refused a third time. A wonder that I didn’t just up and walk out of the alley right then. Good idea, actually. I tried, turned around and started, but...

  “Halt.” I stopped. Not of my own volition, it was as if my legs had stopped working. It’s not often that one got to ponder the incomprehensibility of autonomous movement. You don’t individually tell each part of your body, “okay, now it’s your turn to move—” when you wanted to move it. It just did what you wanted it to and you didn’t think about it.

  “Turn yourself around.” I did.

  Nyarla was standing up again with a stern expression on her face. Her eyes glowed an unnatural purple and she made a motion with her hands like she was tugging on an invisible leash. The first part of my body to follow was my left hand, which now had a strange insignia on it that faintly glowed the same color as her eyes. I unsteadily stumbled my way over to her against my will.

  “Carry me to my room, now.”

  I bent down and picked her up, bridal style, and started walking automatically to a destination that I didn’t know the location of. First day in an isekai story, kind of the dream for a shut-in, and I’ve already had my class effectively demoted to slave.

  To a woman, no less.

  And there was no way in hell a fantasy setting like this was going to have a vape shop, either.

  It was going to be a long life, provided she didn’t let me kill myself.