The Tanabata festival was in full swing, and Hitomi was in heaven.
Not literally, of course. The deities had made it abundantly clear she wasn't welcome up there yet. But standing here in the crowded streets of Shibuya, wearing her best white kimono and clutching a boat of fresh takoyaki, she felt pretty damn close.
"Mmm~" She popped another one into her mouth, barely waiting for it to cool. The scalding heat was worth it. Humans really knew how to make food. That was one thing she'd give them credit for—their strange little mortal lives might be fleeting and pathetic, but at least they'd figured out how to deep-fry octopus.
She weaved through the crowd with practiced ease, her white hair catching the glow of paper lanterns. People gave her looks—the foreigners thought she was some kind of model, the locals wondered if she was someone famous—but she ignored them all. She had more important things to focus on.
Like whether she should get more takoyaki, or try the yakisoba next.
Decisions, decisions.
A child bumped into her, and she barely managed to keep her precious cargo from spilling. She shot the kid a glare that would've sent lesser beings running, but the brat just apologized and scurried off.
Tch. No respect.
Still, she was in too good a mood to care. The festival was beautiful, the food was endless, and best of all, she was off duty. No hero summoning tonight. No teenage boys to flatten. Just her, the festivities, and—
The blare of a horn shattered her thoughts.
Hitomi turned, takoyaki halfway to her mouth, and saw it.
A truck. White. Barreling down the street that had definitely been blocked off for the festival.
Oh, you've got to be kidding me.
She didn't even have time to move before it hit her.
REWIND: Three Years Ago
Let me back up a bit. You're probably wondering how I got here—face-first into cosmic irony with a mouthful of takoyaki.
It all started with a white truck and a drunk driver.
Well, technically it started before that, but the truck is where I started. The drunk driver—let's call him Tanaka, because I never bothered learning his actual name—had a problem. Several problems, actually. Alcoholism. Vehicular manslaughter. An alarming talent for evading the police.
Tanaka's truck, a beat-up commercial vehicle with rusting panels and a dented bumper, had killed seventeen people over the course of four years. Seventeen. And somehow, somehow, Tanaka kept getting away with it. Hit and runs. Witness testimony that mysteriously vanished. Evidence that got "lost" in processing.
I don't know if Tanaka had made a deal with something, or if he was just that lucky, but eventually, his luck ran out. The police finally arrested him after victim number seventeen—a middle school girl crossing at a light. Even Tanaka's mysterious fortune couldn't save him from that one.
The truck got impounded. Forgotten in some lot, covered in grime and bad karma.
That's when I woke up.
Awareness came slowly, like surfacing from deep water. One moment there was nothing. The next, I could feel the rust on my panels, the weight of seventeen deaths pressing into my frame like lead. I was the truck. I was the murders. All that accumulated malice and violence had given me consciousness.
I was a tsukumogami. An object-turned-yokai.
And I was so. Bored.
Impound lots are the worst. Nothing to do. Nobody to talk to. Just sitting there, rusting, listening to the rain ping off my hood. I spent months like that, slowly going insane, until one day I realized something.
I could move.
Not like a normal truck—I didn't need a driver. I was the driver. The wheel turned at my thought. The engine roared at my will. And when I rolled out of that impound lot, crashing through the chain-link fence with seventeen ghosts screaming in my wake, I was free.
At first, I didn't know what to do with that freedom. I just... drove. Aimlessly. Through empty streets and highways, going nowhere in particular.
But then I started noticing them.
The ones who'd almost died.
Tanaka had nearly hit dozens more people before his arrest—pedestrians who'd jumped back just in time, cyclists who'd swerved at the last second. And I could feel them. Their near-death experiences left a sort of... marker. A cosmic IOU.
So I started collecting.
I'd find them. Follow them. And when the moment was right—when they were distracted, crossing a street, headphones in, completely oblivious—I'd finish what Tanaka started.
Thud.
Over and over again.
It took a few years before I got a name for what I was doing. The internet is a wonderful thing. Apparently, I'd become something of an urban legend. "Truck-kun," they called me. Sometimes "Truck-sama" if they were feeling respectful.
And the really weird part? People who got hit by me didn't just die.
They got sent somewhere else.
Two Years Ago
"You're doing WHAT?!"
The tengu looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. His red face had gone even redder, and his wings were puffed up in agitation.
We were in one of the between-spaces—a meeting ground for yokai and spirits, invisible to mortal eyes. It looked like a run-down community center, complete with folding chairs and a water cooler that nobody ever refilled.
"Sending people to other worlds," I repeated, munching on some chips I'd stolen from a convenience store. "You know. Isekai."
"I know what isekai is," the tengu snapped. "What I don't understand is why you think you have the authority to—"
"She has a job, Akihiro." 100 Kilometer Per Hour Granny rolled up in her motorized wheelchair, moving at a speed that should've been physically impossible. She was technically a yokai too—a speed demon who'd died in a motorcycle accident and now terrorized highways. "Leave the girl alone."
"Thank you, Granny." I shot the tengu a smug look.
"I didn't say it was a good job," Granny added. "Just that it's legitimate. The deities need heroes for their little multiversal disputes. Someone's gotta deliver them."
A kappa poked his head up from the water cooler. "She's not wrong. I've been ferrying souls across rivers for three centuries. It's honest work."
"Honest work doesn't involve murdering high schoolers!" The tengu was practically vibrating now.
"They don't stay dead," I pointed out. "They get revived in another world with cheat abilities and harems. If anything, I'm doing them a favor."
"You sent Nakamura Kenji last week. He was on his way to a job interview."
"And now he's the Demon Lord of the Western Wastes with three wives and a magic sword. You're welcome."
The tengu buried his face in his hands.
Granny cackled. "I like her. She's got moxie."
"She's got a body count," the tengu muttered.
"So do you," I shot back. "You literally used to throw people off mountains."
"That was traditional! It was part of the culture!"
"And isekai is part of modern culture. Keep up, old man."
The meeting devolved into bickering after that, but I didn't care. I'd proven my point. I had a job. A purpose. I was contributing to the cosmic order.
And if that contribution involved running over random pedestrians... well, someone had to do it.
Over the next year, my legend grew. The "isekai boom," they called it. Light novels, manga, anime—all featuring protagonists who got hit by trucks and sent to fantasy worlds. I was a cultural phenomenon. A meme. An icon.
I loved it.
But apparently, the deities didn't.
Six Months Ago
"Absolutely not."
I stared at the deity—I couldn't see his face, just a blur of golden light and an overwhelming sense of authority—and felt my temper rising.
"What do you mean, 'absolutely not'?!"
"You are not ready for ascension," another deity said. This one's voice was feminine, cold. "You lack the experience, the reputation, and quite frankly, the maturity."
"I have TONS of reputation! I'm literally famous! People make memes about me!"
"Memes," the first deity said flatly, "are not a valid metric for divine status."
"Sun Wukong started as a troublemaker! Ne Zha killed a dragon prince when he was, like, seven! The Nine-Tailed Fox seduced an emperor! If they can become deities, why can't I?!"
"They also," the cold voice said, "demonstrated growth. Redemption. A journey that elevated them beyond their origins. You... run over teenagers."
"For a NOBLE CAUSE!"
"The isekai boom is getting out of hand," a third deity chimed in. This one sounded tired. "Do you have any idea how many heroes we're dealing with now? We're drowning in protagonists. Every world has fifteen chosen ones stumbling around, and half of them have harems that are causing diplomatic incidents."
"That's not my fault!"
"It literally is," the cold voice said. "You've sent over two thousand individuals in the past eighteen months alone."
"I was trying to build reputation!"
"You were trying to grind stats like this is a video game."
"...Maybe."
Silence.
Then the first deity spoke again. "Your request for ascension is denied. You will continue your duties, but you will show restraint. No more mass isekai events. And perhaps... consider the consequences of your actions."
I left that meeting furious. Humiliated. They'd dismissed me like I was some kind of child.
So I did what any rational person would do.
I doubled down.
If they wanted reputation, I'd give them reputation. I'd send so many heroes that they'd have to acknowledge me. I'd become so famous, so integral to the system, that they couldn't ignore me anymore.
I stopped being selective. Anyone who crossed my path was fair game. Salarymen. Students. Tourists. If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, congratulations—you were going to another world.
The isekai boom became an isekai explosion.
And with every hit, with every soul I sent tumbling into another dimension, something inside me grew heavier.
Darker.
I didn't notice at first. I was too focused on my goal, too wrapped up in my plans for revenge. But the weight was there, accumulating like rust, like blood on chrome.
Negative karma.
One third of all the negative karma in existence, to be exact.
And the deities noticed.
Present Day: The Festival
The truck hit me square in the chest.
There was a moment—just a split second—where I saw the driver's face. Wide-eyed. Panicked. He hadn't meant to. The brakes had failed, the barrier had been down, and he was just as much a victim of circumstance as I was.
Oh, I thought distantly as my body crumpled. Oh, that's ironic.
[System Integration Complete]
[Welcome, Hitomi]
[Current Karma: -9999999999999999999999999]
[Dimensional Transfer: Initiated]
And then I was falling.
Not physically—my body was already broken on the pavement, takoyaki scattered across the asphalt. But I was falling, my consciousness ripping away from the mortal world, dragged down by the weight of a thousand bad decisions.
I tried to scream. Tried to curse the deities who'd set this up, because I knew this was their doing. This was too perfect. Too poetic.
But I couldn't make a sound.
I just fell.
And fell.
And fell.
Until—
Thud.
I hit something solid. Cobblestones, maybe? My vision swam, colors bleeding together into a nauseating blur. Voices shouted around me—confused, alarmed, speaking a language I somehow understood despite never hearing it before.
Slowly, painfully, I pushed myself up.
I was in a town square. Medieval architecture. Market stalls. People in fantasy RPG clothes staring at me like I'd dropped out of the sky.
Which, technically, I had.
I looked down at myself. White kimono, slightly torn. My body felt wrong—weak, fragile, human. And clutched in my hand, somehow miraculously intact, was the last piece of my takoyaki.
[Welcome to the World of Eraldia]
[Quest Available: Survive Your First Day]
[Penalty for Failure: Death]
[Reward: You get to live, obviously]
I stared at the floating text only I could see.
Then I started laughing.
It wasn't happy laughter. It was the kind of laughter that came from someone who'd just realized exactly how screwed they were. Manic. Slightly unhinged.
"Oh," I wheezed, clutching my sides. "Oh, you bastards. You absolute BASTARDS."
The crowd backed away nervously.
[System: Language noted! Very creative. -1 Karma]
[Current Karma: -10000000000000000000000000]
I laughed harder.
This was fine. Everything was fine. I'd been isekai'd by a truck, stripped of my powers, and dumped in a fantasy world with negative karma so astronomical it probably violated several laws of physics.
But I'd get through this.
I'd survive.
And then I'd find a way back to those smug deities and make them regret everything.
Right after I finished this takoyaki.
Priorities.