# Chapter 1 — Wrong World, Wrong Tree
Hey. Name's Allan. And before I get into how I ended up hanging upside down from a tree in another world, let me just say this — I never bought into any of that isekai nonsense.
You know the type. Guys who spend their entire day reading web novels and watching anime, fantasizing about getting hit by a truck and waking up as the chosen hero of some magical kingdom. My best friend Kevin was exactly that kind of guy. Dead serious about it too. He had a whole plan — what class he'd pick, what skills he'd grind, how many women would inevitably fall for him. A full Harem. Mapped out. In a spreadsheet.
Touch some grass, Kevin.
That's what I always thought. That's what I always said.
Right up until the moment I opened my eyes and found myself stuck in a tree, head pointing at the ground, blood rushing to my brain while a group of sword-carrying strangers stood below me and laughed.
But let's back up. You deserve the full picture.
---
It started on a rainy afternoon — pretty standard for our town. I headed over to Kevin's place to drag him out of the house, because if I didn't, the guy would genuinely rot in his room until he fossilized. I knocked. No answer. Pushed the door open.
He was gooning.
I won't elaborate. You know what I mean.
"Bro," I said.
"Watch this," he said, not even flinching.
"Have some shame, man. At least close a tab."
After I successfully killed the mood, we actually sat down and talked. And of course — *of course* — Kevin steered the conversation straight to isekai. New video he'd just found. New theory about magic systems. New additions to the Harem roster. I let him go for about ten minutes before I cut him off.
"Kevin. We're going hiking."
"What?"
"Grass. You need to touch it."
He complained the whole way to the trailhead.
---
Here's where things went sideways.
We were crossing a street near the park when a truck — out of absolutely nowhere — clipped Kevin and sent him skidding across the pavement. People screamed. Someone called an ambulance. I dropped to my knees beside him, heart hammering, and he looked up at me with this expression like he was already making peace with the universe.
"Allan," he wheezed.
"I'm here, man. Stay with me."
"Delete my computer history."
"Kevin—"
"*Please.*"
The ambulance took him before I could respond. I rode with his family to the hospital, sick with guilt the entire way, running through everything I could have done differently. The doctor came out eventually and said it wasn't serious — no major injuries, just shock and bruising. Kevin would be fine.
And when Kevin finally opened his eyes and saw us all crowded around his bed, his first words were:
"Oh thank God. I didn't get reincarnated."
His mother burst into tears. I stared at the ceiling and questioned every choice I'd ever made.
I slipped out quietly once I was sure he was stable. The guilt had faded. Kevin was fine. Everything was fine.
That's when the MRI machine tried to kill me.
---
I was still in the hospital hallway — backpack on, full of hiking gear I never got to use — when something started humming. Then rattling. Then *pulling.* I turned around just in time to see the MRI machine at the end of the corridor light up like it was possessed, and before I could take a single step, it yanked me backward like I was made of metal.
Which, in hindsight, I was. Backpack full of gear. Rookie mistake.
The staff scrambled. Someone grabbed my arm. Someone else was shouting something in Japanese — I don't know why there was a Japanese man in the hallway, but there was, and he was very concerned, and he was also unfortunately grabbing parts of me that were not helpful. The magnetic field was doing something awful to my lower back. My vision was going white at the edges. I couldn't feel my legs.
And then I couldn't feel anything.
---
There was a black void.
Then a strange, faint tingling — like pins and needles but softer, almost pleasant, spreading from my fingertips inward. The kind of feeling you can't quite describe except to say that it felt like *something happening.*
Then light. Air. The scratch of bark against my face.
I was in a tree. Upside down. In a forest that was very clearly not anywhere near the hospital.
Below me, a group of people in medieval-looking armor were pointing up at me and absolutely losing it. Full-on cackling. Swords on their backs, leather straps across their chests, boots caked in mud — and every single one of them was laughing at me.
I opened my mouth.
They said something back. I understood none of it.
I waited for the automatic translation that every isekai protagonist gets. The magical linguistic blessing. The convenient gift from whatever deity handles interdimensional travel.
Nothing.
One of them said something that sounded like: *"shi lakls now even lan dbowbe kjwosbsma."*
I blinked.
They laughed harder.
After about twenty minutes of this, they simply *left.* Didn't help me down. Didn't ask if I was okay. Just walked off into the trees, still chuckling, like I was the funniest thing they'd seen all week.
Basic courtesy. Truly a lost art across all worlds.
---
Getting down from that tree took longer than I'd like to admit. By the time my feet hit the ground, all the blood that had pooled in my skull had turned my head into a snow globe. I stood there for a full minute just waiting for the world to stop tilting.
When it finally did, I spotted something in the distance — rooftops. Smoke rising from chimneys. Signs of life.
I walked toward it.
And honestly? Once I got there, I kind of forgot to be panicked for a second.
The village was stunning in the way that only things you've seen in movies but never believed could be real are stunning. Stone and timber buildings packed together along dirt roads. Stables with actual horses. A blacksmith hammering at something with sparks flying. Multiple taverns, which felt both very medieval and very promising. People in roughspun clothes moving between market stalls, and every third person with a sword strapped somewhere on their body like it was just a normal accessory — a bag, a scarf, a sword.
And then I saw her.
A woman in a chest plate and form-fitting gear, dual blades on her hips, metal greaves catching the light as she moved through the crowd like she owned every inch of it.
I stood there for a second.
Okay, I thought. *Okay.* Kevin's Harem thing. I'm starting to get it.
I kept walking. Kept observing. I still couldn't understand a single word anyone was saying, but I was picking up on the shape of things — the way the village was organized, where the important buildings sat, how people carried themselves based on what they wore. No obvious magic yet. No glowing hands or floating runes. Either this world kept its supernatural elements subtle, or I hadn't found the right part of town yet.
Then I found the orphanage.
---
Here was my plan — and I thought it was a pretty solid one, all things considered. Act confused. Play helpless. Get taken in somewhere safe. Learn the language from the inside.
Back home, I was a fast learner. I'd picked up the basics of two languages just messing around online. I figured four weeks, maybe six, and I'd have enough of this world's tongue to start actually functioning. I was sixteen, my brain was still plastic, and I had literally nothing else to do.
I didn't mention I was sixteen before, did I? Yeah. Sixteen. Dead at sixteen. At least I wasn't a toddler — I was not going to spend my second life in diapers.
The orphanage was run by a nun. Young-ish, with a kind face and patient eyes — the kind of person who apparently developed a sixth sense for "lost and confused" because she took one look at me and immediately started using hand signals. Basic stuff. *Are you hungry? Do you need somewhere to sleep?*
I nodded along. She fed me. She showed me to a bed. And before I went to sleep, she sat across from me and held up a book, pointing to letters one by one, watching my face to see what registered.
I didn't sleep that night. I was too busy going through every book I could find on the shelves.
I couldn't read any of it — yet. But I memorized the shapes of the letters. Mapped the recurring patterns. Started building the architecture of a language in my head the way you assemble furniture without instructions — slowly, with a lot of staring, until something clicks.
---
A month passed. Then two. Then more.
The rhythm of the orphanage became mine — mornings helping with chores, afternoons sneaking in study time, evenings listening to conversations and trying to match sounds to meanings. Slowly, agonizingly, the language started to give itself up.
And as my comprehension grew, so did my understanding of the world.
Magic existed here. Confirmed. But it wasn't like the stories made it out to be — some universal force anyone could tap into with enough willpower and a dramatic speech. It was gated. Bloodlocked. Elves had their own form of it. Royals had theirs. Demons, dwarves, fairies, divine beings — each species accessed power through a framework unique to their lineage, refined over centuries of selective breeding and accumulated inheritance. The nobles didn't just marry for politics. They married to strengthen their bloodlines' magical output. Generations of intentional pairing, all in service of producing more capable heirs.
There was also something separate from magic — a force called *Shrass.* Used by swordsmen, distinct in nature from traditional spellcasting. Beastfolk had their own variant. Elves had one too. Every major species operated within its own energetic system, like parallel technologies that never quite shared the same language.
None of this information was available to common people.
I only found it because of a diary.
Tucked behind a row of children's reading books on the orphanage's highest shelf was a worn leather journal, filled in cramped handwriting, belonging to the knight who had originally built this place. Low rank. Served under low-ranking officials. But apparently those officials talked loosely, and he had sharp ears and a habit of writing things down — things he'd overheard, things he'd pieced together, things he'd sat on for years without knowing what to do with.
He'd built an orphanage. Forgotten a diary. And handed me a roadmap to understanding this world without even meaning to.
I sat with the journal for a long time after I finished it.
*Classical isekai setup,* I thought.
Then, despite everything — the tree, the truck, the MRI machine, the laughing strangers, the dead language, the dead me — I started to laugh too.
Thank God for sloppy knights who leave their notes behind.
---
*End of Chapter 1*