Farmboy Mage Volume 1
Prologue - The End of a Joke Life
Author: Raikiri_Sorcery
***
I was 47 years old when I died.
Forty-seven. That's an age where most people either have a stable job, a family, or at least a dog. I had none of those. I didn't even have a potted plant. Not because I hated living things, but because I once forgot to water a cactus for six months and it died in front of me.
I wish that was a joke. But like everything else in my life, it was just a quiet, pitiful truth.
My name was Paul Gapor. Human. Japanese, technically. But in my world, that kind of detail didn't mean much. Not when orcs ran for mayor, elves starred in pop idol groups, and dragons ran multi-conglomerate banks. It's just... how things were. I was born in a world where so called fantasy creatures weren't hidden or living in shadow realms. They were just there. Co-workers, neighbors, schoolmates. Hell, my childhood doctor was a half-ogre. Nice guy. Terrible handwriting.
And still, despite all the diversity, I ended up like this.
A shut-in. A loser. A useless man who lived in his mother's home for nearly two and a half decades. Forty-seven years old and I had never kissed anyone, never had a job longer than three weeks, and the only time I traveled was to attend a manga convention and even then, I almost passed out from anxiety in the train station.
So yeah.. Not the hero type.
...
(Sigh)
I wasn't always like this, you know..
There was a time when I had dreams. I loved chemistry. Spent nights curled up with textbooks instead of comic books. I even went so far as to earn a Master's degree, thinking that hard work and passion would open doors, but reality wasn't some neat chemical formula. Really, It was just chaos in a bottle.
Every interview ended the same way.
"Thank you for coming. We'll be in touch."
They never were.
Time after time, I'd see the job I wanted handed to someone else. An elf with an ageless face and a resume a hundred years long. A dwarf with a perfect attendance record from a guild older than my family tree. A demon who knew twelve languages and flirted with the recruiter mid-interview.
Me? I was just human. Average. You might even call us disposable.. and eventually... I gave up.
Did I mention humanity is dwindling? Like, I have seen a research on media that Humanity will be coming to an extinction in the coming centuries due to us having lower birth-rates. Harsh, isn't it? It's not fake news, at least, I'm certain it isn't. It's literally shown on television and podcast through graphs and research paper.
How depressing, well, anyways.
Twenty-two years. That's how long I wasted.
I stopped trying. Stopped hoping. I deleted my job board apps and replaced them with gacha games. I stopped talking to friends (what few I had left) and locked myself inside my room. Morning, noon, and night blended together until the only calendar I followed was the one tied to seasonal anime releases.
I was just a skinny loser, stuck in my room like a damn baby.
My parents have divorced during in those twenty-two years. I was supposed to have a sibling, but.. her.. head wasn't developed. Thus, dying in the process. It caused my family great distress and eventually, they divorced. My mom stayed in Japan while my father moved out of the country.
My mother... she never gave up on me.
We lived with her new husband, a Demi-human Rabbit. A bit of a prick, but we don't talk much.
She brought me meals. Paid the bills. Left the TV on for background noise, pretending it was for her. Sometimes she talked to me through the door, even when I didn't reply.
My father? He moved to Australia. Married a Dwarf woman from New York, of all things. I heard she was nice. He tried to reach out, now and then, but I ignored him. What was I supposed to say?
"Hey Dad, I'm still unemployed and living like a ghost in Mom's house. Sorry I turned out this way, haha.."
I didn't have the courage nor do I have anything.
Then, one day, he called again; said he missed me. Said he wanted to see me. He sounded... tired. Not angry. Not even disappointed. Just... sad. To my surprise, Mom didn't stop me. She just nodded.
"You're still his son," she said. "Go."
And so I did.
I packed a bag; my first time doing so in decades and boarded a flight to Australia. For once, I thought... maybe things could change. Maybe, even this late in life, I could start over. But fate is cruel. Even in a world of countless possibilities, humans still find ways to ruin everything.
The plane was hijacked. By humans.
They had covered their faces with ski-masks and one of them even wore a condom to cover his face. They're terrorist, if I wasn't making it obvious enough. Desperate, angry terrorist with guns and a cause I didn't understand.
I was sitting near the front, I was too close to them.
One of them grabbed me. Pressed a barrel to my neck. Yelled something about opening the cockpit or he'd shoot me. I remember the pilot's voice over the intercom. He was surprisingly calm, and he refused the terrorist's request.
I remember the shaking in my legs. The cold sweat dripping down my back and then... something inside me snapped.
I thought, Screw it. If this was how I was going to die, I wanted to at least go out doing something right. It's most likely I elbowed him. I grabbed the gun.
And what you guys might expect, I failed.
I heard the shot before I felt the pain. My chest exploded with heat, oh, that stinging sensation. Then another shot, and another. The world spun. People screamed. My knees hit the floor, afterwards, my face followed. There was blood, so much blood.
"Damn it... Is this how my life is going to end?"
That's all I could think as my vision blurred.
Not regret. Not anger. Just shame. Shame that I died like a side character in a tragedy no one would read. A meaningless life & a pitiful death.
But...
Something strange happened. When I felt my senses dying out, my hearing, my vision, and my sense of touch... I suddenly heard crying. Not from me, and definitely not from a crowd.
A baby..? Then I realized something instantly: No, wait. I was the one crying.
It was a strange feeling, one moment I felt everything going dim, and suddenly I heard my own voice, loud and clear.
My eyes opened. The world was warm, blurry, loud. Two giant figures hovered over me. A woman with golden hair and powerful eyes. A man with a calm smile and weathered hands. I had tiny fingers, I couldn't speak, and I couldn't move properly.. and yet, in my mind, I was still me; Paul Gapor.
[End]