The last thing I saw before I died was a truck.
Not even an interesting truck. Just a standard delivery vehicle, white and boxy, with some cheerful logo I didn't have time to read. It ran a red light at the intersection near Shibuya Station, and I—exhausted from another soul-crushing day at the office, too tired to properly check both ways—stepped off the curb at exactly the wrong moment.
Truck-kun.
That was literally my last coherent thought before impact.
I'm about to get Truck-kun'd.
I'd spent YEARS—years—mocking this exact scenario. Laughing at the absurdity of it. Making fun of every generic isekai light novel where some poor bastard gets obliterated by a delivery vehicle and wakes up in a fantasy world. I'd written snarky comments on forums. I'd rolled my eyes at the trope so hard I probably gave myself migraines. I'd literally told my coworker Yuki just THREE DAYS AGO that "anyone who actually gets hit by a truck and isekai'd deserves it for not paying attention."
And then the universe said, "Bet."
There was a screech of brakes. A moment of crystalline clarity where I thought, Oh. This is how it ends. This is how I become a STATISTIC. A MEME. A cautionary tale about looking both ways.
Then impact.
The pain was bright and sharp and somehow disappointing in its brevity, like the universe couldn't even be bothered to make my death memorable. Just—wham—and done. No dramatic slow-motion. No life flashing before my eyes. No profound final thoughts about the meaning of existence.
Just: Truck. Face. Death.
Peak comedy.
Then nothing.
The void was... boring.
Deeply, profoundly, insultingly boring.
I don't know how long I drifted in that darkness. Time felt meaningless. There was no pain, no sensation, no thought beyond a vague awareness of existing without actually being anywhere. It was like being stuck in the loading screen of reality, waiting for something to happen, except the loading screen was just an empty black void and there wasn't even elevator music to pass the time.
Is this it? I remember thinking at some point. Is this what comes after? Just... nothing? Forever?
What a ripoff.
I'd been an atheist in life—mostly out of spite and a general distrust of organized anything—but I'd always secretly hoped that if there WAS an afterlife, it would at least be interesting. Reincarnation, maybe. Or some kind of cosmic waiting room where you could file complaints about your previous life with a bored angel receptionist.
But no.
Just void.
Just darkness.
Just the universe's way of saying, "You got hit by a truck like an idiot, and now you get to spend eternity contemplating your poor life choices."
Except then, suddenly, something did happen.
Sensation returned in a rush—too much, too fast, overwhelming. I gasped and choked on air that tasted wrong, too clean, too sweet, like someone had pumped it full of fantasy-world purity or whatever the hell this was. My lungs burned. My body felt heavy and foreign, like I was wearing someone else's skin.
Which, as it turned out, I absolutely was.
Oh no.
Oh no, oh no, oh NO—
I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. My head spun. My stomach lurched. I collapsed back onto something ridiculously soft—a bed?—and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will away the nausea.
What the actual hell?
Did I... did I actually...?
Did TRUCK-KUN actually WORK?!
The thought was so absurd, so cosmically ridiculous, that I started laughing before I even opened my eyes. Just a little giggle at first, breathless and slightly hysterical, but it grew and grew until I was shaking with it, my whole body convulsing with the sheer insanity of what was happening.
I got isekai'd.
I ACTUALLY got isekai'd.
By a TRUCK.
A LITERAL DELIVERY TRUCK.
The most GENERIC, CLICHÉ, OVERUSED plot device in the entire history of Japanese light novels, and it happened to ME!
The irony was exquisite. The cosmic joke was perfect. I'd spent so much time mocking this exact scenario—laughing at protagonists who were stupid enough to get hit by trucks, rolling my eyes at the lazy writing, making snarky comments about how "Truck-kun is the hardest-working entity in the isekai industry"—and then the universe looked at me and said, "You know what? Fuck this girl in particular."
And you know what the BEST part was?
I hadn't even been doing anything heroic when it happened!
I wasn't saving a child from traffic! I wasn't pushing someone out of the way in a noble sacrifice! I wasn't even distracted by something important!
No, I was just TIRED. Exhausted from another meaningless day at a job I hated, trudging home to an apartment I could barely afford, probably thinking about what convenience store dinner I was going to eat while watching anime and complaining about isekai tropes.
And then—WHAM—Truck-kun said, "Your time has come, you hypocritical bitch."
Chef's kiss. Truly. The universe's sense of humor was impeccable.
I finally managed to crack one eye open, still giggling like a maniac.
Slowly, carefully, I looked around.
I was staring at a ceiling. Not my ceiling—not the water-stained, cracked plaster of my tiny Tokyo apartment where I'd spent countless nights staring at the same brown spot and contemplating my life choices while watching trashy isekai anime and making fun of them.
This ceiling was high and vaulted, painted with an elaborate fresco of stars and moons and strange constellations I didn't recognize. Dark wood beams crisscrossed the space. A chandelier hung overhead, dripping with black crystals that caught the light and threw shadows across the walls.
Oh my god.
Oh my GOD.
It's REAL.
I'm in a FANTASY WORLD.
TRUCK-KUN ACTUALLY WORKED.
I sat bolt upright, nausea forgotten, and stared around the room with growing, hysterical disbelief mixed with the most deranged glee I'd ever felt in my life—or lives, apparently, since I was apparently collecting them now like Pokemon cards.
The room was huge. Obscenely huge. My entire apartment could have fit in here three times over with room left for a convenience store. The walls were covered in dark purple wallpaper with silver patterns that seemed to shift when I wasn't looking directly at them—which was either magic or I was having a stroke, and honestly both options were equally entertaining at this point. Heavy curtains blocked most of the windows, but thin streams of sunlight leaked through, illuminating dust motes that danced in the air like tiny fairies.
Please be tiny fairies. Please let this world have tiny fairies I can torment.
The furniture was all dark wood and gothic elegance—a massive wardrobe carved with ravens (RAVENS!), a vanity table with an ornate mirror that probably cost more than my entire year's salary back in Tokyo, bookshelves stuffed with leather-bound volumes that screamed "I'm in a fantasy world now and everything is EXTRA!"
And the bed I was lying in? A four-poster monstrosity draped in black silk, large enough to sleep five people comfortably, or one person very dramatically while contemplating their villainous schemes.
This is not a hospital.
This is not Tokyo.
This is...
This is exactly what every trashy isekai light novel promised.
And I MOCKED them.
I mocked them SO HARD.
Another laugh bubbled up, louder this time, edged with something that was definitely hysteria and definitely delight and definitely the sound of someone's sanity taking a vacation.
"Oh my god," I said aloud, and my voice came out wrong—higher, younger, unfamiliar. "Oh my GOD. I'm that person now. I'm the IDIOT who got hit by a truck. I'm the PROTAGONIST of a bad isekai story. I'm—"
I looked down at myself.
Wrong hands. Too small, too delicate, with long fingers and pale skin that had clearly never seen a day of manual labor or a moment of vitamin D deficiency or the horror of Tokyo's winter dryness. I was wearing a nightgown—actual silk, by the feel of it—that probably cost more than my monthly rent used to.
The laugh that escaped me this time was almost a cackle.
Oh no.
Oh no, oh no, oh no—
This is too good.
This is TOO GOOD.
I stumbled out of bed, my legs shaky and uncooperative like a newborn deer, except newborn deer probably didn't have this much chaotic energy and existential glee coursing through their veins. I made my way to the vanity mirror, half-walking, half-staggering, my heart pounding with something that might have been terror or might have been the most deranged excitement I'd ever felt.
Please be a cute anime girl. Please tell me Truck-kun at least gave me the full isekai package deal.
My reflection swam into focus.
That wasn't my face.
The girl staring back at me was young—maybe sixteen or seventeen—and devastatingly beautiful in a way that seemed almost offensive. Like someone had taken "generically pretty anime girl" and cranked every slider to maximum and then added a "make her look vaguely threatening" filter on top. Pale skin that practically glowed. Sharp cheekbones that could cut glass. A delicate nose. Lips that were naturally the perfect shade of rose.
And her eyes—my eyes—were the color of amethyst, bright and unsettling and wrong in the best possible way, with a predatory quality that made me want to cackle.
Long black hair fell past my shoulders in waves that had clearly never experienced the horror of Tokyo humidity or the tragedy of drugstore shampoo.
Oh.
Oh, this is...
I leaned closer to the mirror, my hands gripping the edge of the vanity, and stared at the reflection that stared back with growing, manic recognition.
I knew this face.
Oh no.
Oh NO.
Oh this is PERFECT.
I knew this face because I'd seen it hundreds of times before. In a game. In The Radiant Princess and Her Seven Suitors, the otome game I'd been obsessed with for the past six months, the game I'd rage-quit at least forty times because I kept getting the bad endings, the game I'd been playing on my phone during my lunch breaks while eating convenience store onigiri and complaining about my life.
This was Isabel Nyx Raven.
The villainess.
The character who died in every single route.
The most hated woman in the entire game.