Ichiro's First Meeting

After everyone had arrived, the group began talking about how their days had gone. Inori shared her anger about the news broadcast, Takamasa shared about a new printing deal the company just received, and Asuka sat as quiet as ever. After everyone began to settle down and casually chat with each other, Yuki stood and moved to a podium near the front.

"Well", Yuki started. "Since this is Ichiro's first official meeting, I think we should try to make him as comfortable as possible so that he knows he's not alone in what he went through."

"Of course!" Takamasa spoke up. "I could tell him about the world I was in."

As Takamasa began to stand up, Shingo spoke, not whispered, but spoke, "No." Everyone turned to look at him as he continued with, "From what I gathered about his world, I think he should hear about mine. I wasn't in mine as long as him, but I was in mine the longest out of anyone else here and, forgive me for saying, I feel like mine was one of the worse situations to be in."

The group fell silent. Takamasa sat back down slowly and let out a slight grunt as he did. They all seemed to understand what he meant. He didn't want to disparage anyone else nor what they went through, but of the group, only one seemed to have been in a worse isekai and she sat unmoving and silent. Ichiro noticed the mood in the room changed drastically as Shingo stood slowly and casually walked to the front of the room where the podium was.

"Hello, I'm Shingo" he said very monotonously.

"You don't have to talk about your world right now if you don't want to" Yuki said, trying to quell any pain that was coming.

"I'm already at the podium." Shingo said. "It's okay, how can he trust us when he doesn't know anything about us. Also, this is his first meeting. We'll all eventually open up to him. There's no point in delaying it."

Yuki let out a worried sigh. "If you insist."

"I'll start again." Shingo said. "Good evening everyone. As you know, I'm Shingo and I was trapped in my isekai for a little more than ten years."

Ichiro, began to focus on what Shingo was saying and tried to imagine the world he described.

"Nine of those years I spent in complete and total darkness." Shingo continued. "The world was much like this one, but at the same time it was very different. Humans had been forced to live underground because by the time I arrived there, the demon lord of that world had taken over the surface, the oceans, and the skies. The races of that world had built these massive underground tunnels similar to our subway tunnels."

"Why was there no light?" Ichiro asked.

Everyone was taken aback that he would ask a question and Inori said "We don't really ask questions, even if we have some."

"Oh? Sorry. Why don't you ask questions?" Ichiro puzzled.

Inori responded, "We might ask about something the person doesn't want to talk about or even want to remember. Not everyone had a good time in their worlds."

"I understand, I'm sorry I asked." Ichiro apologized.

Then, Shingo chimed back in. "No, it's okay. If you...If any of you have any questions, I think this is the right place to ask them. I trust all of you to know about my world and I hope you feel the same." Shingo's eyes glanced over to Asuka as she stared back at him.

Asuka smiled slightly showing her approval of Shingo's sentiments. The rest of the group glanced back and forth at each other as if they were wondering why they even made the rule about no questions.

"You see, there was no light because everything that could be burned either already had, or couldn't be burned due to another circumstance. Most people didn't want to burn anything because it was hard to get air in the tunnels so any time something burned, there was a chance everyone in the area would suffocate. The other reason was that any smoke that left the tunnels would alert the demon lord's forces in the above ground and they would come to hunt us."

"How did you move around not being able to see anything?" Konomi asked.

Takamasa glared over at her.

"What?" Konomi said almost indignantly. "Shingo said it was okay to ask."

"And I really did mean it." Shingo continued. "It took a lot of getting used to, but eventually I was attacked by a horde of rats. I was basically swinging blind while they bit chunks out of me but I managed to get a little experience from smashing them. I was lucky enough to have Dark Sight as one of my skill options on leveling up."

"Oh, so you could level up too!" Takamasa said excitedly.

"Dark sight changed how I could see and I was able to start actually navigating the tunnels after I bandaged myself up." Shingo continued. "As you'd expect, the underground didn't have much food either. Most people learned to eat the slime and mold that grew on the walls. Some people would eat the rats. That took a lot of getting used to."

"How did you cook the rats?" Yuki asked, worried that she already knew the answer.

"We didn't." Shingo said confirming Yuki's intuition. "My isekai took so long because I could never venture out of the tunnels so the only thing I could fight were the different creatures that would venture into the depths of that world. "

Everything the group had thought about his world wasn't nearly as bad as the reality Singo had endured. Each question they asked came with an even more horrible answer and a deeper, darker mood set upon the group having now known about what Shingo had to endure.

"As you'd expect," Shingo continued. "Some of the people of the tunnels had gone almost feral from the constant starvation and darkness they lived in. Some of the things I saw almost made me lose my motivation to go on. Some had turned to cannibalism or murder or worse. It made me wonder if those people were worth saving. Often, I would have to defend myself against the people of that world because they had lost who they were. I remember cursing the fact that they didn't give experience because often, they were more trouble to deal with than the monsters."

Shingo paused momentarily, considering what he thought about that world before continuing with, "I know it makes me sound horrible, but I remember thinking, quite often, that it would be wonderful if killing the people did give experience and that it would have made my job there easier."

Some in the group let out small gasps but Ichiro sat, unflinching, listening to Shingo's every word.

"From my time in the underground," Shingo spoke, moving ever closer to the end of his talk. "I developed something like magic. It was more like activating skills than anything. I could almost do anything with shadows and darkness. I could jump into one shadow or darkness and pop out of any other. I could move the darkness and shape it. I could use it to attack the creatures around me. I made the darkness my weapon because that's all I had."

"What was the demon lord like?" Asuka spoke up for the first time.

Everyone, except Ichiro, looked to the girl and back to the podium before Shingo answered. "It's hard to explain. It was a giant looming creature that could change its form. The above world didn't have the same darkness situation that there was underground. There wasn't even a night time, which I found out rather quickly."

"No night?" Takamasa uttered out loud.

"Yea, there were two suns in the sky." Shingo explained. "It made using my powers above ground hard but not impossible. It's in fighting the demon lord's forces that I found the two suns give each of the forces I fought two shadows for me to use. It wasn't easy to fight at first. The hardest thing I fought in the underground were the other people. So, fighting these new monsters, it was like I was an entirely new world."

Takamasa then asked, "What was the above ground like? Most of us arrived before the big problem really took root in our worlds but you arrived after the surface was lost."

After a pause and some consideration, Shingo answered, "It was a wasteland. You could tell that great cities once stood but all that were left were ruins and rubble and vast deserts of destruction. The demon lord had built it's own city on a continent across a vast ocean. It stretched for further than the eye could see and it was made out of solid obsidian. The atrocities..." Shingo choked on his words for a moment before continuing in his customary whisper. "The horrors I saw happening in that city still haunt my dreams."

Shingo sniffled and looked to Ichiro before returning to a normal speaking tone and, through tears, said, "I've been back in this world for nine months now. Truthfully, I can vaguely remember that before I went to my isekai, I didn't quite believe the stories about people like us. A few things I learned from all of my time there and my time back here are that we need to stick together and I would trust anyone here with my life, because not all of us that go to another world get to come back. Further, even if we do come back, we may be so changed that the people we knew before may not recognize us or want to associate with us anymore."

Yuki began to tear up slightly before Shingo continued. "I hope you can put that same kind of trust in me, but I understand if you can't yet. Know that the powers we all had from before are gone now and we're just normal people, but don't be afraid to rely on us or work together with us in times of need. Yuki taught me that with this group. We're stronger together."

As he finished speaking, Asuka jumped up from her chair, ran to him and hugged him across his stomach considering she was much shorter than him. Then, one by one, each of the members stood, moved to Shingo, and joined in the group hug. Ichiro leaned forward slightly in his chair and placed his hands on his face.