Isekai was just as awful as he remembered. The capital of vulgar where dreams came true for a price. It was also, in the truest meaning of the expression, a melting pot. Isekai was, for lack of a better description, a teenager – uncouth, uneducated, self-assured, egotistical, immature and dead certain it was always right. Just like a teenager, it grew and developed if you turned your eyes away from it for just a moment. He had, for several months. Where perfectly good buildings had been demolished, new ones rose in their stead, and an entire town block had sprouted from a piece of land he knew was unsuitable for farming. As for farming, several new fields greeted them before the carriage reached the outskirts of the town.

  The centre of the town stayed awake in ways no town this size had any right to back on earth, but in Wergaist this probably counted as a large city. Or rather, close to Wergaist these days. The proclamation of a sovereign state still held. Some things were alike, though. A jumble of torches and lamps, both natural and magic, flooded the centre with light and helped revellers to the next place where they could spend their coins. And they were lamps. Glowing walls probably didn’t feel fantasy enough.

  “Gate?” he asked Ai.

  She looked at the streets with a mix of revulsion and joy. “Yeah. Not in the mood for a night out right now.” Which meant she was, but he could sense her longing for the familiar.

  “Gothenburg or Nagoya?”

  “Gothenburg. If only the gate opened at Tokyo or Osaka! Definitely Gothenburg!”

  Ioha didn’t really get the derogatory comments about nightlife in Nagoya. It wasn’t that bad, but more than one acquaintance from Japan just snorted whenever nightlife and Nagoya came up in the same sentence. To be honest, the gates saw Nagoya bloom as a tourist destination, but maybe bad rumours needed time to die. Well, the same held true for his old home as well. Tens of thousands of East Asians visited Gothenburg each year, even if the vast majority who gated through only used the city as a point of departure to head further out in Europe.

  Closer to the narrow seaside mountain range, a square opened up more of necessity than a lack of interest to build on what must be attractive land lots. A gaping hole in the mountain wall led into what at first looked like an enormous cave, but, as Ioha had experienced several times, really was a tunnel. On one side the Isekai most knew, and on the other a small harbour town less visited by tourists for reasons of smell and slippery stairs.

  Almost all of the seafood consumed in Isekai was local, with quite a substantial volume sold further inland. The tunnel cave, with the inner town, also held the four gates. One pair connecting to and from Nagoya and the other feeding Gothenburg.

  “Lockers?”

  “If we’re gating now, sure.”

  Ioha and Ai parted ways, and he headed for his permanent locker. Anyone living on this side rented long-term for a very low cost. Tourists and some transits rented for a daily fee that was almost half of what he paid monthly. It opened when he put his hand to it, and he stripped. Everything went inside after he pulled a flimsy bathrobe out. Almost everything. A bunch of copper coins and a silver one stayed in his hand. Gating wasn’t free. The floor was cooler than he remembered, or maybe he just wasn’t used to walking barefoot, and the entire area suffered from poor lighting. Not that he cared, since the booths for changing clothes weren’t fully covered. The darkness around him, like the entire cave, smelled faintly of ocean, and a slight discomfort pushed him back into the relative light outside the locker area. He found a bench and sat down. Around him, in an unorganised jumble, stalls, small buildings and pedestrian squares teemed with business. Trinkets from Wergaist, snacks and light meals, fortune-tellers and weak-classed mages all competed for outworlder coins. All in all, a perfect place to wait for Ai. She’d take a little longer because she wanted to look good when she returned to her body a month later. A girl thing, Ioha guessed.

  “Ready?”

  Ioha searched for her voice in the bedlam. Behind him. She smiled, a snack in each hand and clad in a bathrobe just as flimsy as his own. It covered everything it should, but still revealed far more than he liked. It wasn’t a matter of him wanting all of her for himself, but she looked vulnerable and exposed. “For me?” he asked and gulped.

  A hand reached out to him in confirmation. “Better than at school,” she said. Well, most everything was better than at school. The food there built their bodies just as designed, but taste wasn’t high on that priority list.

  After the first bite Ioha took a second and a third before even breathing. It wasn’t just better. A tourist gravity well with repeat customers came with the bar set pretty high for the lowest acceptable quality of food. Spicy gravy ran down his chin, but he didn’t care. Ai might be one of the high and mighty, but she got just as greasy. They stood staring at each other while they devoured their food.

  “Ready?” she repeated with a shiny grin on her face. By now, gravy covered most of her chin and cheeks.

  Ioha nodded, pointed at her face, and wiped his own with a sleeve. They’d get a new bathrobe when they returned. They were rentals and included in the locker fee. “Shall we?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  With a nod she took his hand, and they walked through what would have been a combined security zone and immigration control in an airport. Since they were outbound, no one asked any questions. Those would come at their destinations. On the other side, they mixed into the Gothenburg queue. There was another one for the Nagoya outbound gate. Isekai might see numerous tourists, but that number was dwarfed by those transiting between Nagoya and Gothenburg. There were hundreds of people, all in their flimsy bathrobes. Ioha smiled at the first timers. Most of them touched their hands or faces; those in pairs or groups pointed at each other and laughed nervously. Then the unorganised queue thinned, and Ioha looked at Ai’s back when they waited, lined up one by one. She stepped onto the platform, vanished, and her bathrobe fell to the ground. Someone grabbed it with a long rake, and it was his turn. Five steps and a wrenching feeling in his stomach later, he stood butt naked on another platform and was waved aside to a dark booth where an equally flimsy bathrobe waited for him. He put it on and joined the outbound queue to the locker area. What the hell? Ioha squinted to find out what was going on. Something’s wrong. The world around him blurred and made him dizzy. Almost at the lockers, he stumbled on his own feet and fell into the closest row of lockers. Wait a moment. He didn’t fall into it, but rather into an invisible something just by his side. No way! This needed confirmation, but first he pulled his clothes out of the locker and dumped the bathrobe inside. Ai next.

  She waited for him in tight jeans and a blouse he remembered from pub-crawls in the past. This was the petite black-haired Ai he once fell in love with. She stared at him with eyes huge from surprise. “Noticed?”

  Ioha nodded. “My eyesight is junk again. Took a while to remember.”

  “And?”

  “I almost fell into the lockers. Threw a shield to stop the fall.” Yes, he still had his aura. Far less of it than in Wergaist, but it was there, as were pathetically weak versions of his abilities. “How did you find out?” he asked.

  “Best self-healing caster in the school, remember? Of course, I’ll feel any change in aura, no matter how small. No status display, though.”

  Ioha tried to open his. She was right. Still, abilities and aura carried over the gate. Keyed to the soul, or however the essence of him being him was defined. Then he mentally slapped himself. “Duh! We already knew it, didn’t we?”

  “Huh?”

  “The bank exchange magic. You know, deposit money here, get slapped in your face and collect coins in Isekai – magic?”

  “Duh! OK, cool. Duh, I’m an idiot!”

  Ioha chose not to agree. Their night together hung in the balance. “Taxi or bus?”

  She shrugged. “Bus,” she said and walked to the exit with a small leather backpack bouncing where it hung below her hair. It looked like a backpack at least, but in reality it served as a medium-sized handbag. He looked at her high-heeled low boots. Here her stature was an issue. He never cared, but she wanted to look taller.

  “Do I look strange?” She had stood staring at him for a while now.

  “A little. I’m impressed how fast you forget.” Ai gave him a tired smile. “Now I see I liked this you as well. I just didn’t know.” She reached out with her hand. “Shall we?”

  Both showed their passports at immigration, and Ai got a recommendation to renew the one waiting in Nagoya. Behind them first first-timers gating through from Nagoya received their newbie gating kit. Underwear, a simple set of clothes and other necessities someone arriving absolutely naked a continent away would need. They looked forward to a more thorough screening as well, since they had left the only copy of their passports in Nagoya and needed new ones issued. First time gating was not a very pleasant experience, as Ioha remembered himself, and it was a little expensive as well. A three-thousand-Euro soul imprint mandatory from Sweden to Japan and around half a million yen the other way. It had to cover an entire set of pretty much everything you usually carried around with you for your daily life.

  “No jacket?” he asked and followed her. Thanks for thinking of my wallet. He could afford the taxi, but it was money he preferred spending together with her somewhere nice. Wouldn’t she be cold outside? He shrugged out of his coat and took off his second layer, the insulating one.

  “No need.” She turned, one arm already outstretched and ready when he tried to wrap his fleece around her. One arm slipped inside, and then the next. “See?”

  You little! “You’re welcome.”

  She stopped just long enough for him to come up beside her and grabbed his arm. “You know, you’re good-looking in this world as well.”

  With a huge smile spreading on his face, he hugged her closer. I love you! Just when he almost gave up coming to terms with his skinny body here, she just happened to say exactly the right thing. “I know. And charming as well.”

  Both worlds syncing perfectly between Isekai and Gothenburg didn’t sync at all, Ioha thought when the bus dropped them off at the bus terminal by the railway station. This was, no discussion, night in both Isekai and Wergaist. Perhaps even more so in Wergaist. In Gothenburg it was late evening. As they walked in lamplight and dodging trams to the main tourist trap, which also happened to genuinely be where the locals went as well, Ioha slowly accepted how his sense of time had changed during his year and a half on the other side of the gate. When the sun went down, it got dark, even in Isekai. Well, apart from a few central blocks for late revellers and tourists, who on average also were late revellers, night was when it got dark. You stayed up a bit if you had a light, but more often you simply went to bed. With sunrise you woke and rose. He’d all but forgotten the asymmetric day in the modern world, where any ghosts would have to compete for attention with the last order of beer, even during a weekday.

  “Home or a small one?” Ai asked.

  Ioha grinned and leered at her. “Small one, home and a big one he suggested.”

  Her eyebrows rose, and she looked at him from head to toe, the much shorter distance between head and toe. “Small, home and small, you mean?”

  “I’ll give you small,” he said and opened the door to the closest pub.

  “I wish.”