You’re Telling Me This Is a Slice-of-Life?

Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—

The sheer white curtains billowed as the salty sea breeze swept into the room, like an invisible hand brushing over everything in its path.

Against the wall stood a whiteboard, densely covered with photographs and crisscrossing red threads. A cluttered desk sat in front of it, where a black leather-bound ID fluttered in the wind, revealing a photo embossed with a steel stamp and the information beneath it:

Izu University, Medical Faculty, First-Year Student, Sorajima Yuuki.

Click.

A hand pressed down on the student ID, stopping its movement. The boy in the photo—short black hair, crimson eyes—pulled open a drawer and tossed the ID inside. He ruffled his hair before picking up a pen, hastily scribbling on a torn scrap of white paper:

[My eighteenth birthday has passed, and nothing strange has happened. Could it be that I really hit the jackpot and arrived in the world of my dreams? Was that sentence I saw back then just a hallucination from the moment I transmigrated?]

The pen paused. Yuuki turned his head, gazing at the mirror on the rental apartment’s wall. The reflection showed a sharp-featured young man with black hair and red eyes—undeniably handsome.

But there was little excitement in those eyes. After all, he had been looking at this face for nearly a decade. Whatever thrill there was had long since faded.

Ten years ago, he had taken over this body—the sole survivor of a car accident. Good-looking, with some savings, orphaned parents—a classic protagonist template. After his initial shock, he had been ready to embrace his new life with reckless abandon.

Then he found ‘Sorajima Yuuki’s’ diary.

And one particular sentence had made his blood run cold.

Even now, he remembered it vividly. Written in simplified Chinese, scrawled in thick, blood-red letters:

【Survive!!】

[So I spent years waiting—waiting for a kaiju invasion, the apocalypse, a mana resurgence, a system activation, a supernatural horror event, anything.]

Yuuki stroked his chin, his gaze shifting toward the blackboard covered in photos. Male and female faces. Military bases. Eerie buildings. Urban legends. And at the center of it all—

A massive red question mark.

[Did I draw that? I don’t remember.]

He rubbed his temples but couldn’t recall. Giving up, he dragged over a metal bin, set the scribbled paper alight, and then started tossing in the photos and documents from the board.

The weak flames flickered in the sea breeze, casting a warm glow on his face. Yuuki watched as the images curled and blackened—the cold-eyed girl with raven-black hair, the deadpan boy with fish-like eyes—expressions once frozen now appearing almost alive in the fire’s dance.

“No mysterious gas explosions, no Avengers, no Men in Black. There are conflicts and wars in the world, sure, but on the whole, it’s peaceful—almost identical to the Earth of my past life. If there’s anything different—”

His eyes flicked to the nearly incinerated photos, names flashing through his mind.

Grand Blue. Love Is War. Hyouka. The Pet Girl of Sakurasou.

And others he hadn’t been able to track down. But they all had one thing in common:

This was a normal, everyday youth romance world.

School life was the main narrative. The most one could suffer here was emotional distress. No battles requiring brute force.

[And yet, I can’t find that diary anymore. Maybe I really did read too many web novels in my past life and developed paranoia.]

Yuuki’s mouth twitched. That single sentence had haunted him for years, keeping him on edge and making his life miserable.

Waiting for the end of the world was exhausting. Over time, he had begun to slack off, especially in the past two years, focusing more on real life.

[So I took the middle ground—kept preparing, but also enrolled in Izu University.]

At that thought, a grin crept onto his face.

The carefree senior, Azusa-Senpai. The bombshell beauty, Nanaka. At any moment, he could dive into a classic school-life romance.

Living out the best campus days, graduating to become a famous writer, earning stacks of cash, settling down with someone he loved, and making lifelong friends.

It was an ordinary life, but a happy one. A life that, despite mocking the grandeur of “isekai” and “rebirth” tropes, still held its own appeal.

Not like I asked to be here in the first place.

He had been cautious for years, which was already impressive. If it were a typical isekai protagonist, they’d have been infiltrating Shuchiin Academy and turning every girl into a childhood friend by age eight.

The last of the paper turned to ash. Yuuki dumped the remains into the sink, scrubbed the whiteboard clean, pausing only momentarily at the blood-red question mark before wiping it away with a sigh.

[All that suffering for nothing. But on the bright side, at least the skills I picked up can be useful for self-defense. If nothing else, I’d make a great player in the dating scene.]

Tossing the sponge aside, he stretched, his mind already setting up a blueprint for his new life.

Then his gaze fell on the coffee table in front of the single-seat sofa.

An idol magazine lay there.

On the cover was a beautiful girl with waist-length black hair and soft lavender eyes. A pink rabbit hairpin adorned her locks, complementing her near-perfect smile.

Sakurajima Mai. A beloved idol across Japan.

But aside from being a familiar face, Yuuki was far more concerned with something else—

This was the only known supernatural element in this world.

Yet despite years of careful scouting, he had never found anything unusual in Kanagawa Prefecture.

[It’s about time. If there’s still nothing, I can finally let go of this paranoia and just join the diving club, wasting away on oolong tea every day.]

His heartbeat quickened. It felt as if a long-suppressed emotion was about to break free, the shackles of reason barely holding it back.

Hastily, he threw on a jacket, slipped on his shoes at the entrance, and hesitated for a second before turning back. From the hidden compartment in the shoe cabinet, he pulled out several gleaming scalpels.

The mirror-like blades reflected his face. A flood of memories surfaced—

Kendo dojo. The octagonal cage. The gym. The racetrack. The dissection room.

[Never thought I’d be this afraid of dying. Spilled so much sweat and blood preparing for a nonexistent crisis, and all I got was a well-trained body?]

Yuuki sighed, feeling like he was being overly paranoid. Looking back, he wondered—if something had really gone wrong during those dangerous activities, wouldn’t he have died even faster?

“Whatever. At least I can brag about it now.”

He slipped the scalpels into his pockets as if sheathing a warrior’s blade. With a crisp click, he turned the doorknob and stepped forward—

Only for his smile to freeze.

His crimson pupils constricted.

There was no warm afternoon sunlight. No familiar sea breeze.

Even the floor beneath his feet felt soft.

Instead—

A corridor stretched before him.

A corridor that had no place in his twenty-thousand-yen-a-month apartment complex.

Thick gray carpet muffled all sound. The pale green walls exuded an ancient, suffocating atmosphere. Yuuki’s heart, which had been surging with excitement, stopped cold. His neck stiffened as if turned to rotting wood, taking several seconds before he could force it to move.

No familiar staircase. No noisy brats running around.

Only black wall-mounted lamps flickering dimly, lining the seemingly endless hallway.

Am I still dreaming?

That was Yuuki’s first thought as he stood there in a daze. Then, as if someone had just stabbed him in the rear with a knife, he spun around at lightning speed. His hand instinctively shot out, fingers landing on something cold—
A door handle.

…What the—?

He didn’t turn it. His narrowed eyes blinked several times, trying to process what he was seeing. The reflection in his pupils was not the familiar sixty-centimeter-wide apartment door plastered with small advertisements.

Instead, towering before him was a massive oak door, taller than a person and spanning several meters in width.

The door was plain, devoid of any unnecessary patterns, yet it exuded an ancient air, much like the surrounding walls and the carpet beneath his feet. The scent of aged wood seeped into his nose.

His palm remained resting on the handle, utterly still. Then, amidst his growing confusion and unease, he heard a voice—an eerie, unnatural voice.

It carried no discernible gender, no traceable source. It was as if countless men and women, young and old, were speaking at once—some laughing, some weeping, some growling, some sighing. The cacophony of voices was overwhelming, yet each word was chillingly clear.

【Welcome to the ‘Reincarnation Game’.】

【As one of the fortunate few who has risen above the masses, you shall experience the extraordinary and become the extraordinary.】

【Now, open the door.】

Thus, It spoke.