Isekai TestEverybody is getting isekai'd these days. Just get hit by a truck or something and BAM, you're in another world. Usually fantasy but the genre was expanding after being diluted for so many years. It seems fun! Will you try to get isekai'd?
[[Yes, Isekai Me]] or [[No, Don't Isekai Me]] There all kinds of ways to get isekai'd these days. Which do you chose?
[[Truck]]
[[Mobile Game]]
[[Dream]]Understandable, not everyone is ready to go on an adventure. You'd probably get more dopamine staring at your phone for another five hours while being barraged with ads and algorithmically compiled hate.
[[Where It All Began]] The classic isekai move, get hit by a truck. You scouted all around the city to find one and, finally, heard a delivery truck coming down the road! Now's your chance! Just wait for the right moment and-
[[Fling yourself forward]]
[[Hold on a second...]]You browsed the app store looking for an isekai-ing game. The government had just cracked down on games that isekai'd people, due to 12% of the workforce vanishing overnight and the impact it had on the economy. No luck on finding any games that would for sure isekai you...
[[Sign up for Mobile Game Testers]]
[[Truck]]
[[Dream]] You flung yourself into bed and closed your eyes. If you thought hard enough about it, you could wake up in another world, right? And not just a dream of one, but for real! Maybe your soul would end up there while your body remained on Earth! Anything was possible!
Except you couldn't fall asleep. What do you do?
[[Take Sleep Meds]]
[[Think of your crush]]
[[Think of your fictional crush]]You signed up for every mobile game you could find that was in open beta. None of them isekai'd you just yet but there was still a chance. Perhaps to increase your odds you could...
[[Microtranscation your way to isekai-dom!]]
[[Play the three free minutes of gameplay per day.]]You sunk tens of thousands of dollars into every game. You got every waifu. Aquired every upgrade. Played for hours and hours. Who cares what the price is if you get to live in a fantasy world!!!!!!
[[What All Your Money Got You]]Because you played the games in such a way that the companies didn't make any money off you, you were not deemed worthwhile enough to isekai.
[[Where It All Began]] You made the companies so much money their bottom lines couldn't afford you getting sent to another world.
[[Where It All Began]]You didn't have a perscription.
[[Dream]]You thought of the one you loved. Pictured them as hard as you could. Drew every detail in your mind. Maybe they'd end up isekai-d with you! You thought and you thought and you thought and you drifted off to sleep...
[[You Wake Up]]You thought of the fictional character that most captured your heart. The one that, when you closed your eyes at night, they appeared beside you. They'd look deep into your eyes and kiss you. That always put you right to sleep.
[[You fall asleep]]Your eyes slowly open. Is that the chirping of a woodland bird you hear? The mystical rushing of a sparkling creek?
No, it's your phone's ringtime. There's no cell reception in a fantast world...
Your eyes snapped open and grabbed the phone. IT'S YOUR CRUSH!
[[You Answer]]
[[Too Scared To Talk]]Before you can get a word out their voice screams through the phone,
"DID YOU TRY TO ISEKAI US TOGETHER?! My mom's visiting this weekend! She's buying ALL MY MEALS! Do you know how much that'll save on my weekly grocery bill?!"
"H-how did you know I was trying to isekai us?" You nervously ask.
"A fairy flew into my window. She was all like 'I have come to take you and your beloved to another world. Will thou follow me?' I told her to get lost! Then she took a poop in my water glass. God dammit."
You want to question her about the whole "beloved" thing but thought better of it. Maybe you can try something else.
[[Dream]]If you're too scared to talk to your crush you aren't ready to be isekai'd.
[[Where It All Began]] A fairy flies into your room and looks down to your sleeping form. She smiles.
"Another soul ready to make the journey to another world!"
Just before she waved her hands to activate the magic isekai spell however, you mumbled out the name of your crush and made kissy lips. The fairy's eyes widened,
"THAT'S MY CRUSH, AND YOU CAN'T HAVE THEM!"
The fairy flew away.
You woke up the next morning, not in another world. Perhaps you should try something else.
[[Mobile Game]]
[[Truck]] At full speed you leap towards the truck. You're moments away from being isekai'd!!!!!!
"I don't think so, pal."
Inches away from the truck a hand yanks you back. It's a cop!!
"Trying to pull the ol' isekai trick, huh? Can't have that. Don't you know 12% of the population's been isekai'd by now? We can't afford to lose that much taxpayer money! Half the force is out trailing trucks these days..."
Crap. Perhaps there was another way...
[[Get Hit by a Motorcycle]]
[[Ask your mom for help]]
[[Mobile Game]]
[[Dream]] Could you guarantee this was an isekai-ing truck or just a regular truck? There was only one way to be sure.
[[Throw someone else in front of it]]
[[Fling yourself forward]] You grab the nearest passerby and fling them in front of the truck.
WAM! The truck hits them at full speed. Your eyes stay focused on the body. You notice a faint outline float out of the body and dissapear! That's it! THAT IS AN ISEKAI TRUCK!
Before the truck driver can realize what they've down and stop, you-
[[Throw yourself forward]]You run through the city. A motorcycle could provide the same force of impact as a truck right?
You scour the city but all the motorcycles were driving at such slow speeds they'd never provide the necessary force to isekai you! You asked one motorcyclist why they were driving so slow. They growled,
"Getting hit by a motorcycle became the second most popular way to get isekai'd! And all bikers are rebels! We don't do what's popular. So to mess with the people we drive as slow as possible!"
Crap. Maybe you could try something else.
[[Mobile Game]]
[[Dream]]
[[Ask your mom for help]]You go to throw yourself in front of the truck but a hand grabs you before you can. It's a cop!
"You think you can isekai yourself after you killed someone in cold blood?"
"N-no, they got isekai'd!" You try to explain but the cop just cuffs you.
"Uh huh, we get that a lot these days. 'Oh, I didn't kill them, they just got isekai'd!' Sure, buddy. Tell it the boys at the station."
The boys at the station did not believe you. Before long you made it in front of a judge who sentenced you to life in prison. Before you were taken away the judge quipped,
"You know, getting sent to prison is kind of like being isekai'd. Heh."
[[Where It All Began]] You went to your mom to ask if she could provide some way to isekai you. She nodded as you explained everything that had happened to you to try and make it happen up until now. She apologeticlaly shook her head, she had no idea how to help but if you could think of something she'd be willing to support you. That was mom, always ready to help...
[[Maybe that was a problem]]Crap, of course! Your life was too good!! You had a healthy and loving dynamic with your mom, of course you couldn't get isekai'd! The only people who got isekai'd had rough home lives, were lacking some kind of character development, or were hot enough to sell mobile game micro-transactions! You could-
[[Intentionally ruin the relationship with your mother.]]
[[Give yourself a fatal flaw that can only be corrected by isekai-ing.]]
[[Become really hot.]]Nothing better than some mommy-issues to give you a deep wound big enough to get isekai'd! You consider telling your mother about your plan but you can't risk it. You need this to be real. You start treating your mother like crap, insulting her at every turn, stealing from her, and signing her up for every email newsletter you can find. Your cold vicious turn breaks your mother's heart and you can never repair the damage.
After years of never talking to you, you realize you isekai'd yourself into a world without a mother. Crap.
[[Where It All Began]] You gave yourself such a deeply fatal flaw that no one wanted to around you. Friends shunned you. Family dropped away. Your job fired you. The government took away your benefits (not because of your fatal flaw, it was just bad timing on your part.) Thus you were left in the gutter, all alone, with no hope of making it out.
You smirked to yourself. Now would be the time. Now you would be isekai'd to another world!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[[It's isekai time, baby!]]You worked as hard as you could to become so conventionally attractive that a major mobile gaming corporation would sponsor you to get isekai'd to sell merch!
However the mobile game market was now totally dominated by AI and the companies just used shitty AI hot people to try and market their games.
No one will hire you.
[[Where It All Began]]You closed your eyes and waited for the isekai to come... But it never did. Instead a social worker found you on the street and offered their help.
[[Turn them down.]]
[[Accept the help.]]You sit in the gutter for the rest of your life, waiting to get isekai'd.
It never happens.
[[Where It All Began]]You accept the social workers help. While many slip through our broken system, due not to the social workers but their lack of funding and red tape, you don't. You manage to repair your life and, along the way, realize that anyone who wants to be isekai'd this badly can't have a very good life.
You work for years in therapy to discover why you had this deep well of discontent within you and slowly filled it. Now you're back to normal life and work as a social worker yourself, helping others just like you.
As you work the local soup kitchen you remember how this all started. You're happy where your life has ended up but you also consider how things could have gone differently.
[[Where It All Began]]