I've always been the type of person who couldn't bend as easily as others.
When I believed something was right, I stuck with it.
In a good light, people called it pride or resolve. But to most people, I think I was just a pain in the ass.
When I was in kindergarten, some older kids tried to hog the playground equipment, so I fought them alone to protect our turn.
We'd been playing there first, and they showed up later and tried to chase us off.
I struggled with everything I had and made one of the older boys cry.
In the end, one of the daycare ladies stepped in and broke up the fight.
And naturally, I got scolded.
Why would I be the one getting in trouble when I did the right thing?
Back then, I just couldn't understand it.
I get it now — by getting into that fight, the other kids who'd been playing with me got dragged in too and ended up hurt.
Some of them even cried.
The ones in the wrong were the older kids who showed up late and tried to take the equipment. That much was certain.
But was fighting them the right thing to do?
That, I still don't have an answer for.
What I think I vaguely grasped at that moment was this: just because something is right doesn't mean it's absolutely, unquestionably right.
Back then, though, I could only understand it vaguely.
Even so, I kept brandishing my sense of right whenever I got the chance.
Literally brandishing my fists.
I stopped bullying in elementary school.
I fought back against extortion in middle school.
I could list small examples all day and never run out.
It's not like I'd trained in martial arts or anything.
But despite my somewhat short stature — you'd never guess it from looking at me — I never lost.
Maybe I had some natural talent for it, or maybe I was just good at moving my body the way I imagined.
I probably would've lost against someone with real martial arts training, but against amateurs, I was unbeatable.
That was the problem.
By the time I graduated middle school, I was an outcast.
I even earned the unflattering nickname "Little Demon."
I don't think I ever did anything wrong.
But in the end, I don't think what I did was right either.
Well, maybe from the moment I relied on my fists for solutions in a country like Japan governed by law, being "right" had nothing to do with it.
Right in the thick of adolescence, no less.
I was moping around, wondering what "right" even meant.
I'd already become isolated back home, so for high school, I applied to one a little farther away.
There, I tried to stay out of sight as much as possible.
Luckily, the high school I ended up at — Heishin High — had a gentle school culture, and there was no serious bullying or anything like that.
People would talk trash about Negishi-san behind his back, calling him a "real-life horror character" and whatnot, but nothing ever harmed him directly.
If anything, the bigger issue might have been how certain girls snidely badmouthed
But since Wakaba-san herself didn't seem to care about it, I was able to hold my tongue.
I made a couple of people I could call friends, and those two invited me into the world of online gaming.
I hadn't really played games before, but playing together with friends was fun, and I got hooked quickly.
What I played in that game was frontline attacking and blacksmithing.
I forged the weapons we used, then fought with the weapons I'd made.
I crafted all sorts of different weapons and swapped my equipment around constantly.
Shun and Tomo, who played with me, told me to just pick one weapon type and stick with it, but using different weapons had its own discoveries and its own fun.
But behind all the fun, there was, of course, stuff I couldn't forgive.
Rude players.
Message boards that made you feel sick just reading them.
Evil like that existed.
Unlike in middle school, this was something I couldn't solve with my fists.
I know.
I know that by high school, the world isn't full of right answers.
But even so, anger welled up inside me.
I took that anger out on the game.
That's how I tried to convince myself.
And yet, something like a lump still lingered at the bottom of my heart.
I really am stubborn to a fault.
That was my high school life — spent without swinging my fists even once.
If I'd known it would end so abruptly, would anything have changed?
I don't know.
Either way, I died.
I'm not sure what killed me, but I know for certain that I died.
Because I've been reborn.
Honestly, I couldn't accept it at first.
I'd learned about reincarnation from a light novel Tomo lent me.
In the back of my mind, I understood — however unreal it felt — that what I'd experienced was that very thing.
But understanding it and accepting it are two entirely different matters.
And especially when it's clearly a reincarnation into a world that is obviously not Earth — Another World.
From what I could tell, I'd been reborn into what you'd call a fantasy world.
The kind with
I wasn't sure about the civilization level, but it was probably nothing too advanced.
And apparently, magic existed too.
I'd witnessed it being used firsthand, and unless it was some kind of trick, it was probably the real deal.
For the first few days after being born, I spent my time vaguely mulling all of this over.
To be blunt, I had to process the situation like it was happening to someone else, or I wouldn't have coped.
In other words — escapism.
But sooner or later, I had no choice but to face reality.
What I could see around me was a modest house.
A small village, with simply built homes.
Villagers coming and going.
Well — not humans, technically.
Compared to humans, shorter bodies.
Green skin.
Pointed ears.
Sharp fangs.
No matter how you looked at it, they were Goblins straight out of a game.
This was a Goblin village.
And I had been born in that Goblin village.
I lowered my gaze and saw green skin.
Ah. Yeah.
I'm a Goblin too.