— Hidesuke's POV
It was an honest-to-god mistake.
I wasn't suicidal.
I mean… sure, I was depressed. Severely so. The kind of depression that hollowed you out and dragged your shadow behind your feet like extra weight.
I'd stopped looking forward to things years ago. Food. Sleep. People. Everything tasted the same: bland.
But I didn't want to die. Not really.
I just… wanted something to stop. To shut off the ache for a while. To silence that constant gnawing in my brain that whispered that I was wasting oxygen.
When I took those pills, I wasn't thinking about death. I was thinking about relief. A pause. A break from the colorless loop that was my existence.
I thought… maybe if I drowned my brain deep enough, I'd come back up to the surface with feeling. With something.
But the second I realized I'd pushed too far—when my limbs stopped responding and the water turned too cold too fast—it was already over.
That was the last thing I remembered.
And now… this.
I opened my eyes to somewhere else. Somewhere I couldn't name, couldn't categorize.
My breath stuttered the moment the ceiling above me came into focus.
It stretched too high, too polished—immaculate panels of white that gleamed with a faint, unnatural glow. Like everything had been sterilized by light itself.
My ears took in the sound next. A constant humming. Mechanical. Rhythmic. Clinical.
Then came the smell. Not just the sterile sting of disinfectants, but something sharper. A metallic tang, like a scalpel that had just been rinsed in acid.
There were traces of something floral buried under the chemicals, but it didn't mask the artificial burn crawling up my nose.
Was I in… a hospital?
I blinked slowly, trying to move my head. The pillow under me wasn't cotton or memory foam. It had the texture of something synthetic. Like it had been woven in a lab.
And then I saw her.
She floated past my peripheral view, too graceful and fluid to be human. A woman in a nurse's uniform, but her feet didn't touch the floor. Her arms moved in perfect coordination, but her joints didn't flex. Her smile was fixed. Her eyes glowed.
I stiffened.
That was a robot.
I was looking at a nurse-bot. A humanoid machine in pristine white garb, pushing a tray of metallic instruments with soft chimes following in her wake.
Where the hell was I?
Definitely not heaven. That much was obvious.
Most religions probably frowned on people who offed themselves—even if it wasn't on purpose. Suicide, as belief systems so neatly framed it, was still considered murder. And according to that logic, I was both the culprit and the corpse.
Still, even if judgment had been on the table, I doubted it would've come in the form of sterile walls, blinking machines, and that soft, mechanical hum echoing through the air like a lullaby stretched too thin.
But this wasn't hell either. There were no flames. No tortured screams. No devils jabbing pitchforks into my ribs.
Just silence.
And that humming.
My gaze drifted across the room, scanning what I thought were other patients.
Except… they weren't.
Not exactly.
One of them had horns—massive, spiraled things curling from his temples, blackened at the edges like they'd been dipped in fire.
Another was small, almost childlike. Her skin shimmered faintly, like it had been brushed with frost. Her eyes were pure black. Not dark. Not shadowed. Black. Solid voids with no whites, no pupils. Her silver-white hair floated gently, though there was no wind in the room.
Across from me, a boy with leathery bat wings snored quietly, chest rising and falling in rhythm with the beeping machine beside him.
Next to him, another figure lay strapped down, a long scaly tail twitching against thick metal restraints.
I stared. Just stared.
My brain tried to make sense of it all—to come up with words like cosplay, genetic mutation, hallucination—but none of them stuck.
None of this was normal.
And then one of them looked at me. An androgynous teen with skin like polished stone and a tongue that flicked forked between parted lips. Their expression shifted. Not in greeting, but in warning.
Their mouth curled open, revealing too many teeth.
Not a smile.
A threat.
A reminder that wherever I was now, the rules were different. And I needed to learn them. Fast.
I quickly looked away.
My fingers found the edge of the blanket covering me. Not cloth. It was cool and weightless, humming with faint energy, like it was regulating my body temperature.
I sat up slowly. My limbs didn't feel sore, just foreign. Like I'd borrowed someone else's body temporarily.
A soft hum broke through the fog in my head.
I was still side-glancing at a girl with wing-like bones curving from her shoulders when one of the nurse-bots glided toward my bedside. Her movement was smooth. Like oil over glass.
She stopped just beside me, head tilting slightly. Then, in a voice that sounded unsettlingly human—warm, practiced, gentle—she spoke.
"Scanning patient…"
A beam of pale violet light swept from her right eye, moving from the crown of my head all the way to the soles of my feet.
The warmth of it danced over my skin, not painful but not pleasant either. Like the tingling you get when you stand under a sunlamp too long.
"Patient identification complete."
Her mouth moved again, lips curling upward in what was supposed to be a comforting smile.
"Name: Hidesuke Shinohara. Age: 19. Hero Name: Black Thorn. Hero Tier: F. Faction: Guardian. Power Type: Organic."
She went on. Something about vitals. Authorization for release. Compatibility stats.
But the words crumbled into static as soon as she said the name.
Hidesuke Shinohara.
Black Thorn.
The moment it hit, my brain buckled. That name wasn't just familiar. It was unforgettable because she never shut up about it.
Lily.
My sister.
My brilliant, relentless, too-pure-for-this-world sister.
She'd been obsessed with RPGs. Was always gaming, always streaming. Her room was a literal shrine of keychains, merch, custom consoles, limited edition posters, laminated lore books stacked higher than her desk.
She used to joke that she had more fictional boyfriends than socks.
I never got it. Gaming wasn't my thing. Not when everything in the real world already felt fake enough. But I listened. I always did. Her voice was one of the few things that didn't sound hollow.
She'd tell me about everything. The flashy combos in Kenshin Impact, the assassination puzzles in Killer's Creed, the futuristic gang warfare in Silver Vengeance, and the underground prophecy arcs in Twilight Nexus.
Half the time, I tuned out the plot and just listened to how happy she was.
But then came Arc Zenith.
That one… was different. A futuristic world teeming with heroes, gods, and villains.
Lily didn't just like it. She lived in it.
She'd stay up late streaming, gushing to chat about secret quests and fighting mechanics and design breakdowns.
I'd find her humming the main menu theme in the kitchen. She even memorized the battle cries of her favorite characters and recited them like monologues.
Arc Zenith was her escape, her passion, her joy.
And one day she said something that really stuck: "You know what's crazy, Nate? There's this trash-tier hero no one plays—like, complete NPC energy—but I swear, he's the best character in the entire damn game."
I remembered blinking. "Oh... What's his name again?"
"Hidesuke Shinohara. The Black Thorn."
She grinned so wide that day. Said she'd "adopted" him. That he was her son and soulmate all in one. That everyone slept on him because he wasn't flashy or meta, but "He had heart. And he never gave up. Not even when the game spat on him."
She showed me once. I remember the screen. A boy with long black hair and a tattered uniform. Slouched posture. Black vines or thorns coiled around his arms like living tattoos.
His in-game lore was short: abusive parents, early power awakening, drafted into the Guardian faction before he even knew what heroism was.
One line always stuck with me.
"If I can bear the pain, someone else won't have to."
That was his punchline.
Lily used to repeat it constantly like it was gospel. Sometimes she'd say it with a smile. Sometimes with tears in her voice.
She made his voice her phone alarm. Made a custom wallpaper of his silhouette. Once she even half-joked, "If Hidesuke were real, I'd never need a boyfriend again."
And now… here I was.
Lying in a hospital bed, in a world I didn't recognize, in a body that wasn't mine—
—and being called his name.
Black Thorn.
Hero Rank: F.
Faction: Guardian.
It hit like a gut punch I hadn't braced for.
My heartbeat thundered for the first time in a long while. My fingers curled against the blanket. The robotic nurse kept speaking but her words warped underwater.
Every breath I took was suddenly too sharp, too tight. My chest was caving in.
Was this real?
Did I… get Isekai'd into a video game?
No.
Worse.
I'd become the background character in the game my sister loved most.
The one no one used.
The reject.
The trash-tier NPC.
I slowly raised a hand to my face. My skin looked different. Smoother. Healthier. Not pale and sallow like before. And my nails… they had a faint black sheen. Almost vine-like ridges beneath the surface.
My eyes stung, and I realized I hadn't blinked in too long.
Lily, I thought, clutching the blanket. Is this your doing? Did you… somehow send me here?
It wasn't possible. But then again, nothing about this moment made sense.
I hadn't just woken up in a hospital.
I had respawned.
And something deep in my gut—past the fear, past the disbelief—told me this wasn't some fantasy land.
It was a game world, yes.
But that didn't make it safe.
I was here. Alive again. But in the identity of a hero nobody wanted.
And in the distance… I could feel it. Like the low beat of a drum in my soul.
Something was watching.
Waiting.
Keeping score.
And the moment I stepped outside this room… The game would begin.