Testing My Luck in the New World

The blaring glow of the morning sun stung the backs of my eyelids, forcing me back into consciousness. My arm was freed of the excess weight of her sleeping form and I was left without the warmth that just two nights together had left me accustomed to. Unable to open my eyes once I noticed this, and with my heart screaming in my ears, I blindly reached beneath the sheets to where I remembered Yua sleeping just a few hours before. But all I felt was the smooth cotton afront to my wishes as I was greeted with nothing but the bedsheets we once shared.

I gripped them, clenched them, squeezed them until it hurt and thought to use every ounce of strength I'd earned in the dungeons with her to rip the sheets off the bed out of anger, but my limbs fell limp. I'd slept well enough, but I hadn't the energy to move any more than what it took to press my forearm over my eyes to blot out the sun, just so I wouldn't have to see the other half of the bed be empty.

I waited and waited. Thinking that she'd just gone downstairs to request the innkeeper to start breakfast early so we could get a jumpstart on our day. Pondering if she'd gone to fetch us some water since the tea we had with dinner wasn't enough to replenish what we lost sweating so much in the dungeons. Or, maybe, I was just hoping that she'd gotten uncomfortably sweaty sleeping next to me after our heated conversation last night and left to take another bath so she wasn't scrunching up her nose from the smell all day long.

It wouldn't have been hard to confirm any of these wishes. All I'd need to do was get up and go downstairs and search for her. I could even just use my right as her master to search for her outline through the walls. I'd find her, or I wouldn't, and I'd have my answer. But it didn't matter. The sheets where she'd been laying were already cold with the morning chill.

She'd been gone for a long while... and I'm the one that gave her the right to leave.

"I guess she was right...Maybe I am... sad? Wish she picked a different word for it. Sad just doesn't really compare to this."

It was impossible to continue denying it now. I don't even know why I was trying in the first place. Maybe it was just me trying to look tough for her, the girl that loves strength? My heart was still gripping at my throat from the inside, trying to wring my neck to get up and go looking for her, but in truth, I didn't feel much different. I felt worse, that much was certain. I knew without a shred of doubt that I was in love with her, but her loss didn't make me feel empty. The emptiness was already there. It was always there. Just waiting for her to fill it. I thought the black void inside me had already bottomed out years ago, but the empty bedspace beside me just dug a little deeper.

The alarm I'd set on my smart phone went off, stealing away with the morning silence and my chance to grieve.

I was always too cheap to buy a dedicated alarm clock and overly relied on my phone's alarm function, even though it failed me fairly often. It was due to my own cheapness that I had to pick out an incredibly annoying alarm sound just to wake my ass up, because no matter how much sleep I got, it was never enough and, unfortunately, my job demanded punctuality.

With the well-trained reflex of a man that hated getting up in the morning more than just about anything else in the world, I smacked the touch screen icon to shut it up. Naturally, it took three attempts to end the alarm for good. Feeling its smooth glass against my fingers, I was struck with a sudden, overbearing thought that I couldn't have ignored if my very life depended on it.

My smart phone wasn't reincarnated into the new world with me.

Shooting up in bed fast enough to almost jettison my blanket into orbit, I immediately scanned my surroundings. This clearly wasn't my room at the Lazy Cat Inn. The pointless wardrobe in the corner of the room was replaced by a couple of tightly packed bookshelves, each lined with the various anime figurines I'd collected over the years. The window overlooking the outdoors bathing area was nowhere to be seen, as the only permanent fixture in that part of the room was the doorway leading to what was clearly a bathroom that most definitely wasn't there the night before. I recognized it by the light switch on the wall next to it that only seemed to work half the time you flipped it and whose plastic covering had been burned a dark shade of brown due to an electrical mishap before I even moved in.