Chapter Text
The air is dry and cold, seeping under my skin and piercing down to the bones, like invisible steel. Each breath brings pain, and the wind cuts through to the marrow. Burying my nose in my scarf, I try to warm myself, feeling how its soft fibers fail to shield me from the winter chill. I stand, waiting for the traffic light to signal it’s safe to continue my journey home, to where warmth, comfort, and even a brief respite await.
The weight and fatigue that have built up throughout the day press down on my chest, making each movement feel like a struggle. Everything inside me seems to pull me toward the ground, and I can’t help but long to sink onto the nearest bench, close my eyes, and drift into a forgotten sleep. Even my stomach, which has been growling with hunger for the past hour, can’t push me to hurry. My thoughts are still with home, with that long-awaited moment of rest, which still feels so far away.
My dreams of a warm bed and much-needed rest were suddenly interrupted by the sound of the traffic light, which finally turned green. Weaving between slow-moving pedestrians, I hurried toward home, where even the smallest reprieve from this cold, exhausting day awaited. But just as I reached the entrance, in the familiar, almost forgotten rhythm of daily life, I heard that unsettling sound again — another air raid siren.
In almost three years of war, I had grown accustomed to these sirens, and they no longer triggered that dreadful panic that once made me jump out of bed in the middle of the night and rush down to the basement, hiding from a potential threat. Now, I simply kept walking, ignoring the sound. It was wrong, yes, and unsafe, but… honestly, I was tired of this constant state of alert. Our city was rarely hit, and when it was, it somehow always seemed to be manageable. So, like many others, I just ignored the sirens and continued doing what I was doing, as if the world wasn’t a war-torn place, but just another ordinary day in the rhythm of life.
All I could feel over the past few years was exhaustion and emptiness. Each day blurred into the next, and it felt as though I was living in an endless cycle: work, home, work again, home again. Like Groundhog Day. Maybe it was burnout, maybe depression — I don’t really know, and to be honest, I don’t want to figure it out. There’s just no time. Time flies by, and I can’t keep up. The past three years have been a real nightmare, and each new day seemed like just a continuation of the last, as if this entire war was slowly erasing me from the inside.
As I approached the elevator, I couldn’t suppress an irritated sigh. The power outage at the most inconvenient moment—it felt as if life had decided to throw yet another challenge my way. Now I had to walk up to my floor. Seven stories. Seven long, exhausting flights, with each step making me feel every muscle in my body. By the time I finally reached the door of my apartment, my legs barely obeyed me, and every step was a struggle. My mind was empty, filled with nothing but a sense of utter depletion, as if I hadn’t been living at all, just existing.
And finally, the moment I had been waiting for all day — my comfortable, soft bed, the place where I could forget everything. Maybe I had managed to grab a bite to eat, but with the power still out, food no longer mattered. Quickly shedding my clothes, I slipped under the blanket, feeling it gently envelop me, offering the warmth I had so desperately missed. Despite the chill of the sheets, an incredible sense of relief washed over me — at last, I could relax. The siren had long since fallen silent, but the all-clear had yet to come. My gaze slid across the phone screen—I checked the Telegram channel, hoping to find out what was going on, but there was nothing but silence. Fine, I thought.
Turning off my phone, I settled in more comfortably, and suddenly, everything around me ceased to matter. Soon, I drifted off, consumed by the long-awaited rest that, for at least a moment, allowed me to forget the world outside the windows.
The sudden awakening to a stranger’s voice, especially a man’s, was the last thing I expected. I live alone, and night always promised me silence, solitude, as the world outside slowly dissolved into darkness. But this voice… it was insistent, and the gravelly tone made me instantly alert. When I opened my eyes, it felt as though a cold wave had washed over me: my face was hit by a cool, dry breeze, and my nose immediately caught the scent of salt and iodine. The smell of the sea. It was both familiar and foreign, like a memory of something distant and forgotten. I immediately realized I wasn’t in my apartment, but where I was remained unclear. The sound of waves, the creaking of wood, and the distant hum—none of it was calming.
A man in his fifties stood in front of me, his expression irritated. His gaze was sharp, like a blade, and he clearly hadn’t expected me to take so long to regain my senses. He wore a white uniform, and atop his head was a cap with a symbol that vaguely lingered in my memory, but I couldn’t place where I had seen it before. Everything around me felt strange and foreign, and this moment seemed to stretch on, like a thread about to snap.
“Ensign Asta, why are you sleeping on your post?” — the man’s voice was sharp and harsh, carrying an edge of irritation, as though he was ready to unleash a tirade. His words cut through the silence, making me flinch, even though I was still trying to make sense of what was happening. I remained frozen, struggling to understand what the hell was going on, while his gaze grew increasingly hard. The man’s brows, pulled tightly together in a straight line, crept lower towards his nose, expressing complete displeasure and clear anger. His face contorted more and more, as if every second he was about to unleash all his frustration on me. And in that strange, almost surreal moment, I realized one thing — something was definitely wrong here.
“Sorry,” I muttered, though in reality, I had no idea what was going on. But in that moment, it seemed like the only right response. I felt the words slip from my mouth, empty yet somehow necessary.
I watched as the vein in his neck began to swell, pulsing with threatening intensity. The anger on his face was so palpable that it seemed on the verge of boiling over. He opened his mouth, ready to unleash all his fury on me when, suddenly, like thunder on a clear day, a voice rang out from below. The man shot me a sharp, angry glance, as though checking whether I had understood his “lesson,” and ordered:
“Don’t sleep on duty,” — those words, gritted out through clenched teeth, sounded like the final note before he turned and descended, leaving me alone with this bizarre situation.
After the mysterious man disappeared, I remained still for a while, blinking as if trying to process what had just happened. Everything around me felt so strange that it seemed like I was trapped in some nightmare, about to wake up in my own bed. But, alas, reality was too sharp and vivid to be a dream. Once the initial numbness wore off, I decided to look around, hoping to get some sense of where I was.
Turning my head, I saw the vast, blue sea before me, stretching out as endless and empty as my thoughts. Suddenly, feeling my legs give way beneath me, I glanced down—and that’s when I truly began to panic. I saw the deck—a real ship, wooden, with sails, like something out of an old tale. What the hell! My legs practically buckled, and I sank to the floor, feeling the ground slip away beneath me. This was too absurd.
What the hell? Just moments ago, I had been lying in my bed, surrounded by silence and comfort, and now—here I was, standing on some ancient deck, in the middle of the sea! This wasn’t just strange; it was unimaginable. Life had definitely not prepared me for this.
Trying to make sense of things, I began running through every possible explanation for how I ended up in this bizarre situation. And, honestly, none of them seemed very promising. The first, and least likely, was that I’d been drugged. But, as I said before, that seemed unlikely—there aren’t any substances I know of that could cause such vivid and unsettling hallucinations. Sure, there was that creepy pasta on 2ch about something like this, but that was just fiction, another scary story. So that theory was clearly not worth considering.
The second theory, also unlikely, was abduction. But if that were the case, there was one obvious question: why would anyone want to kidnap an ordinary girl who’s barely getting by, working as a barista in a café, and doesn’t even dream of anything bigger than a quiet life? I didn’t look like someone anyone would risk their neck for. So, that hypothesis fell apart as soon as I tried to grasp it.
Now, the third theory, though the most fantastical, seemed more plausible than anything else I had come up with so far. This was, of course, the so-called “isekai”—worlds where heroes are transported through portals, with all those adventures I used to love reading about when I was obsessed with the genre. I had read hundreds of fanfics and mangas where characters ended up in parallel worlds, but here’s the interesting part—there were no trucks or “san” to knock me out, as usually happens in those stories. Though, maybe it wasn’t that simple: perhaps the anxiety I had heard wasn’t false, and maybe I really had been hit by something like a missile, although that wasn’t certain.
While my brain, like an army on the battlefield, was desperately trying to explain how I ended up in this situation, and most importantly, where I was, I hadn’t noticed someone starting to climb up toward me. All the confusion in my head, thoughts flashing like quick-moving shadows, made it hard to focus on my surroundings. And only when the person climbing up suddenly spoke did I snap back to reality, as if someone had shaken me out of my stupor.
“Well, you’re something, Asta! Falling asleep on duty and getting on the bad side of the Vice Admiral—talk about a stroke of luck!” The guy chuckled, his voice light and teasing. He easily hopped over the railing and, without breaking stride, sat down next to me. His smile was bright and contagious, like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day, and for a moment, it felt like his smile was the only thing that could slightly ease my confusion.
I couldn’t utter a word, just blinking, as if trying to comprehend what was happening. My lips automatically curled into a smile, mirroring his expression, but I didn’t even realize when it happened. The guy looked to be around my age, maybe 20-24, with a messy mop of black hair, the color of raven feathers, and eyes as dark as the night. He carried himself with an odd mix of laid-back confidence and mischief. His skin was tanned, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors, and just beside his upper lip, there was a small mole. That tiny, almost imperceptible mark gave his face an unusual charm, as if it accentuated everything about him, making him seem even more intriguing and alive.
“I’m Roy, in case you forgot,” he said, his words tinged with a slight annoyance. Apparently, I had been silent for so long that he started to doubt whether I remembered his name. There was a subtle trace of hurt in his voice, barely noticeable, but still there.
“Sorry, Roy, I really did forget for a moment,” I replied, trying to smile, but my smile felt more like an apology than any sign of relief.
“Pff, it’s fine, I’m not offended,” he said, with a faint indifference, barely waving his hand as if it was something trivial. “So why am I even up here? The Vice Admiral told you to go to his office, grab the papers, and start packing. We’ll dock at Impel Down in about two hours, so go on, I’ll cover for you.”
But there was something in his words that made me freeze. Everything inside me tightened. It was like a click in my mind, and I felt the blood freeze in my veins. Damn it, he said “Impel Down”! That’s the prison from One Piece! I froze in place, unable to believe it. Thoughts raced through my mind. I nearly slapped myself on the forehead—how could I not have realized it earlier? That uniform… it definitely belonged to the Navy! And the flag on the ship—that, too, was theirs! This situation was starting to take a very ugly turn.
“Did you forget where the Vice Admiral’s office is again?” Roy’s voice cut through my thoughts, and I snapped back to reality, as if someone had abruptly yanked me from a daze. All I could do was nod silently in response.
“So, you go down from the crow’s nest, turn left, go through the door, walk down the corridor, and it’s the third door on the right,” he explained in such a calm tone, as though giving directions for the most ordinary task.
I quietly thanked him, then, with some effort, climbed over the railing and began to descend. If it weren’t for all this sudden information crashing down on me, I probably would have just stood there, unsure of what to do. But as the thoughts mixed with my confusion slowly began to quiet, I quickly made my way to the deck.
As soon as my feet touched the deck, the ship rocked slightly, throwing me off balance, and I instinctively leaned against the mast behind me to steady myself. I exhaled quietly, looked around, and, following Roy’s instructions, began making my way to the office. Every step seemed to echo in my ears with the realization of how unreal this all was.
When I reached the door, I hesitated. How exactly should I enter? I couldn’t just walk in—it would be too… strange. I had to salute or at least show some military respect. I stood there, debating what to do, and the minutes stretched on like hours. But those thoughts began to feel ridiculous and useless. With a burst of irritation, I decided to forget all the formalities and just knocked. Improvisation, I suppose, was the way to go.
“Come in,” a voice immediately called from the other side of the door, and in that moment, all the confidence I had in my improvisation evaporated like morning mist. I froze for a second, trying to gather my thoughts, but something inside me whispered that everything had already been decided.
“Ensign Asta reporting as instructed,” I said, stepping into the office and automatically raising my hand to my forehead, as I had seen in movies, unsure if I was doing it correctly. Everything I said felt like a jumble of phrases from various sources, a funny mishmash of films and books, and I suddenly felt foolish.
“At ease,” he said, and I instantly exhaled in relief, lowering my hand. Looks like I hadn’t messed it up. The Vice Admiral, meanwhile, continued sifting through a stack of papers, flipping through the sheets with a focused expression. For several minutes, he silently searched for something important while I stood there, trying not to dwell on how strange everything felt. Finally, he pulled out a single sheet of paper, smiled widely as though he had found something valuable, and handed it to me.
“You can go pack your things,” the Vice Admiral said once I finally took the paper from him. His voice was so dry and detached that it only made me feel more uncertain. Continuing with my improvisation, I mustered what little courage I had, saluted—trying not to think about how ridiculous it must have looked—and left the office.
And so, my new quest began. Find my room and my stuff, all while not screwing up and not looking like a total idiot in front of all these people. But, honestly, nothing could be harder than just not freaking out.
Damn it, why me? Why couldn’t it be someone else, someone who could handle this without so many questions? Sure, I’ve complained about life being boring, that it’s too predictable and monotonous, but that doesn’t mean I should be thrown into some dangerous anime world, damn it! And anyway, isn’t an isekai just some fanfiction fantasy? What the hell am I doing in this godforsaken reality? This situation is as bad as it gets! I’m a watchman, I’m heading to Impel Down, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.
Why couldn’t it have been like in most fanfics, where they just throw me into the hands of the powerful, giving me a Devil Fruit and all the willpower I could ever want? Or at least send me to a romance where I’m the villainess! I could have saved the empire from a coup or the attack of some monsters, married a northern duke, and schemed my way through court intrigues and battles for the throne! But no, instead—Impel Down. This is definitely not what I had in mind.
I would have stood there, lost in my misfortune, complaining about my unenviable situation, if it weren’t for someone’s hand suddenly landing lightly but firmly on my shoulder. I jumped and turned around.
“Asta, what are you doing just standing there? Did the Vice Admiral yell at you again? He’s been in a bad mood today,” said the girl in front of me, noticeably taller than me—almost by two heads. She shook her head, as if she couldn’t quite believe anyone would speak to me like that, and her displeasure was obvious.
“No, it’s fine, just lost in thought,” I quickly pulled myself together and came up with an excuse. “Can you believe it? I got so nervous I forgot where my cabin is,” I smiled involuntarily, amused by my own stupidity. Why not? It could work. After all, I decided to play the fool.
The girl, whose name I didn’t know, gave me a clear look of skepticism, raising one eyebrow and narrowing her eyes slightly. “You’re acting kind of strange… well, maybe it’s just the nerves,” she muttered more to herself than to me. Sighing, she added, “Come on, I need to head to the women’s quarters too.”
With that, she turned around and, without waiting for my reply, started walking down the long corridor, her steps confident and quick, as if this situation was second nature to her. I, on the other hand, stood there a little dumbfounded, not sure what to think, but in the end, decided that following her would be the best choice. Losing track of the one person who knew where I was supposed to go would have been the worst idea.
The entire way to the cabin, I focused intently on memorizing every step, every detail of the path, so I wouldn’t look like a complete fool later. I had to find my way in this maze, where every room looked like the next. I walked, almost never lifting my gaze from the floor, and at some point, I didn’t even realize how close I had gotten to the back of my guide. She, without acknowledging me, calmly opened the door, let me in, and closed it behind her. Then she made her way to her hammock, unhurried, as if it were her usual spot.
I, on the other hand, remained standing by the door, feeling awkward. The room had four hammocks, some nightstands, and a few belongings, but I couldn’t make sense of where mine were. I felt completely lost, but the girl, without a word, quickly took whatever she needed and left. I didn’t even have a chance to ask her anything—she simply vanished, as if she had never been there at all. And I was left alone, with the sense that this place had grown even more alien.
“Shit, where are my things?” I muttered into the emptiness, trying not to panic. It couldn’t be that hard, right? Looks like I’d have to figure this out. Fine, let’s go with trial and error.
First, I went over to the hammock and the nightstand belonging to the girl who had shown me the way. I figured I didn’t need to bother with those; they definitely weren’t my things. Opening the first drawer, I froze. On the inside of the lid were labels with names and numbers. A wave of relief washed over me. “Well, at least something!” I whispered. Lady Luck had finally come through for me, even if a little late.
It didn’t take long to find the drawer labeled “Asta.” I carefully opened it, hoping for the best, but inside, all I found was disappointment. “Well, this is something…” I muttered when I saw that the drawer only contained a toothbrush with paste, a patrol uniform, and some civilian clothes—a t-shirt and shorts.
I searched a little longer, hoping to find something more useful, and then, right next to the drawer, I spotted a backpack. With the patrol’s emblem. “This is it!” I thought, exhaling with relief. I opened the backpack, quickly started gathering my things, and at the very last moment, just as I thought I was done, I found a wallet wedged between two layers of clothing.
I opened the wallet and found a few bills—yes, not much, certainly not what I’d hoped for. The other pockets were empty; there was not a single useful item left. It was a token amount, as if someone had tried to leave at least a minimal means of survival, but even that was clearly insufficient.
I put the wallet back in the backpack and tightened the drawstring, feeling an odd sense of relief, as though this small action had brought some semblance of stability to the chaos. Sitting on the nightstand, I nervously flipped through the papers in my hands. I looked at them with hope, but I knew they were unlikely to reveal anything significant. Still, I wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, there was a clue among these documents—some hint about what to do next in this new and uncertain world.
From the documents, I gathered that my name was Asta—well, that much was clear from the start. I held the rank of ensign and had served at a patrol base in South Blue, on the island of Sentorea. Wait, Sentorea? I was sure I’d never heard of that island in the anime. All I knew about South Blue was that it was Ace’s homeland, and of course, the place where the brutal purge of Roger’s legacy had once taken place. That was the extent of my knowledge about this sea. And by the way, what arc are we in now? Has the war already happened, or not yet? Well, I’ll figure that out later.
Next in the documents was a record of my service at the base, but honestly, it was of little use. Just a formality, something like “served, performed duties.” Nothing interesting. However, on the last page, there was information that made me a little uneasy: apparently, I—or rather, the girl who had been in this body before me—had submitted a request for a transfer to Impel Down. Why there?
Damn, so many questions and so few answers. I stacked the papers on the nightstand, stood up, and began pacing the room restlessly, once again trying to process everything that had happened to me. My head throbbed from the overload: the events, the people, this new world—everything was blending into one big mess, making it hard to find any kind of order. Terrible thoughts about a bleak future kept creeping into my mind. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to get out of here at all? Maybe this is permanent?
I would have continued to spiral if I hadn’t caught sight of a mirror in the corner of the room. An odd place for a mirror, but still, I was curious to see what I looked like… I stepped closer, unable to resist.
The reflection in the mirror stared back at me… Well, more accurately, it was my double. The same face, the same eyes, the same hair color. Everything was familiar, as if I hadn’t gone anywhere. But no, I should have been different! I started to look more closely: the moles—yes, they were all in the same places, just like mine. But the scars… they weren’t there. And then it clicked in my head—I was in the body of my doppelgänger, from One Piece.
It all seemed so absurd that I almost wanted to laugh. But instead, I just stood there in front of the mirror, feeling the reality closing in on me again. My head ached, as if it were splitting into a thousand pieces, and there was a nasty metallic taste in my mouth, as though fear wasn’t just an emotion, but something physically tangible that had filled me from the inside.