Night on Earth didn’t try to warn him.
It didn’t shift the air, didn’t whisper, didn’t signal anything unusual.
It simply existed—quiet, ordinary, forgettable.
Ryo Hasegawa lay on his bed without tension, without worries, without expectations.
Sleep reached him the way water reaches low places: naturally, without force.
His breathing slowed.
His mind emptied.
Nothing dramatic.
He didn’t dream.
He simply slept.
He woke because something was different.
Not sound.
Not touch.
Just a sense—like the edges of his existence had been rearranged.
He opened his eyes.
His room was gone.
The window, the shelf, the ceiling, the mattress—everything dissolved into a heavy, colorless black that seemed to hold its own breath.
Ryo sat up slowly.
His hand reached down automatically, expecting the mattress—
but nothing responded.
He wasn’t falling, wasn’t floating.
He was simply there, suspended in a space built without ground.
A voice entered the darkness.
Smooth.
Old.
Impatient.
“You finally wake.”
Ryo turned, expression unchanged.
A figure approached—bright, sharp, almost divine in posture but careless in expression.
It wasn’t human.
It wasn’t anything he could categorize.
But it acted like a god who had done this too many times and stopped pretending to enjoy it.
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“I summoned you,” the being said casually.
“The world you came from is irrelevant now. Another world needs saving. Its people cry for help. Tiresome… but predictable.”
Ryo listened.
Here we go… classic isekai nonsense.
Summon a random kid.
Beg for salvation.
Offer fake importance.
The being stretched its fingers and light crackled between them.
“Here, in this plane,” it said, “whatever you desire will be granted. Wish for strength, knowledge, power… it matters little. But once you go to that world, the door closes. No more requests. No more changes.”
Ryo looked at him without responding.
The god waited for spoken desperation—
the begging for powers,
the dramatic words,
the excitement.
Nothing came.
Ryo’s silence deepened.
So predictable.
Give me anything? Here only? Then I set things now.
He examined the rules, turning them over like stones.
If this place grants anything… then I build what benefits me, not them.
Somewhere private. Somewhere untouched.
Somewhere to vanish, to exist alone.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t move.
The being watched him with rising irritation.
“And?” it demanded.
“What do you ask?”
Ryo’s eyes didn’t shift.
I’m already doing it.
You don’t need to hear it.
He tightened his thoughts.
A space only for himself.
A place no one enters.
A plane detached from everything.
Potential to grow at his own pace—
not forced, not chosen, not destined.
The god felt none of it.
The silence only thickened.
“…Are you mocking me?” the being snapped.
Ryo blinked slowly.
You talk too much.
The being clenched its fist.
“You mortals—such arrogance. Speak or be thrown.”
Ryo calmly finished the final thought he held back until the last moment—
a condition, simple and absolute:
My death belongs to me alone.
Only nature or my own will can end me.
The moment that thought crystallized—
The god acted.
“Enough!”
Light burst like a blade, slashing through the dark.
It wrapped Ryo’s form, folding space around him like paper being crushed.
“Go!” the god barked.
“If you wished nothing, then perish as nothing. I will find someone more obedient.”
The world snapped shut.
Ryo vanished.
Silence.
Then—
“…What?”
The being stiffened.
“He didn’t arrive.”
“Where—where is he?”
“Did he… evaporate in transit?”
The god examined the pathways, the lines of energy, the summoning marks.
All correct.
All stable.
“He should be there.”
“He should have appeared.”
“…Did he perish?”
A frustrated exhale.
“Tch… irritating. Waste of time. I’ll summon another.”
The being turned its back.
Unaware that the boy it dismissed as “nothing”
had simply stepped somewhere the god never imagined,
somewhere beyond his reach,
somewhere built from a loophole.
Author's note:
Existence Without Purpose.
