If he were to compile a list of the most foolish decisions of his life, everything that had happened before last night—and, to be honest, everything that had happened in his entire life—would pale in comparison to a single word.
"Accept."
The word sounded ordinary, almost harmless. But it was precisely this word that gave rise to the ridiculous, frightening, and almost absurd situation he found himself in. There was a time when he thought that life's mistakes were just minor misunderstandings from which lessons could be learned. But now he felt how this "acceptance" entangled his thoughts like a curse, each time striking a blow to his pride.
They say curiosity killed the cat, and that seemed to fit him perfectly. Who could have guessed that he would find himself not just in a forest, but in a foreign forest — foreign in every sense: the trees were taller, the grass was thicker, the air was heavier, and most importantly, it was inhabited by creatures that could only be seen in fantasy films and novels.
The net he had fallen into — immediately, without fuss, as soon as he saw them — made it perfectly clear that he would not be able to leave peacefully. At least not yet.
When these creatures approached, assessing their prey, he tried to get a closer look at them. They resembled the aborigines from myths drawn by a child's imagination: bandages made of vines covered only the bare essentials, leaving their broad shoulders and powerful, sinewy chests exposed. Scars were visible on various parts of their bodies — either from battles or something else. Their skin color ranged from earthy gray to swampy reddish-brown, with a deep hue, like smoked tree bark.
They were three times taller than the average person, and in terms of body mass, one of them could probably rival two overweight people at once. Sculpted muscles rolled under their skin as they moved. Their arms were long and flexible, ending in five fingers, but the fingers were topped with claws. Sharp. Curved. Even from a distance, it seemed that they could cut a branch like a knife.
Their faces were covered with rough masks made of bark, fabric, and animal bones, decorated with intricate war paint. One of them had bright red spirals on his cheeks, covered with fabric at the bottom. The second one had a large mask made of bark with black stripes running across his eyes. The third also had a cloth mask, but it completely covered his face, with holes for his eyes — white dots imitating the starry sky. And finally, the last, fourth one had a mask made of bone from an animal unknown to him, with symbols similar to ancient runes.
It was the last one who came closer than the others. He walked silently, gracefully, with some kind of animal grace. Stopping next to the captive, he slowly bent down, as if listening to him. A long club touched his chest — not painfully, but insistently. Iniesto felt a chill run down his spine. Through the slits in the mask, he could see only the eyes. Blue. Cold. Surprised and attentive.
"He's studying me," flashed through his mind.
He wanted to believe that it — although who was he kidding — was not aggressive. This creature, with runes, tilted its head to one side, as birds do when trying to see something small. Then it looked back at the others and said something in a deep, low voice. Either a question or a command.
One of the creatures, wearing a mask in the shape of the night sky, tapped its claw on the shaft of its spear, as if thinking.
He realized they didn't know what to do with him. And that was... worse than if they had decided to kill him right away. God knows what they could do to him. And he really didn't want to find out.
Iniesto froze when the clawed fingers of the creature with the scarlet spiral on its mask touched his shirt. The fabric was ordinary, cheap cotton, bought on Earth in some hypermarket, but to these creatures it seemed as strange as their masks made of bone and bark seemed to him.
A finger with a long black claw carefully hooked the button and pulled. The plastic cracked plaintively and flew into the grass. The creature made a low, surprised sound, almost a purr, and the others immediately moved closer. Now there were four of them around him.
The one with the runes leaned over again. His breath was warm, smelling of resin and something spicy, like pine needles after rain. He ran the club over Inesto's chest, slowly, as if checking to see if the man would break from a single touch. The club stopped right over his heart. Inesto felt it pounding so hard that it seemed about to jump out and run away to hell.
"Don't move," he mentally commanded himself, but his body wouldn't listen: the tremors shook him to his core.
Suddenly, the one wearing the star mask made a sharp, short sound—not a growl, but more like a click of the tongue, as if swatting away a fly. The others immediately took a step back. The runic giant stood up to his full three-meter height and stepped back. The creature with white dots said something — slowly, clearly, looking straight into Iniesta's eyes.
The sounds were unfamiliar, guttural, but they had the intonation of a question. It repeated once more, louder this time, and poked him in the chest with its club, not painfully, but insistently.
Iniesto swallowed.
"I... don't understand," he managed to say.
Silence hung in the forest — thick, disturbing, viscous as resin, physically palpable. The four giants stared at Inesto without blinking: some through their masks, some through narrow slits for eyes, but each gaze was equally piercing, devoid of human sympathy. In none of those eyes did he see malice, anger, or mercy. There was only interest — they wanted answers he couldn't give.
The one with the mask covered in white dots paused for a second. Then he said something again. His tone changed—now it sounded like a statement. Even without knowing the language, Inesto understood that they were expecting something from him.
He swallowed—his throat was dry.
"I..." He swallowed again, feeling their attention on him. "I don't know what you're saying. I don't understand."
His own voice sounded strange to him — hoarse, almost broken, as if the words were bursting out on their own, squeezed between panic and despair. He raised his hands, showing his palms. The gesture was universal — openness, peace. Negotiation. No danger.
Silence surrounded them again. The wind rustled the leaves, somewhere far away a bird screeched piercingly — and then fell silent.
A second. Another. And then — movement began.
Iniesta didn't have time to understand what was happening before he was roughly twisted and pulled into the net, a rope cutting into his wrists. One of the creatures confidently lifted him onto his shoulder — so easily, so casually, as if he were picking up a sack of grain from the ground. The others followed close behind, moving deftly, almost silently through the forest, yet quickly, as if they knew every root.
They carried him, and with every step, Yienesto's gaze clung to everything, trying to understand what was happening. Among the foliage, other representatives of these creatures flashed by — tall, powerful, naked to the waist, wearing the same woven bandages and masks made of bark and bones. Many stopped to look at him. Their gazes were long, studying, though silent. He saw neither anger nor mockery in them — only cautious curiosity, as if he were not a human being but a rare beast.
When the trees parted, Ynesto saw a settlement. It looked primitive but sturdy, as if built not by barbarians and simple natives, but by the hands of those who knew their craft well. The houses — or rather huts — were built of thick woven branches, intertwined with vines and reinforced with slabs of rough stone. Tall palisades of intertwined branches surrounded the settlement, like the skeleton of a huge beast, protecting its inhabitants from external threats. Strange trophies hung from the sharp tips of some of the stakes — bones, tails, parts of masks decorated with feathers. Everything confirmed once again that he had found himself in a completely alien and hostile world.
They entered through a large opening—a gate without doors, decorated with horns and clay figures. Judging by how confidently the creatures moved, this was the main entrance. He noticed two standing nearby, armed with long spears, and how they glanced briefly but attentively at the new captive.
Yinesto turned his head, taking in every detail. He saw women—or those who probably played that role in society. They had less massive bodies but moved with the same confidence, their masks more openwork, decorated with small bones and leaves. Some had straps with hanging bags on their shoulders, and knives made of teeth or stone dangled from their belts. He saw children: their legs were dark and covered in mud, they did not wear masks, and they played between the dwellings, throwing a ball made of woven fibers at each other. For a moment, one of the children stopped, staring at him with wide eyes before disappearing behind a house.
The various sounds were unfamiliar, in the sense that they were definitely not earthly. Various domesticated animals, not of earthly origin, the language spoken by the locals, the sound of stone striking stone, the clanging of branches in the hands of craftsmen. The rustling of feathers, the rustling of leaves, the smell of hot meat cooking in a large clay pit. The smells were strange and incomprehensible — with notes of resin, ash, and herbs he had never seen before. There was a spice in the air that tickled his nose and made him want to sneeze. And then there was the smell of animals.
He noticed one — a large creature, like a cross between a jaguar and an antelope, with a horn like a tree branch protruding from its forehead. It lay at the threshold of one of the houses, lazily moving its paws, but its eyes were open and watched every movement of Yigneau closely.
If his first encounter with intelligent life had been a real shock, what was happening now knocked him off his feet completely. He might have thought he had ended up in a movie or, at worst, in someone else's reality, but that wasn't enough — everything that was happening didn't fit in his head, no matter how hard he tried to digest what he had seen. His brain tried to find at least some familiar points of reference — but they crumbled like old plaster in the rain.
Everything in this place was otherworldly.
Neither the faces of the creatures, nor the sounds, nor the smells. Not even the air itself, filled with something ancient and primitive. There was nothing familiar here, and because of this, the feeling of loneliness and emptiness in his chest became almost unbearable.
He found himself in a place where a person could be just another beast caught in the net of a world that was not obliged to be merciful to him.
Soon he was taken to a prison — a large pit, the sides of which were lined with stones, and a lattice roof of thick branches intertwined with bones stretched over it. It was a place for prisoners. And inside, to his considerable surprise, there were people. Real, ordinary people. Seeing something familiar in an unfamiliar world was a relief.
He was carelessly thrown inside and fell onto the hard ground. He immediately felt eyes on him. They were men and women of different ages, some very young, some already gray-haired. But all of them wore the same rough clothing: simple, almost primitive fabric that covered only the bare essentials. They looked at him with different expressions in their eyes: curiosity, wariness, contempt — all of this was mixed in their gazes.
They were particularly interested in his clothes. Modern, albeit worn, his shirt and pants stood out sharply among the coarse fibers and leather they were clad in.
Iniesta leaned heavily on his elbows, feeling the hard ground scratch his skin through the fabric of his shirt. His throat tightened, either from the dust or from the realization that he was completely isolated here, without the slightest control over what was happening around him. His heart, like a well-oiled machine, tried to keep its rhythm, but it was increasingly falling out of sync — the world had changed too abruptly.
Noisy, disorderly thoughts swirled in his head like smoke above a bonfire. He was far from calling himself a strong person — certainly not a hero capable of facing the unknown with his chin up. But deep in his chest, something else was stirring: an ancient, almost instinctive feeling. The instinct to survive.
Fragments of memories flashed through his mind. In his younger years, he had loved thrills, consciously seeking out situations where his nervous system was on high alert, where his heart pounded so hard it felt like it would jump out of his chest. Taking risks was a habit of his, and now, strangely enough, that habit was coming back to him. Later, more consciously, he took self-defense classes — several years of training and survival courses that seemed like a hobby at the time, but now suddenly became tools for survival.
How grateful he was to himself for leading a preventive lifestyle in his conscious years, spending time on sports, self-defense, and reading all kinds of "preparatory" materials, even if it sometimes seemed like a waste of time. Groundlessly believing that someday he would find himself in a life-threatening situation, he was now reaping the rewards of those habits.
He recalled articles about behavior in extreme conditions, footage of reports about survivors of disasters, and advice from forums. All of this came together in his head, forming the first steps of a plan. "Don't panic. Identify your resources. Assess the threat."
"Damn..." he exhaled, closing his eyes for a moment. His body was shaking, his brain was racing, but now this knowledge and old habits gave him at least some support.
He couldn't lose control. He needed to focus on his breathing. He would use the diaphragmatic breathing technique. He lay on his back, placed one hand on his stomach and the other on his chest, then inhaled through his nose so that only his hand on his stomach rose, and slowly exhaled with his lips pursed.
After fifteen repetitions, his pulse began to slow down. The air here was heavier than he was used to, but he still achieved the result. His thoughts gradually began to settle. He was finally able to assess the situation with almost no panic. He slowly raised his head and looked around: the other prisoners were looking at him with curiosity, as if he were a strange animal. He noticed their tired faces, their vague wariness, but not a hint of aggression, and even a glimmer of hope.
He raised his hand in a friendly manner, making a slight, almost timid gesture of greeting.
"Hello."
A woman holding a child responded. She approached him, trying to understand his intonation, and replied in a completely different language. His words were incomprehensible, but they conveyed caution and supplication. Iniesto tensed, listening to the strange, guttural sounds, trying to establish some kind of connection. After a few minutes, the woman realized that contact was impossible and left him alone. And Iniesto was able to be alone with himself.
He leaned his back against the cold wall, lowered his head, and tried to collect his thoughts, to understand how he had ended up here. Every detail, every moment seemed vague, as if through the fog of memory. He closed his eyes, and suddenly — like an electric shock — that ill-fated moment flashed before his eyes.
Jerking forward, he slapped his forehead in frustration. Why had he said that damn word?
And his memory, as if not expecting resistance, began to slowly unfold. Suddenly, the past burst into the present, and he found himself back where it all began...
***
Post Office No. 17 in the southern suburbs of London smelled of old paper, dust, and the faint scent of fresh ink. Inesto entered at 8:57 a.m., as always, three minutes before the start of his shift. Margaret, his replacement, was already standing behind the counter, a woman with gray strands pinned up in a strict bun and an ever-present cup of tea in her hand.
"Good morning, Inesto," she nodded, without looking up from her sorting. "You seem... pensive today."
"It's just the morning," he replied curtly, taking off his light vest and sitting down at his desk. "Sophie is leaving tomorrow."
Margaret hummed understandingly. She knew almost everything: about the university in Manchester, about the suitcases, about how Inesto had been sitting silently in the kitchen for the past two weeks, staring at one spot.
"The children are flying away," she remarked philosophically. "It's like letters you send but never get back."
Inesto just nodded. He walked over to his desk—a narrow workspace by the window with a brand-new computer, a receipt printer, and a stack of CN22 forms. The monitor flashed the Royal Mail logo in greeting.
He logged in, checked the delivery schedule and updates on tracking numbers. The familiar menu appeared on the screen: "Receiving Shipments," "Incoming Accounting," "Daily Statistics." Everything was as usual — not a single unnecessary item. Sometimes he caught himself thinking that, despite his age, he could handle the system faster than many of his younger colleagues. It was funny, considering his "past life" — as a literature teacher, he rarely encountered modern programs, but now he had become so familiar with them that it was almost natural. Especially considering his "backwardness" in other areas: he still called a smartphone a "mobile," and for him, "the cloud" was associated with the weather.
A fresh batch of envelopes lay nearby. He reached for them, but his gaze slipped to the reflection in the tarnished glass of the monitor. In the reflection — him, the table, the rack with folders. And, of course, the panel: a blue rectangle hung in the air to the side, reflecting off the glass as if it were real.
[Waiting for streamer user. To activate, say "Accept."]
He tried not to notice it, like one ignores an annoying fly. He focused on the keyboard and entered the data for the next shipment: name, index, category. The printer beeped briefly and spat out a receipt.
"Iniesto," Margaret called from the next window. "The courier will arrive after lunch with the new barcodes. Check that everything matches the report."
"Okay," he replied without looking up.
For a few seconds, the office fell silent: the clicking of keys, the hum of an old fan, the rustling of paper. He suddenly realized that he had no urgent tasks for the next half hour—a rare moment before the next report check. He caught himself thinking about the panel again. And then — quickly, as if committing a minor prank — he clicked on the browser icon and typed in the search bar:
"What is this floating rectangle in front of my eyes?"
In a second, half the page was filled with links to forums about visual anomalies, articles about HUD screens and AR applications, and medical sites stubbornly offered options such as "flashing spots due to eye fatigue" or "floating flies," but nothing fit.
He refined his query:
"Blue rectangle on the screen won't go away."
Again, nothing. Forums, memes, someone joking about hallucinations.
"Expected," he grunted, scrolling through another page.
This wasn't the first time he'd encountered this. When it all started, he was sitting at his computer — at home, late at night — feverishly searching for any kind of answer. The internet seemed to him like an all-encompassing library where you could find everything: from articles about rare symptoms to advice on how to deal with various issues. But, as it turned out, even there were no explanations. Only fragments of phrases, guesses, laughter. People were used to thinking that everything could be explained. And if it couldn't, then it simply didn't exist.
He scrolled through page after page, feeling a slight dull pain throbbing in his temples.
"A waste of time," he sighed wearily, running his hand over his face, realizing there was nothing to be found here. It was the same as before: no use, just noise, advertising, and guesswork. He was about to close the browser, but his fingers froze on the mouse.
A completely stupid, ridiculous thought came into his head. The very one he had once forbidden himself to think.
Two years ago, on one quiet evening when Sophie was still in school, he confessed to her over dinner:
"You know, I was thinking... should I write a book? About a brave young man who is suddenly pulled out of our world and into another, a fantasy world. There are dragons, ancient prophecies, a great villain... well, the classics.
Sophie looked up at him with eyes full of sympathy and slight mockery: "Dad... it's all been done before. A million times in fan fiction. A billion times in anime. It's called 'isekai'.
It was the first time he had heard the word "fanfiction," and when he asked her about it, she immediately handed him her phone:
"Here, read this. Wattpad, WebNovel, Fanfiction... everything you just thought of is there."
That was when Inesto first became interested in fanfiction. He opened a couple of stories on her advice, read a few pages — as a lover of literature, he evaluated the text, style, logic — and, to be honest, it left much to be desired. He tried to give some of the "works" a chance. But then he realized it was a lost cause. The plot was predictable, the spelling was poor, the characters spoke like teenagers in a chat room, and the "level system" appeared every three paragraphs. On top of that, female characters were constantly flirting with the main character...
"Leaves much to be desired," he said dryly at the time and never returned to the subject.
And now... Now he suddenly remembered how in those very "bad" fanfics, the characters also saw these windows before their eyes. Exactly the same, but in different packaging. Before his eyes was a flying interface that waited for activation commands, with a few exceptions, but the essence was the same. They were still called the same thing, "the system," with additions: swordsman, farmer, designer, bunker, and many others. It's hard to count how many ways this system was used.
He snorted
"Nonsense. Child's play."
But his fingers had already typed it out, pausing only for a second while he thought about what to write. Shrugging, he typed into the search engine
"Fanfiction about streamers"
Enter.
And when the results appeared, he clicked on the first site without looking. The page loaded instantly, and the screen filled with screaming covers: half-naked anime girls with exaggerated curves, clearly designed to attract the attention of teenagers, guys against a green chat background, with tasteless color correction, and headlines in bold Comic Sans or Papyrus font, which made the former literature teacher's eye twitch. And for some reason, they racked up a ton of reads and views.
"My streamer is an S-level demon" — 1.2M reads 🔥
"I Became a Female Streamer in My Avatar's Body" — 987k ❤️
"The Streamer System: Donate or Die" — 800k
"Stream #47: Life Live" — 46k
Iniesta leaned back in his chair, looking at this carnival of bright fonts and ridiculous thumbnails. The corner of his mouth twitched.
"God... how low modern literature has sunk," he muttered under his breath.
He scrolled down the page. The further he went, the worse it got: endless variations on the same theme. "The Content Maker System," "I Became a Streamer After Death," "Connected to the Flow of Destiny." And in each one, the same clichés: ratings, "popularity levels," virtual currencies, donations, chats, a cool main character, and of course, a harem. It all resembled a giant jumble of words from which the younger generation somehow drew inspiration.
To some extent, he seriously considered picking out some books for Sophie to show her what real literature was, but every time he started to do so, he stopped himself. After all, she grew up in a different world — where paper novels were replaced by screens, and inspiration was drawn not from Tolstoy or Orwell, but from these streams and these, as she called them, "fangirls." And who was he now to teach anyone? A former teacher sorting letters in a dusty office.
He sighed heavily, feeling weary irony stirring in his chest.
"Maybe I'm just getting old," he muttered, scrolling further down the page.
There was nothing he could do; he had already opened the page, and it would be foolish of him to give up now. He had retained the habit of seeing things through to the end from his teaching days. Even if it was complete nonsense.
He clicked on one of the stories — purely out of principle.
And, of course, from the very first chapters, the main character encounters the "system" of streaming, and immediately, without any prelude such as waiting for the word "accepted," he becomes a streamer. And then the usual adventures followed. He didn't read any further and opened another story, where the first pages told the backstory of the hero, and then how he became a streamer, thanks again to the "streamer system." The third story was no better. The hero died under the wheels of a truck and was "reborn" in a world where subscribers decide everything. The fourth described a guy streaming the apocalypse. The fifth was about some "commentator called from the future."
And there were all kinds of tasteless covers for these fanfics, although, to be honest, there were sometimes gems in this sea of monotony. Take the sixth one, for example: the cover depicted a pixelated goblin wearing headphones, and the title read "The Streamer System: I Am the King of Trolling in the Dungeon." He read the first couple of chapters and smiled — at least there was some humor. Moreover, as a lover of creative experimentation, he was satisfied.
If only a real writer, like J. R. R. Tolkien, Isaac Asimov, or Terry Pratchett, had taken on such a project... He would probably have come up with something exciting, logically connected, with vividly described worlds and characters, where every detail would have meaning. Much better than here, where it's just a continuous conveyor belt. He smiled, glancing at the screen again: humor was rare, but when it did appear, it was a small delight for the eyes. The authors tried to be original. Iniesta allowed himself a slight smile, as if acknowledging that in this sea of monotony, there were still rare gems worth noting, even if they couldn't change the overall picture.
Although he did not find a definitive answer to his ailment, thanks to what he had read, a variety of thoughts came to the surface of his consciousness. One idea in particular stuck firmly in his mind, occupying the top of the list of ideas on what to do with this "streamer flow." It suggested saying "accept." But first, he needed to pray in church, write a will, call the cops, doctors, a priest, and maybe even the fire department, just in case. Iniesta sighed heavily, imagining this panopticon of "precautionary measures," and smiled inwardly: "Well, yes, of course, before saying one fateful word, the whole city had to be aware of it."
Thoughts raced through his mind, and he understood the absurdity of the situation: the panel was neither God nor a court of law. And yet, the thought that the word "Accepted" could trigger something unknown kept him on edge. He ran his finger over his face again, as if checking to see if he was still in the real world and not in some fan fiction plot.
And if he turned out to be a character in some story, he wanted to believe that the author had a sense of humor and would not turn his story into a saga about a martyr who lost everything because of his visions.
"Okay," he muttered, exhaling heavily, "today I'll just work. And in the evening... in the evening we'll figure it out. We'll stick to the plan, old man."
With an effort, he returned to reality, clicked on the cross in the tab, and closed it completely. His fingers involuntarily ran over his face, and he decided to distract himself by continuing his work. He avoided the word "Accept" like the plague — God forbid this strange interface took it as an activation command. God knows what that might turn into later on .