Joji came up from darkness. His throat burned. His tongue tasted of bile and cheap liquor.
He drew in air, and it scratched on the way down. When he opened his eyes, he went still.
The bed was not his. The room was not his.
Thick curtains hung in gaudy folds, heavy enough to smother daylight.
A chandelier sprawled above him like a jeweled spider, all glass and gold.
Even the air smelled luxurious oils not familiar to his nose.
His head throbbed. Not just pain. Pressure.
As if someone had wedged a second skull inside his own and it was trying to hatch.
Then the memories hit. Joji, a name strikingly similar to his.
Sword drills. The weight of a blade that belonged to hands younger than his.
A father heroic laughter. A mother correcting his stance with a touch that felt like home.
Most important of all, the supernatural here seemed to spring from a single word.
Jobs.
Still, that alone clarified nothing. His memories of Earth still ruled his sense of reality.
Joji swallowed, and the room tilted a little. He breathed in and out until the tilt slowed.
He pushed himself upright. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and his feet found a floor that was cold and polished smooth.
A mirror stood near the wardrobe. He stared at it as if it might bite him. The face looking back was strikingly familiar.
His face, only younger. No wrinkly lines near the eyes. His hair. Still shaved clean.
Joji yanked off his shirt and stared. His torso was sculpted.
He traced the muscle with his hands, admiring its shape. It was far better than what he had before.
Then a sharp panic hit Joji. He shoved his pants down and leaned in to inspect it up close.
The thing between his legs came into view. He exhaled hard, relief mixing with disbelief.
"Still big in here," he murmured.
The question sounded ridiculous the moment it left his mouth. The room offered no answer.
Joji dragged his pants back up and crossed to the curtains. The fabric resisted him, thick and stubborn in his grip. Then he pulled it aside, and light spilled in.
Below, a training yard stretched wide. Men traded blows with swords, their strikes ringing on steel, their bodies shielded by thick armor made of iron.
Younger trainees swung wooden swords in synchronized lines, their voices rising together with each strike.
Further off, a man raised his staff and drew flame from thin air, while a woman gathered mist and shaped it into ice.
Their attacks collided in a violent explosion as the two battled in the sky.
"Such amazing CGI," he whispered, swallowing hard as his eyes stayed fixed on them. "Is this a dream? I better wake the hell up."
He let the curtain fall back into place, and the room dimmed once more.
Then he lay back on the bed and tried to sleep. A long nap claimed him at last, and when he woke, thirst was the first thing he felt.
The memories of the body he had inhabited still swam through his head, leaving him dazed.
"I'm this guy now, aren't I?" Joji's brow tightened. "Transmigration... is that what this is?"
He had read a few of those novels before. At the time, he thought they were too slow, too easy, too full of wish fulfillment and too empty of consequence.
He had dropped most of them halfway through. Now all he could do was swallow the bitter regret of not reading more.
His eyes moved over the room again, searching for clues.
He stood and paced, bare feet whispering over the floor.
The new memories kept nudging at him, trying to settle into place.
Titles. Names. Faces.
Daisy Everhart. His betrothed.
Duchess Rosalind. His stepmother and mother-in-law.
Then the memory came back to him. An argument between the original owner of this body and the duchess.
A dream. A disagreement. Dangerous ideas. To break away from the kingdom. To carve out an independent state.
That had been the last thing the real Joji pursued before he drank himself into ruin.
Joji clutched his head. Even the screen name he had once used as an adult actor had become real here. Joji Sins of Crossroad.
He tried to think like a man in trouble, not a man in a story.
Then something glimmered in his vision. Not in the room. In his eyes.
Letters hung in the air as if the world had decided to write him a note.
{Sir Engine Initializing...}
Joji froze. His stomach tightened.
{Sir Engine had, at long last, found one. A true gentleman.}
{He shows due respect to peers of every color and every choice of gender.}
{Unshaken by lascivious conduct, and able to discern the beauty within one's heart.}
Joji stared at the floating words.
"What's this, some fancy-ass prompt or something?"
He jabbed at the air, half expecting a menu to pop or a button to click.
It felt like trying to grab smoke. Another line appeared.
{Advancement of Sir Engine's Synchronicity with its Host - 52%}
Joji blinked. The number sat there like it meant something. The words shimmered again.
{Advancement of Sir Engine's Synchronicity with its Host - 67%}
{Advancement of Sir Engine's Synchronicity with its Host- 100%}
{Sir Engine has, at last, successfully synchronized with Host Joji of Sin's Crossroads, formerly known as Jonathan Simons.}
Joji knew this was beyond modern technology. He forced himself to calm down as best he could.
This thing knew his real name, and by then he was already beginning to accept that this was his new reality.
He wanted a family, something he had never truly had before, and now he stood here armed with all the experience he had carried into old age.
The thought made his lips slowly spread into a wide grin.
"Goodbye, old me. Hello, pretty fiancée," Joji said excitedly.
"Now this is supposed to work like a game or VR, right? I'm pretty good with that."
Then two interfaces appeared before him. They looked like the kind of screen that asked a man to choose his difficulty, though both carried their own sort of menace.
{Sir Honorable}
{Sir Risqué}
The figure at the top, Sir Honorable, looked like a veteran carved out of war itself.
His white armor was dented, scarred, and stained, as if he had walked through countless battlefields and come out of each one blooded but unbroken.
The man below was something else entirely.
Black hair slicked back, a neat mustache, and not a scrap of cloth over his upper body, he carried the same shameless air Joji knew too well in himself.
There was something smug about him, something that seemed forever on the verge of bad decisions.
He looked less like a hero and more like trouble given form.
That being said, he was no impulsive youth who would charge ahead and click before knowing what he was getting into.
"Hello? Can you talk? Is there anyone there who can help me figure out how to use you?" he asked.
{I am Sir Engine. I shall speak plainly, so sharpen your wits, for I will say this but once.}
{I, Sir Engine, urge you to make full use of me and thereby gain greater power in this new world.}
{Sir Honorable is a path you may choose should you wish to undertake battles, trials, and the forging of camaraderie.}
{Sir Risqué is a path of carnal desire, clandestine trysts, unspoken throes, and secret rendezvous with one's lovers.}
{I, Sir Engine, do vow and swear that no mission shall transgress your bottom line, whether as a man or in regard to your future aspirations. Quite the contrary. I shall aid you in bringing them to fulfilment.}
{Once you have chosen a side, a mission shall be issued at once, and there shall be grave consequences should its required conditions not be met.}
{A gentleman of your standing may also undertake missions from both sides. Sir Honorable and Sir Risqué shall never issue you two missions at the same time.}
Joji found the introduction a little cheesy, but he had to admit it was thorough.
This was no sloppy program cobbled together by teenagers in the nineties.
Still, he was not about to be fooled by polish alone.
Something like this had to want something in return.
"What do you gain from all this?" Joji asked. "You keep saying all the right things, so of course you must be getting something out of it too."
The screen answered at once, as if it had been waiting for the question.
{We are but a circle that never formed any formal order, nor any true conglomerate of note. We merely rose to a certain height and, having done so, resolved that we might help a worthy man ascend to our station.}
{Your deeds upon Earth did not go unnoticed. Though you squandered wealth upon luxury, half your fortune was spent supporting young people across the globe, with you purchasing goods for them directly rather than sending coin through dubious charities. That brought genuine aid to others, and even advanced your world by a small measure.}
{When you died, you left trust funds for children suffering from cancer and for those in need of help with their schooling.}
{Some might even call you a saint, considering that this wealth was earned through the selling of your own body.}
"What is it you really need from me?" Joji asked.
{For now we would simply make of you a friend to come. An addition to our company. There is no compulsion in this. At present, we are merely taking a wager. We admire your character, nothing more.}