CHAPTER 31: THIS REALM DOESN’T PLAY BY THE RULES

We were falling.

Not stumbling, not floating—falling. The kind where wind screams past your ears and your stomach bolts into your throat. I couldn’t scream. My brain was too busy flashing through every damn thing I hadn’t done.

I hadn’t ridden a dragon.

Hadn’t seen the ocean outside of a book.

Hadn’t held hands with a girl outside of battle or a healing spell.

Sure, I had a harem now, somehow—but could I really call any of them a real girlfriend?

Pathetic, I thought, flipping midair like a broken paper crane. This was not how I imagined dying in the elf realm. Not screaming, not even fighting—just dropping like a sack of meat into whatever lay beneath the clouds.

I turned my head mid-fall—and that’s when I noticed Rin.

She wasn’t screaming.

She wasn’t flailing.

Her silver hair danced in the air like it belonged to the wind, and her eyes—those weirdly calm violet eyes—were fixed on the ground... no, not the ground. The impact.

She looked like she was waiting for it.

"What the hell..." I muttered, voice shredded by the wind.

Akane floated ahead, eyes scrunched in concentration. She was the only reason we weren’t flat splatters on some glowing elf tree already. Her magic, her floatation spell, held just long enough for us to admire the world below:

Endless emerald forests glowing faintly from within, animals that looked like dragons crossed with deer, and floating lanterns bobbing through the air like jellyfish.

It was beautiful.

Terrifying.

Unreal.

Then, just as suddenly as it had saved us, Akane’s magic snapped.

"Crap!" she cried.

And we all plummeted.

Screams. Flailing limbs. A half-muttered spell from Ayame that sparked but fizzled. Mei was too shocked to blink. I braced. My life flashed again. Maybe this time it would show me something worth remembering.

But the impact never came.

We hit the ground. Or at least, we thought we did. But there was no pain. No broken bones. No splatter.

Just... grass.

Soft. Almost feathery.

I blinked. Everyone was sprawled across a glowing meadow, eyes wide, hearts racing, but very much alive.

"What...?" I started, still flat on my back.

A laugh echoed nearby.

Rin.

She was standing. Smiling. Actually laughing.

"With all the hours you nerds spent in the mansion’s library," she said, arms crossed, "none of you noticed the note about gravity in this realm?"

We all stared at her.

"What note?" Ayame asked, voice still trembling.

Rin tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Gravity in the elf realm doesn’t always exist. Depends on intent. This place runs on thought, not just physics."

Mei blinked. "So... we couldn’t have died?"

"Oh, you definitely could’ve," Rin said with a wink. "But not from that fall."

Silence.

I looked around at the strange plants glowing in the grass, the twin moons in the sky, the trees swaying without wind. And I realized something:

We weren’t just out of our depth.

We were in their world now.

No rules.

No guarantees.

Just magic—and a lot of very clever things ready to kill us if we weren’t careful.

And Rin?

She might be more at home here than the rest of us combined.

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The forest looked like it had been painted by a dream. Glowing mushrooms lined the roots of ancient trees, and golden pollen drifted in the air like snow caught in sunlight. After what felt like an hour of hiking—and several terrifying encounters with what might’ve been a laughing tree—we finally reached the stream.

Correction: a gorge disguised as a stream.

The water was crystal clear, almost too clear. It flowed gently at first, but then we saw it—all of it—curling downward into a waterfall that dropped straight into a misty abyss. No bottom in sight. No rocks. No ledges. Just... endless silver-blue nothing.

We stopped at the edge, breathing hard, soaking in the impossible sight.

"Well, crap," I said. "I vote we don’t die today."

"No bridges, no vines, and I’m not summoning anything after last time," Ayame muttered. "I still have feathers growing behind my ear."

I glanced at Rin, who had been unnervingly calm since we entered this realm. She knelt by the water, dipped her fingers in, and stared into it like she was listening to something we couldn’t hear.

"You’ve been acting weirdly knowledgeable about this place," I said, folding my arms. "Anything you want to share?"

She stood up slowly, brushing her hands on her skirt.

"I don’t go anywhere I don’t know something about," she said, cryptic as always. "But this? This place is... different. I’ve never been here. Still..." She narrowed her eyes. "Gravity doesn’t work right here. Why should buoyancy?"

Akane tilted her head. "So...?"

"So," Rin said, "if we didn’t die falling through the air, we probably can’t drown either. The logic follows."

"That is not logic," I said. "That’s the kind of math that gets people slapped."

No one moved. Mei stepped closer to the edge and peered down.

"I vote Ren tests the theory," she said, looking way too amused.

"I second that," Ayame said immediately.

"What?!" I backed up. "How am I always the test dummy?!"

"Rock-paper-scissors," Akane said, already holding out her hand.

My heart sank. I suck at that game.

Thirty seconds later, my loss was confirmed.

I stood at the edge of the stream, staring down at my shivering reflection.

"This is ridiculous," I muttered. "There are literally magical monsters, death traps, and gods somewhere out there, and this is how I die?"

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Look," I said, not turning. "Just give me a sec—"

And then I was falling again.

Someone had pushed me. Or maybe it was two someones.

My scream didn’t even have time to finish before—

Splash!

The water swallowed me whole. Cold. Too cold. It rushed over my skin like silk dipped in ice. I flailed for a second, waiting to sink, waiting for my lungs to fill, waiting to black out.

But I didn’t.

I blinked underwater, arms frozen mid-panic stroke. I wasn’t sinking. I wasn’t floating either. I was just... hovering. The water cradled me like a hammock made of light.

I opened my mouth—and realized I could breathe.

"What the actual—"

Then a face popped in above me, peering through the surface like a judge at a diving competition.

Rin.

She smirked. "Told you."

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