The office lights were still on.
That alone was enough to tell Yuta Tamura everything he needed to know about his life.
It was past ten at night. Most of the city outside had already begun to slow down, neon signs flickering with tired persistence, trains running half-empty. Inside the building, keyboards clacked like insects trapped in glass. The air smelled faintly of instant coffee and recycled exhaustion.
Tamura stared at his monitor, eyes dry, mind hollow. Rows of numbers blurred together, meaningful only to people who would never touch them again once they became reports. His shoulders ached. His wrists felt numb. The clock in the corner of the screen ticked forward with quiet cruelty.
"Just finish this," he muttered. "Then you can go home."
He had said that every night for years.
Tamura was not outstanding. Not incompetent either. He was the kind of employee companies loved: quiet, reliable, and incapable of saying no. He stayed late when asked. He covered shifts when needed. He absorbed extra work without complaint. Promotions passed him by, but responsibilities did not.
At some point, he had stopped expecting anything else.
When he finally shut down his computer, the office was almost empty. Only a few silhouettes remained—people just like him, faces lit pale by screens, slowly aging in real time. Tamura grabbed his bag, bowed lightly to no one in particular, and stepped out into the night.
Cold air hit his face.
For a moment, he felt almost alive.
He took two steps onto the crosswalk.
Then there was a horn. Too close. Too loud.
Light swallowed everything.
Tamura did not wake up screaming.
He woke up confused.
There was no pain. No hospital ceiling. No smell of disinfectant. Instead, there was warmth—strange, all-encompassing warmth—and a sensation he could not immediately process, like floating without water.
Am I… alive?
Thoughts came slowly, as if filtered through something thick. He tried to breathe and realized he did not have lungs. He tried to move his arms and found none. Panic flared for less than a second before something else crashed into his awareness.
Wait.
This feeling…
Memory surged forward, not his own at first. A name. A workplace. A familiar face.
Mikami Satoru.
Tamura's thoughts froze.
"No way," he thought—or rather, the concept of thinking formed without sound. "No way. No way no way no way."
Understanding clicked into place with terrifying speed.
This body was human. This environment was real. And the man whose memories brushed against his own was someone Tamura knew very well—not personally, but obsessively.
Tensura.
His heart should have raced. If he had a heart.
He had reincarnated.
Not just into another world—but into that world. His favorite fantasy. The one he had read from web novel to light novel, the one he rewatched whenever life became unbearable. The story he knew inside and out.
And he wasn't even the protagonist.
"I'm Tamura," he realized, stunned. "The junior at the office. Mikami Satoru's kohai."
Excitement surged, overwhelming logic. All the exhaustion of his past life cracked like old paint. This was a miracle. A reward. A second chance crafted precisely for him.
No more overtime. No more meaningless deadlines. A fantasy world where power mattered, where knowledge of the future was king.
I can survive this. I can enjoy this.
Footsteps echoed nearby.
Tamura turned—and saw him.
Mikami Satoru stood there, ordinary as ever. Middle-aged, polite, faintly awkward. The man who, in another few minutes, would die and be reborn as Rimuru Tempest.
Tamura opened his mouth to speak.
That was when the knife flashed.
Pain returned to the universe.
A sharp, burning pressure tore through his side. He barely had time to register Mikami's shocked expression before a second impact struck him, colder, deeper. The world tilted. Sounds stretched and distorted.
"So this is how it happens," Tamura thought dimly, collapsing. "Right on schedule."
Blood pooled. Life drained. Fear never came.
Instead, there was a strange calm.
If this follows the story… then the next time I wake up…
Darkness closed in.
And then—
He fell.
Not downward, but inward, compressed into something small, formless, and vast at the same time. When awareness returned, it did so all at once.
He was in a cave.
Cold stone. Echoing silence. Magic saturated the air like pressure.
And beside him—another presence.
"Senpai?" Tamura thought instinctively.
A familiar voice answered inside his mind, startled and alive.
"Tamura-kun?"
Understanding settled between them without explanation.
They had both made it.
Reborn in the Cardinal World.
As slimes.
Tamura might have laughed if he could.
This time, he thought, I'm not working until I die.
Unseen by anyone else, something stirred deep within his soul.
[Daily Sign-In System initialized.]
[Welcome back.]
Tamura smiled—quietly, dangerously.
The world had no idea what it had just allowed to exist.