He sat by the stream a little longer, waiting for his legs to stop shaking from the walk, and out of boredom he opened the chat again.
All Chat
xX_Reaper_Xx: ok but for real does anyone actually know how to fight yet or are we all just gonna die to a rabbit
Marisol.99: i saw a rabbit earlier it looked normal don't scare me like that
GhostPepper: nothing here is normal marisol we literally got isekai'd
Player4471: isekai'd 💀💀 bro really said that with his whole chest
Allen stared at the screen for a second, an idea forming that he didn't fully think through.
AllenPogi: guys I found the exit portal back to our world, its near a big rock, first one there gets it
The chat exploded almost instantly.
xX_Reaper_Xx: WHAT
Player4471: WAIT WHERE
Marisol.99: BIG ROCK WHERE ALLEN SAY MORE
GhostPepper: bro drop the coordinates right now I swear to god
xX_Reaper_Xx: ALLEN. ALLEN ANSWER US
Vincent123: Can't believe someone believe on that statement.
Vincent123 How come you're still with us? How could you know it's use when you haven't tested it?
Allen just watched the messages pile up, arms crossed, a small satisfied grin on his face he didn't even know he had.
"Big rock," he muttered to himself. "There's probably fifty big rocks in this jungle. Good luck."
Hotdog: hotdog
Player4471: HOTDOG NOT NOW
He closed the chat before anyone figured out he was messing with them, chuckling to himself for the first time since he woke up in this whole mess.
"That's for calling me old man earlier," he said, even though nobody in that chat actually had.
He was still smiling to himself, watching the chat scroll with panicked messages about the "portal," when a new name cut through the noise. Different tone. No caps lock, no emojis, nothing playful about it.
Faye_M: hey, sorry to kill the mood but does anyone actually know how to find food out here
xX_Reaper_Xx: lol just eat berries or smth, jungle's full of them
Faye_M: which ones though. i don't know which ones are safe and which ones will kill me. i've never done this before in my life
The chat went quiet for a second. Not empty, just quiet, the kind where you could tell people were reading and not sure what to say back.
xX_Reaper_Xx: I am sorry🫶
Marisol.99: ...oh
Faye_M: i worked at a call center. i don't know how to start a fire. i don't know what's safe to drink. i don't have some cool system item giving me free food or water, some of you clearly do based on what's being said here and i'm happy for you but
Faye_M: i genuinely don't know what i'm supposed to do when it gets dark
Allen's thumb hovered over the screen, the joking mood from a minute ago gone completely.
GhostPepper: hey it's ok, a lot of us are in the same boat, you're not alone in this
Faye_M: i know logically that's true but it doesn't really change anything does it. there's like hundreds of us in this chat and i still feel like i'm the only one who's gonna starve out here
Player4471: i mean i don't have a cheat item either. i just got dropped in a field with nothing
Player4471: it's scary not gonna lie. i keep thinking this is a fever dream and i'll wake up in a hospital bed
Faye_M: i hope you're right honestly. for both our sakes
Nobody typed anything for a while after that. Even Hotdog stayed quiet, which somehow made it worse, like even the one guy who said "hotdog" unprompted every five minutes understood there was nothing funny to add here.
Allen sat there by the stream, water still cold against his ankles, and looked down at the sealed spaghetti pack sitting in his lap. An hour ago it had felt like a stupid joke from a stupid floating screen. Now it felt like something he hadn't earned, sitting in his hands while some woman named Faye who used to work a call center job was somewhere out there trying to figure out which berries wouldn't kill her.
He didn't know her. Would probably never meet her. But something about reading it plain like that, no jokes, no username games, just a person scared and honest about it, sat heavy in his chest.
"Christ," he muttered, rubbing a hand down his face. "Some of us really did get thrown into this with nothing at all."
He didn't type anything back.
Didn't know what he would even say that wouldn't sound hollow coming from a man sitting next to an infinite pile of noodles. He just closed the chat, sat there in the quiet a little longer, and for the first time since waking up, the weight of where he was actually landed on him fully.
Not everyone got a spaghetti machine.
Some people just got dropped in a field with nothing but their own two hands and no idea what to do with them.
'But I do,' he thought.
He caught himself before the thought went any further, before his thumb even got close to typing it out in the chat for a few hundred strangers to see.
No. Not smart. Not smart at all.
He'd read enough books in his old life, watched enough of the news, to know exactly what happened to people who had something everyone else needed. It didn't stay a secret for long, and once it wasn't a secret anymore, people stopped seeing you as a person and started seeing you as a resource. Something to be found, followed, cornered. Used until there was nothing left to squeeze out of you.
He wasn't about to be somebody's walking noodle dispenser. Not for a whole jungle full of strangers he'd known for all of ten minutes.
But Faye. Just Faye, that was different.
He hovered over her name in the chat and hit whatever option let him send a friend request, unsure if he was even doing it right until a small notification popped up a second later.
[Faye_M has accepted your friend request.]
He blew out a breath. "Alright. Small steps, old man. Small steps."
He opened Friend Chat, the private one, and typed slower than he wanted to admit.
AllenPogi: hey. saw what you said in all chat. i got a little something that might help, nothing crazy, don't want the whole chat knowing though
Faye_M: oh? ok, i won't say anything
He thought about how to do this without just handing it over for nothing. If it came free, it'd raise questions he didn't want to answer.
Better to make it look like a normal trade, something plain and boring nobody would think twice about.
AllenPogi: I got spaghetti packs, i'll sell you 5 for the price of one rock
Faye_M: ...a rock
AllenPogi: yeah. a rock.
Faye_M: i mean, i have rocks. lots of them actually. there's rocks everywhere
AllenI: great. deal then
Before he could actually list it, he needed the packs sitting in his hand first. He thought the word again, the one he'd almost forgotten how he was even supposed to summon in the first place.
GGS.
The gold screen bloomed to life in front of him, warm and familiar now compared to the cold blue one from earlier. He tapped the glowing spaghetti pack icon once.
One pack dropped into his palm.
He tapped again.
Two.
He kept going, slow and deliberate this time, no repeat of the panic-holding incident from earlier that left him standing in a pile of noodles. Three. Four. Five.
He looked down at the small stack sitting in his hands, dry and sealed, completely ordinary looking despite where they came from.
"Alright," he muttered to himself, glancing between the packs and the Shop icon he hadn't touched yet. "Let's see how you actually work."