My daily life in various anime crossovers can't possibly be this sci-fi.

"Although I don't know if I'm qualified to say this, I hope that you, Jinghua-kun, can take this opportunity to become a little more confident from now on. Even someone like Lunye-kun, who's at the bottom of the class, can be so active. Why should someone like you, whose grades are in the middle to upper range, feel inferior? Jinghua-kun isn't Kong Yiji, you know. I think no matter what, you can at least get a Xiucai degree, right?" Kato Megumi's smile became even brighter.

"Kato-kun, why are you suddenly making jokes... I'm a little unaccustomed to this..." Jiang Jinghua's eyes darted around, as if he didn't dare to look directly at Kato Megumi's smile. "Besides, the kind of person I am..."

"The reaction is quite interesting," Kato Megumi thought.

what

Chapter 10, Section 10: What Happened on the Other Side

Nighttime, somewhere in downtown Tokyo.

"Sigh... I've told you so many times, you're not allowed to use sedation spells during training, but you just won't listen."

A blue-haired girl named Sonoda Umi was sitting on the edge of the bed, gently pressing on Kousaka Honoka, who was lying on the bed and groaning weakly, with her delicate hands covered in magic potion.

Umi frowned slightly, looking at Honoka's thigh muscles with worried eyes. The muscles were completely stiff and slightly red. She didn't know what had happened, but during rehearsals that morning, she suddenly had the "brilliant idea" of using a basic first-level illusion technique, a calming jutsu, to suppress her fatigue and thus train for an extended period. As a result, she trained continuously from 2:30 PM to 8 PM, without any breaks except for meals. The consequence of this was that Honoka, with her muscles overly fatigued, was now practically useless.

"Waaah, I... I was wrong, okay? I'll never do it again..." Honoka Kousaka's voice trembled with tears. Part of it was the guilt she felt, but the main reason was... it just hurt so much!

The pain, as if her entire body had been struck by a battering ram, was extremely unbearable for Honoka, who had already exhausted her magic power.

"Is Honoka alright?"

A girl named Minami Kotori peeked out from outside the door, her long, flaxen hair casually draped down her back.

Although they are all exceptionally beautiful girls, compared to Honoka's liveliness and cuteness and Umi's elegance and beauty, Minami Kotori has a more gentle and delicate feel.

“I treated it with simple treatments and medication, and I should be fine after a little rest,” Umi said.

"Honoka, it's great that you work hard, but you also need to take care of your health. Don't do anything silly like that again, even if it means risking your health, okay?" Kotori said from outside the door.

"I, I know! Don't all become like my mom!" Honoka shouted.

Umi and Kotori exchanged a smile. Although they were classmates, for some reason, being with Honoka gave them the feeling of raising a younger sister or even a daughter.

"Umi, could you get my phone for me? I need to distract myself with something weird... Ouch, that hurts..."

"Here, take it."

Since Honoka needs to stay as relaxed as possible, Umi doesn't care whether Honoka's behavior of lying down and playing on her phone will damage her eyesight.

"If you have any problems, just call us two, okay?" After saying this, Umi left the room.

"Okay, I understand!" Honoka replied.

Honoka Kousaka is currently staying at Kotori Minami's house. For the sake of convenience during rehearsals, the three of them have been staying at the same house recently, and Kotori's house, with its largest area and most rooms, has become the first choice. Although Honoka feels a little uneasy about living with Kotori's mother, who is also the school's chairperson, the comfortable bed in Kotori's house quickly makes her forget about it.

"Hey, there's new information, and it's even offline news..."

OffLINE, developed by the SCP Foundation's communications department, is a communication software exclusively for use by those within the SCP community. All content on it is protected with military-grade security and strictly confidential from the outside world. Therefore, those within the community can freely discuss topics that should not be known to outsiders, such as magic, alternate dimensions, super technology, and containment objects.

If someone messages you directly on offline, it must be something quite important.

The sender's nickname is "Jiang Jinghua".

Among Honoka's numerous LINE friends, honest people like Jiang Jinghua who directly use their real names as nicknames are extremely rare. Honoka opened the window and found that two messages had been sent from half an hour ago:

"Are you there?"

"Excuse me, could you please help me with something?"

……

So what the heck is this?! Honoka laughed.

First of all, what era are we living in with the "Are you there?" opening line? Who would use such an awkward opening line these days? The absurdity of this opening line is just as high as asking someone "Are you asleep?"

The second sentence is also, "There's something I need your help with," but what exactly is it? How am I supposed to know if I can help if I don't even know what it is?

According to industry practice when using LINE to send messages, meaningless opening lines like this should absolutely be avoided. Get straight to the point and don't waste each other's time.

However, for this honest man who uses his real name as a nickname, this way of speaking, which sounds very much like a virgin, doesn't seem strange at all...

"So, what's going on?" Honoka replied.

Surprisingly, Honoka received a reply just seconds later:

"Here's the thing: Have you heard of the Foundation's 2018 Fall Meme Contest? My club wants to create a text-based game as our entry for the contest. Currently, we lack a spellcaster who is skilled in music and has some illusion magic abilities, so I'd like to collaborate with you. If you don't have the time, please recommend some suitable candidates. We will pay a substantial fee and share the profits proportionally after the game's release."

He replied instantly... Did that guy wait in front of the screen for half an hour?

Immediately afterwards, another message came in, which was probably already typed in and was just being sent.

"I don't think we're very familiar with each other, so I'm very sorry to bother you with such trivial matters. I look forward to your reply."

Looking at the long passage of text on the screen, Honoka couldn't help but laugh out loud.

This person is really interesting! It's a text message from a social media app, but why is the wording so similar to a paper letter?

In this insane internet age, are there still such honest and kind people?

However, this formal tone did have some effect. Although Honoka had a lot to do recently and might not have enough free time, she also felt a little embarrassed to refuse this seemingly earnest and honest person in front of her.

"Hmm... I'm quite interested, but I've been very busy lately because I'm preparing for an expedition to another dimension. As for the person I know who's 'good at composing music,' they've also been very busy lately... so I'm sorry, I probably can't help them."

After that, Honoka added an emoticon that she thought was more appropriate.

"Okay, I understand. I'm sorry to bother you." That was the reply from the other side of the screen.

what

Is Chapter 11 of Section 11 going to be the pace of a Japanese light novel male protagonist?

The last time Honoka saw Jiang Jinghua was yesterday when she was working at the convenience store... In fact, that was the first time the two of them had met in real life; before that, they had only seen each other's photos. Honoka recalled.

As for when the two first came into contact, that dates back to some time ago. At the time, Honoka was wandering around a forum set up by the Foundation for spellcasters to exchange ideas, learn, chat, and joke around. She joined a discussion about the power of Evocation spells. Jiang Jinghua, this honest guy, even used "Jiang Jinghua" as his nickname on the forum… he was lucky not to encounter anyone with the same name. Since it was rare for someone to use such an obviously real-life name as a nickname online, Honoka paid special attention to his posts for some reason she couldn't quite explain.

As a result, Honoka discovered that Jiang Jinghua's insights into Evocation Magic were quite unique, giving her a refreshing feeling... Well, actually, that's not the case. As someone who majored in Illusion Magic and was also a science idiot, the only thing Honoka could glean from other people's perspectives was a feeling of "it seems interesting."

Because she thought it "seemed interesting," Honoka sent him a friend request and asked some rather strange questions, such as "If stars came to life and mastered the technology of using magic, what kind of moves would they use to fight?" or "What kind of society would it be if, from primitive times, the ruling class could completely control the ruled class with illusions?" It even included almost philosophical questions such as "What would the world and the magic system be like if the Cavalier constant in the Cavalier function were 3.7 instead of 2.7?"

However, to Honoka's surprise, no matter what strange questions she asked, Jiang Jinghua was generally able to give reasonable and logically consistent answers. Regardless of whether they were actually correct, they could at least be considered reasonable hypotheses. Some of them were even good enough to be disguised as authoritative papers on the mechanics of consciousness and used to fool ignorant people.

From then on, Honoka would often bother Jiang Jinghua with all sorts of random questions.

About a month later, Honoka had formed a basic impression of this guy: he probably loved reading science fiction (fantasy works based on existing theories of consciousness mechanics still fall under the category of science fiction), and he loved to daydream about unrelated things, which was quite similar to her own. However, judging from his social media activity, he never seemed to have the habit of chatting casually with people on social media, nor did he ever post updates. If he did message someone, it was always because he needed to contact them about something or discuss a very specific issue.

Honoka couldn't understand it. Just how strong a mind must someone be to endure the boredom of not posting anything for a week or even a month? Especially since they never post anything at all!

After replying "I understand," Jiang Jinghua did not respond again.

What a... I don't know what to say about him. He went offline immediately after we finished talking? Shouldn't he have taken the opportunity to chat a bit more to deepen the relationship? I guess that's what most men his age think, right?

"Wow! It really got back!" Honoka suddenly exclaimed.

"What a coincidence! I'm also going on an expedition to another dimension soon. What kind of other dimension are you going to?"

This sentence, even with punctuation, was only thirty-four characters long, and it took a full five minutes to complete the previous reply. If Jiang Jinghua wasn't a monster who could only type one word every ten seconds, then this was enough to show that he must have gone through a long internal struggle before sending the reply.

"It's a dimension themed around ship-mounted walkers. It's an old-fashioned theme, and there's nothing really strange about it. It's just a vacation to earn some credits on the side," Honoka replied.

Just then, Kotori suddenly walked in from outside: "Honoka, what did you just shout? What do you mean 'replied again'?"

"Nothing, nothing, I was just chatting on LINE with a virgin... no, someone I met online," Honoka said. "...Huh? This guy is also going to the Shipwalker-themed dimension, just like us, and his departure date is also two weeks from now, on Sunday!"

"Huh? Really?" Kotori curiously moved closer, lay down next to Honoka, and stared at the phone screen that Honoka was holding up.

"Wow, what a coincidence! Not only are we going to the same themed dimension, but we're also setting off on the same day!" Honoka sent out this message.

“Oh, right,” Kotori suddenly said, “this time we’re taking the other non-magical people from Muse with us, so there are nine of us in the team. I heard that the expedition team is sent out in groups of ten, which means we need one more person to join the team.”

The allocation of members within the student research team, except for those pre-arranged, is entirely random. This is also one of the foundation's methods to help young people broaden their social circles.

"...Why are you suddenly bringing this up? You wouldn't be thinking of saying..."

Honoka suddenly thought of a strange possibility... but no matter what, the probability of that was too small.

"Yes, yes. We're just one person short..." Kotori's face flushed slightly.

"How is that possible!" Honoka laughed. "The probability is too small! Besides, out of the ten people in the team, the other nine are all women except for him, and the plane they are going to investigate is also a plane with a large number of women. This treatment is too much like that of a light novel protagonist!"

However, with a "let's give it a try" attitude, Honoka still sent this message: "Since it's such a coincidence, what's your team number? Maybe we'll just be in the same team?"

……

"It's been so long... why haven't I received a reply yet?" Kotori felt inexplicably nervous.

"In my opinion, it's definitely because they casually wrote down the team number on some weird thing, so they're looking for the number now," Honoka asserted.

About four minutes after sending the reply, Jiang Jinghua finally found a piece of paper or something with the team number written on it, and then sent his own team number:

“KC2301-A-1721”.

……

“2301…A…1721…” Honoka’s expression became quite interesting. “Every number matches!”

"Huh? You...you actually?"

"Hurry up and check the team's personnel structure on the foundation's official website! Hurry, Kotori!"

what

Section 12, Chapter 12: This is the rhythm of a Japanese light novel male protagonist!

"..."

Facing the information bulletin board on the webpage, Jiang Jinghua was at a loss for words.

Even if the whole world conspired against him, SCIC's personnel arrangements would never do that. Therefore, it is now certain that he, Jiang, was indeed assigned to the same team as Honoka Kousaka, but that's not the real issue.

With the continuous advancement of technology, the price of interdimensional travel has become increasingly affordable. Even ordinary people with connections can buy a one-way ticket to a nearby developed interdimensional world for a fee of tens of thousands of yuan. Therefore, it's not just Honoka Kousaka and her friends in the industry who are going to this other world, but all nine members of her idol group, μ's.

As is customary, a squad is supposed to have ten members, and nine of them have already been taken. As for who the last one is... well, that goes without saying.

So where does this treatment, the same as that given to the male protagonist in light novels, come from?