Naofumi Iwatani was just an ordinary run off the mill otaku. That’s what he says so we will take his word for it. Not much happened in his life on a daily basis. He’s average day consisted of going to school (of course), playing some online DND game that’s name I don’t really know, and sometimes venturing out to the local 7/11 to buy snacks and GQ magazines to gaze at. 
 He lived with he’s little brother whose “life he turned around” ,to say so in his own words and god knows who else because there wasn’t any mention of any of his other family members. To sum it up, he was living a very slow and stagnant life which promised him nothing more then a slow, stagnant future. That is until one evening as he sat playing his DND game and chatting with he’s friends who shared the same guild as him on the game, one of them slid into his DMs with an offer he couldn’t refuse.
 “You mean to tell me some magical book at the library is my key to becoming a king in some fairy tail land like one of those isekai mangas? If you weren’t my friend I would tell you to f- off”, he replied to his friends preposterous claim.
 “I’ve done it myself. I’m not lying to you”, his friend replied.
 “Then why didn’t you stay there and become king yourself? And how did you get back afterwards? You just told me that once you cross over into this world you can’t come back. It’s like dying.”
 “I found a way back by some miracle I got that y princess to send me back but now I’m not allowed there anymore so the book is useless to me that’s why I’m offering it to you. You said yourself that you felt that your life was not going anywhere and that you were even contemplating suicide.”
 Naofumi remembered that day he had confessed to this particular friend of his and no one else in the guild that he did have any desire to live anymore and that he hated himself and felt as if his existence was meaningless. Remembering this humbled him a little bit and made him more open to hearing his friend out on what he had to say (as wild as it sounded).
 “Okay, But I still have questions. First of all, you told me that you’ve never been to Japan in your life, right?”
 “Yes I haven’t. I live and have lived my entire life in Chicago, Illinois.”
 “I and you had the book once and are claiming to have used it, so I take it that it’s with you right?”
 “It was once but recently I’ve had it shipped to Japan and it’s now being held in the library near where you live.”
 “I’ve never told you where I live and if you’re trying to be scary it’s not f**king working.”
 “I’m not trying to scare you. Just listen to my instructions and go to your local library. I guarantee you you’ll find it there. It’s a read book with no title. It’s cover and binding is red canvas with the golden words embossed on them reading ‘Orange Tree’. That’s not the name of the book so you can’t just go to the front desk and ask for the book. There’s no record of the book in their database and, like I mentioned earlier, the book has no title. You must look through the shelves yourself till you find it.”
The very thought of this frustrated Naofumi and left him with even more questions.
“Someone else probably already found it by now! A book with no title that’s a flashy colour like red is gonna stand out! F**k it.”
“Believe me, no one is going to find it but you. They won’t even see it on the shelf, only you will. And it won’t take you very long to find it either. It’ll almost be as if the book will find you.”
Naofumi was starting feel as if this person he’d known since last and thought he could trust, didn’t see him as very intelligent which saddened him a little. He began to backtrack through all their past conversations they had had and wonder what he might have said to him that would lead him to believe that he was light headed and lived in a fantasy world. He couldn’t think of anything. So what was this guys deal then? Was his friend really crazy?
 “I don’t know about this, really”, Naofumi replied. He leaned back in his desk chair and stretched out his arms.
 “Imma log off now. I think this is enough internet for me today.”
 “Log off the and sleep on it. It wouldn’t hurt to just go to the library and give it a try anyway.”
      After Naofumi read this, he instantly began to feel sleepy. Although, he had slept a full 8 hours the night before and it was only 2 o clock in the evening, it felt as if he hadn’t slept in a week. His shoulders and head felt as if an obese hippo was piggybacking on him. He struggled to keep his eyes open as he stared at his bed wondering if he should lay down for a while. Maybe he had caught the flu at school and it was just now taking a effect on him. In the back of his mind, he new he also needed to urinate but the bed was looking a hell of a lot more inviting to him then the bathroom. 
     Without any further hesitation, he flopped belly first down on his bed. As he laid there on his stomach, he turned his head to the right and noticed that his phone was lying on the bed next to him. “So that’s where I left it”, he said to himself before falling in to a deep sleep. That’s when had the dream, that had him believe in the magical book his friend was talking about.
                                                                                     The dream:
 Naofumi was descending the staircase which lead to the underground train station. For some reason, he didn’t seem to notice that there was no train station where he live that was below ground. Something about seemed right, so he did not hesitate to descend down the dark staircase. Naofumi was the kind of guy to hold on to the guardrail of any staircase he used. Some people don’t. They’re more afraid of germs then falling down a staircase. He wasn’t one of them and so he kept his left hand lazily on the guardrail that separated the staircase. He flinched and nearly fell forward when his left hand was suddenly resting on thin air. When he looked over to where the guardrail should have been, he saw that it had ended in the middle of the staircase.
Up ahead the staircase seemed lead to a station that wasn’t lit with the conventional fluorescent tube lights he was so used to. The light looked warmer, more amber coloured. It was almost like it was lit by oil lamps. Maybe it was. 
  The lack of a guardrail and the change in lighting made him hesitant to go any further. For someone who felt out of place in the modern world, he sure did enjoy his modern day world conveniences. Bright lights and safety regulations. However, as hesitant as he was to go forward, he continued to descend the staircase anyway. He felt as if turning around would somehow disappoint his friend who had told him about the magical book. Though why that was, he couldn’t exactly say. He simply followed his feelings and carefully went forward on his journey.
   The train station was massive. It’s arched ceiling was at least three stories high. The platform looked to be as long as a large football field. Although, he couldn’t  see or hear any trains yet, judging by the size of the two arched train tunnels, he could deduct that they to must be at least three times the size of the ordinary Japanese electric trains he was used to. Another thing he noticed about this station was the sudden ringing noise in his ears as he entered it. He’s ears, being so used to the constant but unnoticeable buzz of technology in his day to day life that it took some time for them to get used to this new environment. However, once the ringing subsided, he loved the feeling of peace this quietness gave him. Curiously, he looked around.
   The platform was separated by two foot tall metal pegs linked together by a long, thick chain of pure gold. That was a foot ball fields length of gold chain unguarded though Naofumi wasn’t going to steal it. He didn’t really value gold and wealth in general. There was something more he wanted but couldn’t yet figure out what it was. As his ears adjusted to their new environment, he noticed a sound at the very opposite end of the platform. It was the sound of water dripping as if someone had left a sink facet on. Apparently the place was so quit and empty that even a drop of water could be heard from far away. Hearing this, however, made him realise he needed to urinate so he travelled towards the source of the sound figuring that where there sink facets their must also be toilets. “At least, there’s running water here”, he joked to himself.
“If not, I’ll just piss on the floor. No one is here to see.”
   As he followed alongside the gold chain he kept his left hand on it. It was the only thing he had to hold on to in this unfamiliar place. But just like the guardrail to the staircase earlier, it failed him. Halfway across the platform his left hand touched nothing. When he looked over to see why, he saw that although the supporting pegs went on, someone had severed the gold chain. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something about this made him uneasy. He felt someone’s hatred for a connection this chain provided. Rather then coiling up the rest of the chain and putting it away where it would remain intact for later use maybe, it was strewn haphazardly across the platform. He decided to keep going forward. His friend would be proud.
    When he reached the end of the platform, he found a that there was in fact a bathroom, much to his relief. It must have been a uni bathroom because there was only one(at least as far as he could tell). When he pushed upon the bathroom door carefully he was not surprised to see that it was a single stall bathroom. What surprised him was the fact that it was really clean for a public bathroom. It was lit by an old fashioned lightbulb that looked like the kind of thing he would only see in some polished bathroom in some movie about the 1920s. But it worked so he wasn’t going to complain. It was when he saw the toilet that he began to feel uneasy. The sort of uneasiness he had felt earlier at the sight of the severed gold chain. 
    The toilet looked to be in perfect working condition as well as clean. It was not the toilet so much as the graffiti on the tank that bothered him. It was of the disembodied eyes of a woman crying. Underneath that someone had written something in a language he didn’t know along with an arrow pointing to the toilet bowl. Naofumi figured he’d hold his pee. He didn’t want to have anything to do with that toilet at all. Zipping up his pants he left the bathroom.
   He had only been out of the bathroom for 30 seconds when a thunderous rattle split the unnervingly quit air causing him to nearly urinate on himself sooner. Even before turning around he knew that this was the sound of the train. Just as he had suspected it was massive and, judging by its design, was most likely not an electric train. The conductors car door slid open and the conductor leaned out and shouted “All aboard!!”. Naofumi felt irritated for some reason by the loud noise of both the train and the conductor. He was never bothered by sounds before in his life until now and he didn’t know why. It was almost as if things just sounded different in this place. More screechy, more high.
  Without hesitation he ran into the first open passenger car he saw. If the conductor yelled one more time, he was sure his ears would start bleeding. As soon as he entered the door slammed behind him at full force, the sound ringing in his ears and causing him to see sparks. “Damn, this person has anger issues!”, he said to himself before yet another iron door, this time a bit smaller though, was flung open brutally and slammed shut. It was the door that lead from the conductors car to the passengers car and he saw the conductor up close for the first time - she looked “y”.
 The conductor held a baton with a tasseled handle that was dark blue like her uniform. She held it with both her hands across her chest as if she was just about to use it and just stood their saying nothing like some sort of NPC. The erratic and uneasy energy he was feeling earlier on the platform was strong in the train car and he was now pretty sure he’d found the source of it. He laughed to himself. She didn’t seem as scary as her aura and, although was sure what that baton she held was capable of, he was pretty sure he could take her down in a fight. He decided to ask her a few things, mainly questions about the train car because after seeing it he had a lot of them. 
“Umm, where do I sit because there’s no seats in here?”, he asked. It was true there weren’t any. Neither were there poles or handles to hold on to. It looked more like a cargo crate then a passenger car.
 “We don’t do that anymore”, she replied in a loud, cold voice full of harshness and authority.
 “What do you mean ‘you don’t do that anymore?’”.
 “The worlds a cold, empty place!! No one gives a f**k about you so your gonna have to give a f**k about yourself! Look out for your own safety from now on! That shouldn’t be hard for you since you’re a big hero!”
 “What are you talking about?”
 She turned around and began to slowly and carefully walk back towards the conductor car door all the while holding her baton like a tightrope walkers stick for balance because there was nothing to hold on to. Naofumi was not going to let her just walk out on him like that. The hell if she was the conductor, he was scared, he had questions, and he needed to get off now! He stumbled towards her and reached for her elbow. She saw his reflection in the window of the door and jumped away from him as if he were a leper.
  “No”, she said as she wagged her finger at him. “Not this time. You can’t hold my hand anymore.”
 “What are you talking about?”, he asked. 
 “You might wanna sit down before the train starts”, she said changing the subject.
 “It’s gonna be going fast.”
Before he could say anything smart the door slammed again and she was gone. Well, not gone but he just couldn’t reach her. “”, he mumbled under his breath as he sat down on the floor. It was then that he noticed how cold the train was inside. It felt as if he was sitting in a freezer box. He also noticed that it stank as well. It smelled like the meat freezer at his local supermarket. This was definitely a cargo train, he thought. It had to be. His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a strong force which pulled him back and slammed him into the hard metal door that lead to the next passenger car so fast that he didn’t realise it happened until it was over. The train had started and it was going fast. Faster then he expected it to. 
  For some reason it slowed down for a little while the way a rollercoaster would right before barrelling down a steep slope. It gave him enough time to hobble towards the conductors car door hoping that by some miracle he could get her to stop. There was a sharp pain in his chest and, judging by the taste of blood in his mouth and the amount of blood that he had spit up on his hoodie, he was sure he broke something. He had also wet himself.
 Right before the train sped up again he managed to catch a glimpse of the conductor through the window of her car door. He thought that surely she to should be suffering, but what he saw instead angered him. Not only did the sped of the train seem to be having no effect on her car to the point that she was able to stand up without a care, she wasn’t even touching or paying attention to the controls. She stood with her back turned to them as she gazed fondly at her own reflection in a decorative hand held mirror. She kissed it so passionately as the train sped up.
 Naofumi woke up in his urine soaked bed enraged and sweating but relieved to find that it was all just a dream. However, the relief didn’t last long when he hard his friends voice over the webcam. Apparently, he was so tired that he had left his computer on. He also heard the voice of a girl he new from the guild that was simping hard for him chime in to.
“Are you okay, b- I mean, are you okay?” She asked with much concern in her voice nearly calling him baby by accident.
 “You were screaming in your sleep and saying ‘Stop, stop!’”, his friend added.
When he stood up, the girl blushed. She could see the wet spot on his pants.
 “Sorry guys but I’m gonna have to let you go for now”, Naofumi explained
 “Okay”, his friend agreed.
 “Understandable”, replied the girl.
 With that, Naofumi shut down his computer. As the room became quit, he flinched. From the bathroom in his very own home he heard the dripping of water. Enraged by the sound, Naofumi charged through the hallway and shoved open the bathroom door.
“There you are, you !”, he growled “I’m gonna kill you this time I swear.”
He felt bad when he saw that the bathroom was empty. Neither was there any water dripping from any of the facets in the bathroom. When he left the bathroom and walked into the kitchen, his heart sank when he discovered the source of the offending sound. It was the coffee machine. His bedroom was upstairs how could he have heard it from there.

                                          To be continued.