My name is Alice Kang. I'm 25, Korean-English, and work as an assistant in one of the world's largest companies. There is absolutely nothing special about me, except for the fact that my face is not very expressive. Most people call it "resting b**** face."
I call it, "don't f****** talk to me you **** *****."
Today, I'm waiting in my boss' room for reasons I have not been told. I hear that this usually means I'm about to be fired. I've never been fired before. I'm not sure why, exactly, I'm being fired, but I guess this will be a valuable experience for my future career.
Not.
I'm a secretary. Working for someone rich is about as good as it gets. And I don't plan on overstepping my bounds.
Still. Being stood up is never a good feeling. Even if the other guy is your boss. Maybe especially so.
I waited for exactly one hour and thirty-one minutes before he came in.
Immediately I stood up, my years of customer service training kicking in. The fake smile I put on was almost second nature at this point, after years of honing it on angry restaurant customers. Just remember; my feelings don't matter, just get the job done. Get it done, get it out, then drown in anime for a couple hours. The new episode of Chihayaf*ru is coming out tonight, just bear with it.
To be frank, I hated this job. Sure, some may say that it is a privilege to work with the world's largest business corporation. But the truth was, I had hated all of my jobs. I slogged through uni to get a degree in something I didn't like, then ended up being an assistant to people I hated. Honestly, the only reason I was doing this was because I needed money to live. And to pay off my student loans. And to pay for my manga obsession.
With that in mind, an opportunity like this only came once in a lifetime. After all, as far as I knew, all I had done was deliver some documents to him yesterday, before he suddenly asked me a bunch of questions and asked me to meet him here today. He couldn't be some pervert that got off to mundane office talk, could he? Ugh, that'd be creepy. Then again, most rich guys had weird tastes.
"Good morning, Mr. Hargreaves," I said, nodding politely.
"Feel free to sit," he said, walking over to his desk. "It's not like it'll matter anyway."
He was a weird one, Mr. Rupert Hargreaves. Even for rich people. At 27, he was already an accomplished businessman, recently absorbing his father's pharmaceutical company into his own, multi-billion dollar enterprise. Because Congo Prime wasn't a business, no. It was practically a nation to itself. A huge conglomerate that absorbed and assimilated all it liked, and left everything else to dry.
How someone could make such a large company like that at 27 was beyond me. He was just three years older than me, and I still have a hard time deciding what underwear to wear every morning.
But that wasn't the weird part. That was all normal for rich people. The weird part was his personality.
At first, he came off as every other rich person. To put it nicely, he "lived in the now." To put it not nicely, he looked down at everyone and didn't realize why that was a bad thing, since from where he's standing, it's a great view.
The thing was, he seemed very aware that this was his view, at least from the conversation yesterday. Nothing he said actually made it seem like that, it was more the way he said it. The way he asked questions, like he knew he was doing it from a place of privilege. The same went for how he casually asked me to come in today with no explanation. It was like he knew what kind of reaction he was going to get, but he insisted on doing it anyway, just for laughs.
It was annoying as hell.
"As I mentioned, I have a project I've been wanting to work on for quite a while now," he said dramatically, looking out the window behind him. The sun was already high in the sky, shining over the gray city below. I suddenly understood why he came in late; he probably wanted to sun to be in the right place for this dramatic reveal.
What a poser. I suppose I'll humor him.
During the conversation yesterday, we had ended up talking a lot about manga and anime. From what I gathered from that conversation, he had extremely basic tastes. I got the vibe that he liked strong, silent characters; especially females like that. With that in mind, I said nothing.
Maybe that's why I think he's different from other rich people. Because I know he's just another weeb.
"The plan is for me to become this world's Demon Lord," he went on. "I plan on using my considerable wealth to bring untold terrors. And you will help me with this."
Alright. A crazy weeb.
"Do you have any objections?" he said, finally turning around. I looked at him straight in the eye.
Honestly, this was better than I expected. I thought I was getting fired. Turned out he was promoting me. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.
Apart from being completely out of his mind, that is.
"If I did, you could just replace me," I said frankly. "There's no reason for me to say no."
He liked that answer. I could tell.
"What I want is someone loyal," he said. "Someone who will not question my orders, no matter what they are."
"Not even to clarify?" I said automatically.
He smiled at that.
"I don't expect you to read my mind, so I suppose it's only natural," he answered. Well, that was more reasonable than most rich people. Despite his literal craziness, I suppose he was pretty reasonable.
"In that case, what is your goal as a Demon Lord?" I asked.
"To bring my friends over from the world I came from," he said.
Riiiight. May need to rethink "reasonable."
"How?" I asked. It's not like it mattered if he was crazy or not. As long as I got paid for the work I did, I didn't care if he thought he was the second coming of Jesus Christ.
"Let me show you," he said, snapping his fingers.
The world twisted in on itself, the space between particles folding. I couldn't breathe. I was nothing and everything, and the world passed at the speed of light behind my eyes, racing towards it's destruction before I could open my mouth to scre-
And I was me again. I was me again, sitting in the same chair as before, but in the middle of a large, open space. Pillars of copper rose up to hold up a ceiling I couldn't see, and a path of white light stretched out in front of me, into the distance, towards a dark tunnel.
"I've prepared a presentation," he said, walking forward as if nothing unusual happened. "Come along."
I felt my body move, but my mind was still in shock. What the hell just happened? How did we get here? Where was here? What the heck was all that just now? I looked at the back of the man leading me towards the tunnel.
Who the hell was this man?
"I may have not mentioned, but that was only because it seemed more believable to show, rather than tell," he started. "I am a mage."
A mage. Well that explains things.
It also didn't explain anything.
"A mage?" I managed to say. I was surprised at how normal my voice sounded. It was almost like I was commenting on the décor or something.
"Someone who can use the natural magical energy in the world," he explained. "Where I'm from, we're more common. Here on Earth, not so much. I actually have yet to meet another mage here."
"That seems about right," I said.
We walked in silence towards the tunnel for a little longer.
"I'm surprised you don't have any more questions," he said, still not looking at me. "I was expecting a bigger reaction."
He sounded like he was complaining. I fought the urge to yell at him. After all, he was still my boss.
"Well, I am currently rethinking my entire belief system right now, so I am in a little bit of shock," I admitted. "I think I just need a little time to adjust."
"Really? It doesn't seem like it."
"Still waters run deep," I quoted.
"I suppose so," he mused.
A pause.
"I must say," he said. "Whatever I was expecting from you, it wasn't this reaction. You are full of surprises, Ms. Kang."
I bit back a laugh. Yes, I was the one who was full of surprises here. Not the literal mage from another world.
We reached the cave, and kept walking. The path was lit up, but to the sides was complete darkness. I wondered if there even was a ground beneath us, or if we were walking on pure light in an abyss. Cause that was a thing that seemed possible now.
"As I mentioned, I am not from this world," he said, waving a hand. On the right, a grassy plain with a castle in the distance appeared. It looked like a painting, except for the fact that the grass was moving, as were the clouds. Maybe a really large video?
No, wait, magic was a thing now. Maybe it was just a piece of the world recorded and reproduced. For some reason, that felt like the most likely answer.
"In that world, I was known as the Mage King," he continued. "Long story short, I was overthrown."
He waved his hand, and the scene changed to show a bloody battlefield. It was surprisingly similar to movies, with the exception that there were also giant monsters roaming the fields, stepping on people and razing the earth with breaths of fire and ice.
It was horrifying.
"Of course, I had contingencies," the scene changed to show an old study room, filled with books. A sweaty and bloodied man burst into the room with a torch, took one look at the papers, and set it all on fire.
"Son of a-" he swore, suddenly. I looked up at him to see him looked incredibly annoyed.
"They burned it?" he said, completely off topic now. "It took me centuries to build up that library, and they burned it? Philistines..."
I snorted. I couldn't help it. After all he's shown me, he got annoyed that someone burned his library in another world. It was all I could do to stop myself from falling to the floor in a fit of giggles.
Cool. Calm. Composed.
Be the person he wants me to be. Become someone who wouldn't be phased by this.
But as I calmed myself, I a little voice in my head asked:
'Why? Why are you trying to be someone he wants you to be? Why do you want to be his assistant?'
"...anyway," he went back to his presentation, showing the library in its former glory.
"I had contingencies. That is to say, I planned to be reborn as a baby, and start all over. However...things went slightly awry," he waved his hand again, and the picture changed to show two planets. One was definitely the Earth, while the other was a greener planet.
"Somehow, I ended up here instead of on my own planet," he explained. "From what I gather, this seems to be a completely new dimension, rather than simply another planet. It seems I did not have all the information about the cycle of energy to properly root myself in my home dimension when I devised my reincarnation spell."
The planets turned and diagrams of magical circles and symbols all started to appear around them. All complete gibberish to me, but probably very impressive to an actual mage.
"In any case, I was reborn here, in a dimension with more magical energy than my last world, and absolutely no other mages," he said, snapping his fingers. With that, we were once again plunged into darkness.
He turned to face me.
"I could do anything I wanted, and no one could stop me," he said, looking at me straight in the eye.
I forced myself to keep a calm face. If his goal was to intimidate me into not opening my mouth to anyone else, then he accomplished it. There was no way I could tell anyone about this without sounding completely crazy anyway.
"What do you want?" I asked, as calmly as I could.
He grinned. That was the right question.
"Such world full of magic and power...how could I not share it?" he said, turning back to the darkness. He waved a hand, and the monsters from before appeared.
"I want to share this world with my friends, those people I left behind in my old world," he said.
We watched the models of the monsters turn around for a bit. There were seven of them, all different in their own way. Very much like the underlings of a Demon Lord.
"How can I help?" I asked.
For the first time, he looked genuinely surprised. I was also surprised by my question.
But also, I wasn't.
Wasn't this exactly what I wanted? Something exciting? Something that would actually have an impact on the world?
An opportunity like this only came once in a lifetime.
"What makes you think I need your help?" he asked. Typical rich person. Always so arrogant.
"Well, I suppose you may have just brought me here to tell me about your plans, just so you have someone to share with," I said, "but that doesn't explain the promotion. You need me for something. Probably something you could do yourself, but you'd rather not bother with."
I lay on the flattery at the end, just to sweeten it. He noticed, and grinned.
"Very good Ms. Kang," he said. "I have no way to refute your logic."
He then went on to describe his plan as I listened, keeping my face completely devoid of emotion.