Vape Shop Isekai: A Retail Manager’s Guide to a Stolen World

“So, you finally told her?” Simone asked as they trekked down the old trade road running through the Moist Forest.

“Yeah,” Mark replied. “I never realized that I gave off creep vibes.”

“I mean…” Simone scratched beneath her arm and looked at Mark’s ironic trucker hat, today saying Busier Than a Cucumber in a Women’s Prison. “I don’t think so.”

“Yeah…I…” Mark trailed off.

“What’s up?” Simone pried.

Mark shook his head and shrugged. “Nothing. Let’s just get this thing and get out of here.”

Simone stopped. “It’s not nothing, Mark.”

“Well…” They paused. “It’s just that…when you kissed me—”

“I didn’t kiss you!” Simone’s eyes went wide, and her fingers dug into her underarm to scratch. “You kissed me!”

“How did you know?” Mark kept moving forward.

Simone’s gears turned. “How did I know…oh. Oh! Umm…there was a lot of stuff. But I would say the biggest thing was that even in a conversation like this with any other human…I felt wrong. Why?”

Mark started walking again, keeping their head down. “Like…can you be specific?”

Simone walked beside them, contemplating. “Dysphoria is very bad. I don’t know how to explain it to a cis person.”

“Cis people feel dysphoria, too,” Mark explained. “But…I don’t think I’m cis.”

Simone’s nerves slammed on the brakes, but she knew better. “What do you think you are?”

For a while, Mark didn’t answer. The look on their face was solemn.

“I think…I don’t know…”

“Well,” Simone gently reminded them, “you mentioned the kiss. How did that make you feel?”

Mark sighed. “It…it did something to me. It made me feel…good and bad at the same time, and I can’t figure out what the feeling is.”

Simone slowly nodded. “What was the good?”

“Kissing you itself,” Mark admitted. “It felt…right. Not on the you scale, but that you’re a girl scale.”

Simone thought back to all the times she’d felt horrible kissing women, and then the first kiss from Jullian was what made it worth it. “And the bad?”

“I…” Mark held onto it for a long time. “It’s nothing. Really.”

Simone put a hand on their shoulder. “Mark. I’m the town’s gender counselor and your friend. You can tell me anything.”

Mark sighed. “I…think I might be…a woman.”

“Well, isn’t that a fuckin’ thing to dump on a friend?” a harsh voice called from the woods. “The Godperson wanting to be som’n new?”

Mark’s soul shattered. Simone had seen this before. Fireballs. Dairy Queens. Bodies before anyone could take back what they had done.

“Humptus Nibblenanny, I presume?” Mark’s voice, just a second ago filled with something so achingly familiar to Simone, was replaced by a coldness she’d never heard.

She couldn’t lose them.

“Hey.” Simone reached out and grabbed their hand. “I have you. Get through this. Don’t lose this. I have you.”

Before she was done speaking, they were surrounded by soda jerks wearing Dairy Queens. Ten, at least, but then she saw him. The half-tortle, half-tarrasque, half-giant Humptus Nibblenanny.

“You don’t ’ave ahhnything, sweethaaht.” His thick Tarrasqian accent was inconsistent and sort of beautiful. He brought his massive, oversized soda-tap arm down across his other hand like a club. “Godperson ’illed my ’en. ’At mea’s tha’ we’re ’onna ’ill ’im.”

The look in Mark’s eyes told Simone she wasn’t doing this today.

“You know they can quick-cast now, right?” she asked. “Metamagic as well.”

“Uh…w’at?” Humptus was stumpedus.

“Your guys?” Simone slid in front of Mark without drawing attention to it. She jerked her head back toward them. “They nuked your men in seconds. You know it. You saw the remains. Mark was being pushed when that happened. You’re pushing them now while they’re significantly stronger and much more emotionally raw.”

Simone let that hang in the air for a moment.

“I’m going to use a phrase that they have used for countless decades behind the scenes of creating this fucking monstrosity of a game. Typically right before we TPK.”

Simone cracked her neck from one side to the other and looked Humptus dead in the eye.

“Are you sure you wanna do that?”

The air was stale with overprocessed contemplation. It was a long moment before Humptus turned his attention to Mark.

“Oi. ’Ou did’n wan’a do it, eh?” He slowly nodded his head.

“No,” Mark responded, finally finding their voice. “Your men slaughtered an entire village of people, Humptus.”

Their voice was firm and steady and had lost the edge. Something Simone hadn’t heard or felt before.

“They…no. I’m sorry. I can’t take back my actions now, and I know that.” Mark put a hand on her shoulder. “And, Simone, I need to do this.”

Simone turned and looked up into the most certain eyes she’d ever seen in the person before her. A swell of fear gripped her chest as she knew this journey always came with defining moments, and she wouldn’t stop this one.

She couldn’t bring words to her lips. She just nodded with a sad smile as tears welled in her eyes.

“I wronged you and your people, Humptus,” Mark said. “Do what you must.”

The jerks around them crept slowly closer before Humptus raised a big, meaty hand.

“N’. Sto’. My p’opl’ ’illed? ’Er sure o’ dis?”

“Yes,” Mark said. “Unequivocally. They admitted it to our faces.”

Humptus swung his awkward body around to look at Simone. “Eh?”

“Eh.” Simone nodded. “It’s true.”

“Did you forget the prime directive you gave us, Godperson?” Humptus shocked them both as his accent shifted back to flawless Common.

It only took a beat for them both to realize it and for Mark to say it.

“You don’t kill.”

Simone worried for a brief second, but Humptus continued.

“Those bloody bastards!” Humptus cursed them. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. They took out that town? We thought it was you the whole time!”

“Excuse me,” Simone interrupted. “I can’t just ignore your accent. I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “It gets worse when I have to be mean. Sorry about that.”

“So…” Mark wondered. “You…”

Humptus shook his disproportionately sized head. “You’re good. I mean, we saw what you guys did to that IotSV. We aren’t fucking dumb.”

“Then what was the point?” Simone asked. “If you weren’t going to kill them anyway?”

“Why do you think my speech was devolving?” Humptus shrugged. “We were going to break that rule. What we thought you had done was incomprehensible to us, and now to know it was our own men?”

He paced back and forth with his oblong girth. “It’s hard out here. You put us out in the middle of nowhere, and we’re stuck here. Guys get to doin’ some shit.”

Mark cocked their head. “How would you all like a home?”

The air collapsed around them. Simone’s eyes shot wide.

“Mark!”

They turned to her. “What? They don’t kill. They don’t have jobs outside of this. They live in giant, moist, bulbous mushrooms, for fuck’s sake.”

Mark turned back to Humptus.

“Come to Etokuso. Come meet with Sara, Chadwick, and Lacuna, our council. Bring whoever you want for safety. You won’t be harmed.”

Humptus lowered his massive soda-tap arm and leaned on it. “I think I will.”

The crowd slowly melted into ease and dispersed back into the goopy woods.

“I’ll let them know you’re coming.” Mark smiled.

“Thank you, friend,” Humptus said. “Why are you out here, anyway? Maybe we can help.”

“We’re tracking the source of something that’s hurting our people.” Simone felt the tension ease out of the space. “We just know we have to go to Slorp Cave and go from there.”

“Slorp Cave?” Humptus rubbed his spiked chin. “Most of that system caved in long ago. Just a single path left in there.”

“Where does it go?” Mark asked.

“It goes to Rocksylvania.” Humptus shrugged. “There are a couple little souvenir shops here and there along the way, but it’s just a straight shot.”

Simone and Mark considered it. There were so many things in such a big city.

“Maybe the Shafted should be consulted for this?” Simone asked. “Wouldn’t they know what’s hidden in their own former hellhole?”

“That’s why we’re here,” Mark reminded her. “None of them know anything.”

“There’s some ancient shit down there.” Humptus nodded. “Be careful on your journey. It’s about a mile south. No one will mess with you in our wood.”

“Thanks.” Mark nodded and smiled again. “Please come see us.”

“We will,” Humptus said as he Homered into the forest. “I have to go take a wicked shit now, so see you soon!”

When they were alone again, Simone went back over to Mark. There was a new look in their eyes.

“Are…you okay?”

Mark looked down at her and smiled. “No. But I think I’m going to be.”

Simone’s worry eased. “How do you want me to refer to you right now?”

Mark thought for a time. “I don’t think this is the kind of thing I can figure out without finding out a lot more. Can I come to your classes?”

A warmth blossomed in Simone’s heart.

“Of course. You are always welcome.”

“Thank you.” Mark smiled. “Can you just keep using they and them for now, please? I…know I’m not comfortable with he.”

Simone pulled them into a big hug.

“Of course.”

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