“Thank you for the meal!”

The high-pitched, slightly clumsy voice echoed from the counter connecting to the hallway.

“Yeees, you’re welcome.”

I answered with exaggerated intonation.

When kids reach the upper grades, they start getting shy, so their voices grow quieter and you’re supposed to tone down your reply, but when someone says it this energetically, it makes you want to respond with equal enthusiasm.

These days, school lunches are often outsourced to central kitchens, but our city puts real effort into it, and each elementary school still has the old-fashioned lunch ladies.
I was one of them.

It’s not that I love cooking.
The working conditions were just convenient.
It’s not that I especially love kids either.
Still, when a child occasionally beams and tells you it was delicious, that really is adorable.
I don’t have any of that lukewarm “my job is my purpose in life” nonsense, since I work to live, but I liked this job enough that those smiles felt like a small reward.

Yes.
Past tense.

Right now, the floor beneath my feet isn’t linoleum.
It’s some kind of poorly drained, questionably hygienic earthen floor with uneven stone paving.
Like, what’s hygiene, is it tasty or something?
Weeds are even poking through gaps where the stones have chipped away.
Even though this is supposedly indoors, I keep peeling the skins off something potato-like, filling a huge wooden tub big enough to hug.
The lunch rush is over, and this is prep for dinner.

“Thanks for the grub.”

A rough, muffled voice reaches me.
The kind of voice where you’ve probably forgotten when your voice even finished changing.
Not cute.
Not cute at all.
But this place is full of men who live rough lives, so it can’t be helped.
Compared to the idiots who sometimes slam their empty dishes down like they’re throwing them, this is much better.
So I lift my face and respond at the return counter.

“Y—”

“Why are you here againnnn!”

My reply is drowned out by the knight commander’s thick, anguished scream.

Being summoned to another world is a common trope, right?
Well, not common in real life, but in novels.

I read them too, you know.
Online.
For free.
Pretty often, actually.
Honestly, I enjoyed them.
Even at my age.
I mean, being able to read as much fun stuff as you want, for free, it really is a great era.
I haven’t been able to buy novels I like for ages.
There’s nowhere to put them, and somehow I always feel like reading books requires setting aside a big chunk of time.
In that sense, being able to casually read a bit on your phone during spare moments was perfect.

But still.
I never thought it would happen to me.
Being summoned.
Seriously.
Isn’t there supposed to be an age limit or something?
That’s a normal thought, right?

I definitely went to bed normally the night before.
When I woke up, I was in another world.

The cream-colored floor reflected light like marble, but softer than marble, and red stones were embedded in it, forming circles and patterns that looked like a magic circle.

When I looked up, there was a hemispherical ceiling fitted with stained glass in blue, red, yellow, and green.

Later, I was told it wasn’t glass but thinly shaved stone.
Some kind of special stone.

Dust drifted lazily through the sunlight pouring down.

The edges of the walls where the light didn’t reach were dim, but I could still see luxurious vine patterns carved into them.

Standing vaguely inside the magic circle were five people, including me.

Surrounding the circle were eight people in robes who looked exactly like what you’d expect mages to look like.

Next to them stood a woman in her fifties who seemed a rank above the others, and a man in a velvet mantle who looked like a king no matter how you saw him, also around fifty.
One step behind them stood a knight in full plate armor, his helmet removed.

That knight is now the one who dragged me out of the kitchen and is lamenting across a dining table.

“I understand, really. Being summoned here for our convenience and then told to fight, that’s unreasonable. We swore of our own will to protect this country, but I hear your world was peaceful.”

Knight Commander Zaza spoke haltingly in a gentle tone that didn’t match his imposing title.

“Well, our country just happens not to be at war. On a global scale, it’s not exactly peaceful. We don’t have monsters or demon lords, though.”

“…If there are no monsters, then your enemies are only other humans?”

“I guess so. But more importantly, why did you only summon people from our country? I’m sure there were people with much higher combat ability in other countries.”

“…Unfortunately, we cannot grasp the international circumstances of another world…”

“Ah… yeah, figures.”

“But that’s why our king said it properly, didn’t he? Even if you don’t fight, your lives will be guaranteed. You heroes are our guests. We would never abduct you for our own reasons and then abandon you when things don’t go our way. Even if you don’t fight, it’s fine for you to live pampered and revered like treasures. So why is it… why are you making our meals in the dining hall…!”

Besides me, four others were summoned.

A man in a suit with neatly styled hair, looking exactly like an office worker heading out to work.

A woman dressed confidently in a high-neck sleeveless top and a flared skirt that spread gently from her fitted waist, very much a female college student vibe.

A young man wearing baggy jeans slung low on his hips, fingers covered in chunky rings, the picture of modern fashion.

And a slightly plump boy wearing a school uniform a bit too large for him, unmodified, trousers crisply pressed.
A first-year high schooler, maybe?

And then there was me.
Koshimizu Kazuha.
Forty-five years old.
Wearing a tracksuit.
My daughter’s junior high school tracksuit, at that.
That’s all.

Everyone said they went to bed normally the night before and woke up like this, so why was I the only one in a tracksuit?
I only wore it to sleep.
Everyone else had been sleeping in pajamas or something, yet they were summoned in proper going-out clothes.
Even I could tell how out of place I looked.

Of course I hesitated.
After Chief Priest Ernes, who looked like a senior mage, explained why we were summoned, I blurted out, “Um, I didn’t tell my workplace I was taking time off…”

Well, it wasn’t like there was any way back anyway.

This other world’s culture is medieval European-esque.
As you can guess from words like monsters and demon lord, it’s a world of swords and magic.
Beastfolk, elves, and dwarves walk around openly.
They’re everywhere in the castle too.

I didn’t have trouble with the spoken language, but I couldn’t read the writing.
That said, the literacy rate isn’t very high, so most commoners can’t read either.

Three great powers line up across the center of the continent.
To the south are many small nations.
Beyond a great mountain range crawling with monsters lies the demon race’s country in the north.
This country that summoned us is one of the three great powers.
The Kazalna Kingdom, located to the east.

The enemy is the demon race’s country and the Demon King.
We were summoned as a counterforce.

Why were we summoned?
When crossing between worlds, the body is supposedly broken down once and then reconstructed to pass through the space between worlds.
During that reconstruction, some kind of blessing or boon gets attached.
You gain combat power far exceeding that of this world’s inhabitants and become an existence worthy of being called a hero.
Broken down?
Seriously?
What the hell did you do to me?

After Chief Priest Ernes told us there was no way to return, the King of Kazalna bowed his head in apology.
The velvet mantle made him look like a king, but aside from that, he didn’t really feel king-like.
Honestly, without the mantle, he looked like one of those salesmen who come by the school lunch kitchen.
He was small, too, which added to it.

Still, when the king bowed, Ernes pressed her lips together tightly, the other mages made small “ah, ah” sounds and fluttered their hands in a panic, and Knight Commander Zaza bowed even deeper.
He must be a deeply beloved king.

“I believe that each world should be complete unto itself. We wish to protect our world because we live in it, because it is the world we inhabit. These are things unknown to you heroes. To ask you to abandon your own world and fight for a world with no ties to you would be nothing but arrogance.”

‘Exactly.’
I nodded inwardly.
I didn’t say it out loud, though.

“The demon race is fewer in number than us, but their physical abilities and magical power are far superior. For hundreds of years, we have barely managed to hold the border lines by relying on numbers alone. I cannot force you to fight. Even if you do not, your lives will, of course, be guaranteed. But I beg you. Please, lend us the power you gained by crossing worlds.”

Wasn’t someone going to say, “No way,” or something?
When I cautiously glanced at the others’ faces—

“I see,” the office worker nodded firmly.

“So I can use magic too?” the college girl’s eyes sparkled beneath her perfectly curled lashes.

“Whoa, so it’s a power fantasy? Guaranteed domination?” the young man grinned openly and jabbed the high schooler beside him with his elbow.

“First, I want to know what kind of power we’ve gained,” the high schooler replied with earnest determination.

What?
They’re into it?
All of them?

Well, I can understand the young boys.
But the office worker, really?
With that serious, work-first look?
And I was sure the college girl would say, “No way,” wasn’t I?

No, but for me, it’s impossible.
There’s no way.
They’re all young.
The office worker is a bit closer to my side age-wise, but he’s still young.
Compared to me, he’s definitely still in his prime.

While trying to hide the sense of betrayal welling up inside me, I decided I had to calmly decline.
Just as I stepped away from the suddenly fired-up hero group and moved toward the king—

…Huh?

I lowered my head once to gather my courage and check my footing as I stepped forward.

Something felt off.

About what?
My body.

It felt light.

I pulled my foot back and looked down at myself again.

I wasn’t fat, okay?
But compared to when I was younger, gravity stops being something you can fight, you know.
Your waist, for example.

It’s a tracksuit, so it doesn’t really show my body lines, but even so, this lower half was clearly different from the one I was so used to sighing over every night.

I stared at my palms.
Then flipped them over to look at the backs of my hands.
“…This is…”
I looked around.

Opposite where the king stood, behind me, on the wall by the door leading out of this vast room, was a full wall of mirrors.

Reflected there was—

A younger version of me from my middle school days, wearing a reddish-brown school tracksuit that suited her perfectly.

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