#KiriBakuMonth2020 Day 5: Time Travel!

Kirishima woke up on the beachfront. A light sea breeze brushed through his hair, a salty aroma wafting through his hair. Last thing he could recall was working late at his office job.

The janitor came and went as the sun sunk further into the horizon. Just as he logged off of the computer and gathered his belongings to leave the office building, the lights went out and he felt hands all over him. He was pulled backwards into a cold abyss;

whatever happened afterwards was a mystery until he found himself on that beach.

He pushed himself up, a migraine pounding in his head. Sand stuck to his black slacks and various bugs he couldn’t recognize crawled across the creases in his red work shirt. “Where the fuck am I?”

he questioned to no one, standing and wiping what he could off of himself. As he turned around to analyze his surroundings, the sound of a horn rang out. “Hello?” he called out, beginning to walk towards the grassy area just beyond the hilltop of the beach. “Who’s there?”

An arrow whizzed past his ear. He yelped and stared at it before looking for the culprit. His eyes landed on a group of no more than ten people. The sun reflected off their torsos, or rather the metal plates on them. Their footsteps, synchronized, grew louder the closer they got.

“Are those… iron breastplates?” Kirishima squinted in an attempt to see more details of their outfits; unfortunately, they moved faster than he originally thought. The businessman found himself on his knees in front of a tall blonde man

with blood streaks across his face and exposed torso. He spoke an unfamiliar language, one with many tongue rolls and guttural noises. Muscles rippled with every movement, and Kirishima couldn’t keep his eyes away.

“What is name?”

Kirishima’s eyebrows arched. “Excuse me?”

“What. Is. Name.”

“K-Kirishima Eijiro.” He gulped, nervous. “What’s yours?”

He didn’t receive a response. Instead, the blonde stranger spoke once again to the other warriors, his subordinates. They all nodded before turning to Kirishima, two of them reaching down to pull him up

by his biceps. While they escorted him to wherever they planned to kill him, he tried to pull more information out of the leader.

“So, uh,” he started, “how’s your day? Watch any interesting news lately?”

The blonde man turned to sneer at him. “‘News’?”

“You know, early morning, evening news casts, newspapers, online blogs.” Still, no one reacted with a familiarity to the topic. He started to panic. “How about politics? The election is coming up and the candidates are looking… pretty… fantast—okay, seriously, what kind of

prank is this?” He started to pull away from the guards in an attempt to escape, but their grip tightened before throwing him to the ground. The buttons on his shirt popped apart to expose his torso. He ate dirt as the leader put his foot on the back of his head, pushing down to

keep him held in place. It would be an understatement to say something in him was enjoying the degrading treatment.

“No move,” he growled, saying something else to his subordinates. They suddenly moved back, creating space between themselves and

the two men connected head to heel. With eight men circled and kneeling around them, Kirishima writhed on the ground, working hard to pull his head free without dislocating any important spinal vertebrae. His attempts were fruitless, and after nearly five minutes of struggling

and sweating into the dirt patch that was permanently formed to the outline of his face and chest, he stopped moving to accept the fate he assumed would end in death.

Without warning, the leader removed his foot. Kirishima hesitantly lifted his head to look at the surroundings.

They took him far enough from the beach that he could no longer see the waves on the shore but could still hear them crashing. Grassy plains rolled with the wind. If he squinted far enough, he could spot an outline of a large castle with a surrounding town. He rolled over on

his back to sit up.
Blood pounded in his ears with the sudden realization of the impossible: he was no longer in 2020. Their garments; the fresh air; the unrecognizable language. It wasn’t just a new part of town he’d never seen—it was an entirely new century.

“Wha—” he wheezed, chest heaving. “What year is this?”

The blonde man moved and stood with his feet on either side of Kirishima’s hips. He lowered himself into a sitting position on Kirishima’s lap and looked him in the eyes. “I do not understand.”

The redhead’s breathing got heavier and heavier with every passing moment. His eyes darted back and forth, head twisting and turning to figure out how to get back to his normal life. Out of nowhere, he grabbed his face and ran his fingers along his stubble-covered jawline.

“Please,” Kirishima begged, “I just want to go home.”

“Home is here.” The leader leaned forward to capture Kirishima’s lips in a kiss as he cried, humming happily.

“You are wife. I am king.”