“All right Ryan, what is this about?“ Lori demanded as she closed the door behind her. For some reason, she gave Mikon a suspicious look.

  “Well, there’s something I needed to tell you, but if I was going to tell you I needed to tell Umu, Mikon and Riz too,” Ryan said, looking at the other women in question. The latter three were sitting on the bed, which had their bedroll on it in preparation for going to bed. He took a deep breath, and took the plunge, revealing his deepest, darkest secret! “Everyone… I’m from another world.”

  There was silence broken only the sound of the flames in the fireplace.

  Lori turned and opened the door to leave.

  “No, wait, don’t go, don’t go!” Ryan cried. “I’m not joking or anything! I really am from another world!” He looked towards the other three, who were simply giving him confused looks. “I promise I’ll explain, just… please don’t go.”

  Lori sighed, but closed the door and leaned back against it as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Fine. I will hear this alleged explanation.” She gave Mikon another suspicious look, but his most kinky girlfriend just shook her head. Wait, why did Lori think Mikon had anything to do with— no, not the time for that. “All right Ryan, explain what you mean by ‘you’re from another world’?”

  “I’m not from this planet,” Ryan said earnestly, making eye contact with everyone emphasize his sincerity. “I’m actually from a different place, a place called Earth.”

  “Your demesne was named ‘Dirt’?” Riz said, confused. “Wasn’t there anything better to name it after?”

  “It’s not the name of a demesne, it’s the name of the world,” Ryan said patiently.

  “And which of the moons is that supposed to be?” Lori said.

  “I’m not from any of the moons!” Ryan protested. “I’m from a different world around a different sun. A different place in the sea of stars!”

  “Ahh…” Lori said, and there was the blank, flat expression he was familiar with. “And how, exactly, did you get from your ‘world’ to here? Did you sail on a metal ship?” There was a slight change in her expression, brightening slightly at the thought. “Because we could use a lot of metal.”

  “Uh, no. I sort of… fell into the sea of stars and got swept away on a current. So, no ship.”

  Lori’s expression somehow became flatter. Really, it was amazing how flat her expression could get without it starting to curl the other way from accumulated Euclidean geometry. “No ship. And conveniently no proof to support anything you’re saying.”

  “If I was going to lie about something, why would it be about this?” Ryan pointed out. “What could I possibly hope to gain? Come on, don’t you trust me?”

  Lori tilted her head, and started stroking her chin, visibly thinking about it.

  “Really?” It was his turn to flatten his voice. “After all this time, you have to think about it?”

  “A Dungeon Binder who trusts too easily can easily cease to be a Dungeon Binder,” she said. “Attempting to rush my decision isn’t making me more likely to believe you. Quite the opposite, in fact.” She frowned. “Why am I even here? I do not see why this could be possibly relevant to me.”

  Ryan coughed. “Well, you see… I didn’t have to have to explain this twice. I mean…” He turned towards Riz, Mikon and Umu. “Look, the four of us are… that is… look, I didn’t want to continue what we had without telling you the truth about myself.”

  “The… truth that you’re from a place called Soil?” Umu said, a slightly uncomprehending look on her face.

  “That I’m from another world and am not a person born on this planet but a completely different one, yes,” Ryan said earnestly. “A world without Iridescence, no magic, demesnes—”

  “Oh! Like the one demesne where people came from before they crossed the sea of stars?” Mikon exclaimed enthusiastically.

  “Probably not. We didn’t have dragons or magic, like I said.”

  “Ryan, if you start talking about ending the binderarchy—”

  “That’s not what this is about! I’m telling them this because I don’t want to hide an important part of myself from the women I’m in a relationship with, and I’m telling you because… well, I know things that might be useful.”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “Ryan, you’re already as useful as I want you to be, there’s no need to make up outrageous lies to change that.”

  “Uh, thank you…? I think? But I’m serious! We don’t have magic in my world, so our technology developed in different ways! Now that I don’t have to hide the origin of what I know, I could be far more helpful in developing the demesne.”

  “You mean you weren’t being helpful before?” The flat became an edge.

  “More helpful! I said more helpful!”

  “One wonders why you weren’t that helpful in the first place.”

  “Well, I told everyone that I used to work in a lumberyard. How was I supposed to explain how I knew all sorts of things in wildly different subjects without seeming suspicious?” Ryan said.

  “By being a part of the Mysteries of Alknowledge and a voracious reader?”

  There was a moment’s pause, and then Ryan’s hand met his face. “In my defense,” he said, not moving his hand. “I thought it would be rude to pretend to be part of them when I wasn’t.”

  “But it’s rude to waste my time airing your fictional story?”

  “It’s not—! Look, how about I tell you some ideas from my worlds, things that revolutionized not just warfare, but also farming, communication, manufacturing, then would you believe me?”

  Lori did that head tilt thing. “It would certainly give your story some plausibility.”

  Ryan nodded confidently. “All right. In my world, it’s been discovered and proven that optimally spacing seeds for planting can increase the speed and efficiency of the farming process. So, there’s a device that plants individual seeds at the optimum depth—”

  “Oh, are you talking about a seed drill?” Umu said. “I remember the farmers would use when planting valri. The seeds would go down these tubes…”

  She trailed off as Lori and Ryan stared at the blonde weaver.

  “Oh… you already have those…” Ryan said lamely. “W-well, how about this! It’s a way of preserving doughstrand soup for later consumption, while also reducing the space it needs for storage. First, you take some cooked doughstrands and bundle it up into a cake, then dip it in boiling oil—”

  “You mean soup packs?” Riz said.

  “Ryan, I practically lived off those for lunch back when I was in school,” Lori said, looking very unimpressed. “The means of creating one of the most common preserved foods in the world is not revolutionary.”

  “Uh… all right, this will take some work because I don’t know the actual mechanics, but there’s a way to make a machine that sews… sewing machines already exist, don’t they?”

  Umu and Mikon nodded.

  Ryan stared up at the ceiling and contemplated that sometimes, life just sucked. This was going even beyond the baseline amount of suck of getting isekai-d without even getting any cheat powers as a consolation prize and having a job where it was always overtime, he was used to that level of suck.

  Being an isekai wasn’t even useful here!

  He sighed. “I’m very sorry for wasting your time, your Bindership,” he said tiredly. “But I maintain that everything I told you is true.”

  Lori rolled her eyes. “See that your delusions do not interfere with your duties, Ryan,” she said.

  “They never had before,” he pointed out.

  That actually got a grudging nod of agreement, before she gave Mikon one last suspicious look—he’d have to ask her about that, Mikon wasn’t even doing anything—before opening the door and leaving. Ryan winced at the annoyed bang of the door closing, and he stood to make sure it latched properly. Then he turned and gave a sheepish smile towards the three women still in the room. “So… what do you think?”

  “I… don’t really understand what you told us,” Umu admitted. “But it sounds… impressive?” She smiled encouragingly.

  Ryan did his best not to slump. It would make her feel bad.

  “I mean, does it really matter where you came from?” Riz said with military practicality. “We live here now, right?”

  Well, he supposed there was that.

  He looked towards Mikon, waiting for her reaction, and found her looking thoughtful.

  Then she nodded decisively and smiled. “Ryan… this… ‘world’ of yours, with its foreign ways… are there things men and women do there that you haven’t taught us about yet?” One hand was slowly pulling up the hem of her skirt, showing progressively more leg.

  Both Riz and Umu were suddenly looking at him very intently.

  Ryan coughed. “Well… you might have it here already…”

  “Now, don’t be like that…” Mikon said. “How will we know for sure if you don’t show us?”

  Well, when she put it that way… “So, back home we have this thing called…”

  “All right!” Ryan said a few days alter as he put a plate down in front of Lori. “I asked around, and I know you don’t have one of these around here!”

  Lori looked unamused as she peered at the experimental fruit tart he had made. It was fruit filling inside a pastry dough shell—and yes, he knew that probably wasn’t a tart but he wasn’t going to call it a pie or a pocket—or at least the local equivalent of pastry dough. Without butter, they had to use beast lard, which added a little savory note but also provided saltiness. The filling itself was slightly green, since it was golden-orange alien planet fruit with green honey. “What exactly is this?”

  “It’s a sort of fruit-filled bun,” he said.

  “Is the bread stale? It’s hard.”

  “No, it’s crisp, like well-cooked beast skin.”

  “Why is it burned?”

  “It’s not burned, it’s the honey in the dough turning brown because it cooked in the heat. Look, would you just take a bite? You can smell it, it’s delicious!”

  She gave me one of her all-purpose level looks—at least it wasn’t a flat one—and picked up the fruit tart. It was still steaming a little, but little things like that weren’t something Lori had to worry about, so she just put it in her mouth and took as small bite.

  “Well?”

  “…what do you say this is?”

  “Back home, we called it peach-mango pie.”

  Lori looked down at the pastry in her hand and took another bite, enjoying the taste of happyfruit and pink lady mixed together as a filling. She let out a pleased sigh, then directed a flat look at Ryan. “This is not proof you’re from ‘another world’.”

  He sighed. “I know.”

  Why had he ever thought doing this was a good idea again?