Episode 1: That Common Trope Where Your Smartphone Goes Wonky and You End Up in Another World

Disclaimer for "Crowbar Nurse" Fan Translation by Celestial Pavilion

This is a fan translation of the Japanese web novel "Crowbar Nurse" (バールナース), originally written by the talented author who can be found at [Kakuyomu Raw Link:https://kakuyomu.jp/works/1177354054888779415] and shares their work and wonderful illustrations on their blogs (e.g., sousakuoishii.hatenablog.com and 3hyphens.home.blog).

I am incredibly grateful to the original author for generously granting permission for fan translations of "Crowbar Nurse," on the condition that these translations are strictly non-commercial and involve no monetary gain.

This translation is a labor of love by Celestial Pavilion, undertaken by fans for fellow fans who wish to enjoy this unique story in English. All rights to the original story, characters, and any associated artwork remain with the author.

I was especially thrilled and inspired to see the author's enthusiasm for the English-speaking readership, even to the point of machine-translating a chapter of their own work! This project by Celestial Pavilion aims to share their creation with a wider audience, driven by admiration for the story and the author's passion.

While Celestial Pavilion strives for an accurate and engaging translation, please understand that nuances can sometimes be lost between languages, and interpretations of certain terms (especially unique gaming references!) may vary. I am doing my best, as part of Celestial Pavilion, to convey the spirit and excitement of the original.

If you enjoy this story, I wholeheartedly encourage you to visit the author's original work and blogs to show your support!

I’m just a nameless rookie nurse.
I work on an utterly hopeless ward, one that's truly at the end of its rope.
Back in high school, I was a super hardcore addict of old zombie games and otome games, but now? I’m so exhausted from work I can’t even touch them, not even on my days off.

Why do I have to go through such awful stuff?
Is this a sign I should take a crowbar or something and just destroy this godforsaken workplace?
No, I don’t want a criminal record. I just want to work hard and live my life, damn it!

It’s not just me; the others who started when I did are in a similar boat. We all frequently give up on baths just to secure a few precious moments of sleep, our eyes are totally dead, the reliable senior nurses all have dead eyes, and even the management folks who come to observe the situation, their eyes are dead too. Is anyone here even alive?

...Games? Not a single one of us indulges in such a noble pastime.
Because, you know, everyone’s eyes are dead.
I bet if I said, “Hey, I’ve got a zombie game recommendation for you,” they’d seriously get mad and snap, “Like I have time for that.”

A workplace where casually recommending something gets you furiously yelled at...!

This is just too much. There’s absolutely, utterly no leeway here.

(Ugh, my charts... I need to finish them fast... but my brain’s totally fried...)

I stifle a yawn and let out a sigh.

This is the nurse station.
Beep, boop, beep, boop—the rhythmic sounds of the telemetry monitors tracking patient conditions echo around.
Right now, I’m at one of the station’s PCs, writing up my nursing records for the day.

Location: █juku. Time: Dead of night.
The hopeless ward with a view of the night skyline.

(I haven’t done anything fun lately...
Can’t play games, no energy to hang out with friends, don’t even have the willpower to open my damn phone...)

Mulling this over, I glanced at the wristwatch clipped to my pocket. 12:30 AM.

(No wonder I’m sleepy...)

I shake my head and look up from the watch.
Even at this hour, none of the day shift staff have gone home.
They’re either prepping something or clattering away at their nursing records on the PCs.

(That’s just how this place is, I guess.)

With another sigh, I look out beyond the nurse station.

Rainbow neon signs, rows upon rows of brightly lit office buildings.
No matter how many times I see it, it’s an unreal, beautiful sight, almost like a scene from another world.

...Even this late into the night, the city shows no sign of sleeping.

For every light I can see from here, there’s someone still awake, not yet asleep.

(So this is what the █juku night view is made of—us corporate slaves, grinding away our lives.
Are people being worked to death again today just to maintain this glittering world...?)

The moment I, in my overtired state, started thinking such poetic thoughts, the night view suddenly wavered with a sickening lurch.

(That’s weird.)

I quickly shook my head, and my vision returned to normal.
Letting out a sigh of relief, I grimaced and pressed a hand to my chest.

(My health’s been pretty bad lately, huh.)

As I sighed and resumed my charting, the chief nurse, who’d been doing her night shift rounds with dead eyes, suddenly rushed over looking flustered.

“—Nursing Department rounds! Quick, hide in the linen room, hide!”

The chief nurse practically shouted this in a hushed tone, then grabbed my shoulder and yanked me to my feet.
Before I could resist, with practiced skill, she shoved me into the linen room at the back of the nurse station—a storage space crammed with clothes and sheets waiting to be laundered.
Inside the pitch-black room.
I blinked a few times, then sighed.

(...Ah, geez. Not again...)

This was a common occurrence on this ward.
If the higher-ups in the Nursing Department found out she was making a rookie like me work overtime, she’d get chewed out. So, the chief nurse hid me, the rookie, in a back room.

Even in this hopeless hospital, the hospital as a whole aims to eradicate overtime, and officially, the stance is, ‘We don’t make rookies work overtime.’

A bright and fun workplace where rookies can leave on time with sparkling smiles!!

...That’s a lie. A bald-faced lie.
But it’s a lie that, if exposed to the outside world, would lead to a whole mess of things, ultimately causing the hospital’s management to collapse and explode, blowing a huge hole in the acute care medical network, and causing immense trouble for the people who need the hospital. So, those of us who are still kicking should just keep working ourselves to death, or so a ward bigwig once said with dead eyes. Holding patients hostage is just dirty... I mean, everyone’s eyes are already dead... Is there anyone alive here...?

Due to these sorts of circumstances, every time the Nursing Department came for rounds, we rookies were hidden away out of sight.

(...
...Still, this sucks.
The hospital PCs log you out if you don’t touch them for more than 10 minutes, and any unsaved data gets wiped...)

Meaning, I’d have to rewrite my nursing records.
Definitely going to be here past 1 AM now... I couldn’t help but sigh and slump to the floor.
At this point, all I could do was wait for the door to open, maybe catch some sleep.
As I shut my eyes wearily, I felt a strange vibration from my pocket.

(...Did I just get a call? My phone should have been off...)

Suspicious, I looked at the smartphone in my pocket.
Strange characters were floating on the pitch-black screen.

(...Hmm, is this... English...?)

I thought it was English, but there were a lot of symbols, so it was hard to tell.
The dark screen was faintly lit, just enough to tell it was on, and I could see a lot of green English text displayed.

(...Is my phone broken? I can’t operate it.)

As I tilted my head, staring at the phone... huh? Huh? Wait a sec?
Those green characters were being typed out at incredible speed,
and they were scrolling away and disappearing before I could even begin to read them!

“...Huh!?”

I gasped, my eyes flying open.
Then I hurriedly clapped a hand over my mouth. The Nursing Department bigwigs were making their rounds outside. Making a noise now would be bad.

(Wh-what... Huh? HUH!? What is this, what IS this!! This is scary!!)

My gloomy everyday scenery had suddenly flipped, heralding the start of something sci-fi and extraordinary.

(sudo... Sudo? What’s that? apt?? ██? install... Install? Huh? Install what? Hey, hey, heeeey!! Don’t go installing weird stuff on my phone without permission! It looks like it asked for a password but... what, it’s entering that too!?)

As I stared, frozen, a password-like string of ●●●●●... began to auto-fill before my very eyes.

(What is this, magic? Hacking?)

While I was panicking, the door suddenly burst open with a loud CLANG... and someone jumped into the room.

☆☆☆

“Sera!?
This isn’t some web novel, what the hell is going on with this place?!”

The one who burst in shouting was so handsome it was out of this world... or rather, the kind of handsome that shouldn’t exist in this world.

“Kiryu-kun!?”

The young man looked incredibly surprised to see me, but I was just as shocked.
After all, he was undoubtedly a fictional character... Kiryu-kun, from the popular otome game Nijiyume High ☆ Fantasia (a 2014 social game release).
(An otome game, for the record, is a retro game genre for women where you enjoy romances with various male characters.)

Kiryu Souichiro.

A handsome young man in a suit, with black hair and black eyes, possessing a nonchalant, mastermind-type aura.
He was a helper character who would give you hints to progress in the game.
He was so overly reliable that he always topped the popularity rankings.

...But, believe it or not, he was a ‘hidden capture target.’

Meaning, he was a character you couldn’t even attempt to romance until you’d completely conquered all the other characters.

“Talk later!
For now, we need to shake off those zombies!”

The instant Kiryu-kun yelled this, he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to my feet.
I was surprised by Kiryu-kun’s appearance, but his way of speaking also startled me.
The original Kiryu Souichiro wasn’t the type to speak so crisply and clearly.

(How weird. It’s like there’s another person inside Kiryu-kun’s body...)

—Huh?

—Wait, did he just say, ‘those zombies’?

“Hm? Eh? ...Eeeeeeeh!?”

My scream,
and Kiryu-kun picking up a crowbar lying nearby and bashing the zombies with perfect form, happened almost simultaneously.

Kiryu-kun swung the crowbar horizontally, sending the zombies sprawling, then brought it down vertically, thunk, thunk, thunk, meticulously smashing each of their heads one by one...
My jaw dropped and my eyes went wide.
This was not a move an otome game character should be making.
I mean, otome games have gotten pretty intense lately, but this felt like I was watching some hyper-action yakuza from a game set in █bukicho...

Kiryu-kun mercilessly kicked the fallen zombies aside to clear a path, then roughly grabbed my wrist and dashed out the door.

“...Um, is your profession, by any chance, related to violence?” I asked timidly.

Kiryu-kun looked at me, surprised. “Huh? Nah, my profession is... A game dev!”

“A game dev!?
Are game devs also good at killing zombies!?”

“Good at it!? Well, I wouldn’t say good at it, but—”

“But those moves just now were something not even a seasoned zombie slayer could pull off, you know.”

My head was spinning, but I started running alongside Kiryu-kun.

【Character Introductions That Are Zero Help for Understanding the Main Story (Sometimes Introduces Non-Characters Too)】

■ Protagonist
A rookie nurse on the brink of death from overwork. If you let her talk about nostalgic zombie games, it’ll be longer than the intro to Love Ph█ntom, but right now is clearly not the time for that.