A Kentucky Belle in an Isekai World

10: Making Contact

The college dorms were small, but big enough to squeeze in a few pieces of furniture.

The couch was more of a low seat by the kitchen, but it would do.

Paige's roommate, Candi, took one look at him, and then at Paige, and then she said she was going to go to the cafeteria.

She didn't reappear after that.

Paige looked embarrassed, but then she turned back to business.

"Can I read the letters?" she asked. "Maybe I'd recognize something you didn't."

"Sure." Tony started taking them out. They were getting a little crumpled.

Paige grabbed a laptop from the wall. Then she took out her phone and pulled up the series again on it.

"You can use the bathroom if you need to. I'm going to try to go through this," she said.

Tony was dying to know if she found anything, but he also really needed the bathroom and a shower, if he was honest. He'd brought a change of clothes.

By the time he was finished, Paige had typed up some of the letters. She was really fast.

"I passed typing with flying colors," she explained. "I've kind of thought about being a writer.... I guess normally this would be a dream come true for me, a story like this...but not when it's this creepy."

"Did you find anything?" Tony couldn't wait any longer to ask.

"I'm not sure what it all means," Paige said. "I went through the ones addressed to Hope, but there's only a couple. So I went over the ones written by her. Her hand is hard to decipher, but I'd assume it's a real quill pen. No address. How is Karen getting them? Unless this is a replica.... It'd be hard to replicate this, though--it's not printed paper and it's hard to copy someone's handwriting that well, and why would you bother? So assuming this is the real, original letter...well, this parchment, it's not modern either. It's way too thick, and it doesn't seem like our processed paper. I've seen paper like this a few times. I'd swear this is real."

"I thought so too," Tony said. "So that adds to the 'maybe it's all real' theory."

"It gets worse," Paige said. "Now that I've read Hope's letters, I found things that made it sound like she was in another world. She doesn't use that word, but she's asking if magic is important and how it could affect someone to not have it."

"Magic? Is that what that word was? I thought it was maven," Tony said.

"She smudged the 'g' and 'c' badly, but I'm pretty sure it's magic," Paige said. "That makes more sense?"

"You're right.... I should have thought of that," Tony admitted.

"If she's just speaking in the third person, that might mean she's the one she's asking about," Paige said. "It would be a good way to write in code. The whole thing sounds like a dialogue between a student and teacher. She calls Karen that. It's kind of like Equestria Girls with their diary book."

"What?" Tony said.

"Nevermind. The point is, this could be recent," Paige said. "And there's more. I counted up these letters. She's been gone for 2 days? The letters cover more events than that. I found a new one in the binder that you didn't mention before. About a ball, and one about Finishing School."

"What?" Tony said. "Let me see."

She handed him some sheets of parchment.

Tony looked over them. "Paige, these weren't in there before," he said, sounding ghostly. "I looked through the entire folder, every single page. These are new."