I have made a lot of questionable decisions in my life.
Eating instant ramen for seventeen consecutive days. Staying awake for forty-three hours to finish a light novel series. Accidentally calling my teacher "Mom" in front of the entire class and then, rather than apologizing, simply walking out of the room and pretending I had ceased to exist.
But this — this — was probably the most questionable decision of all.
My name is Tsukasa Ishikawa. Seventeen years old. Backbencher by choice, underachiever by reputation, and, as of approximately fourteen months ago, the only person in recorded human history to have built a functional interdimensional portal in his bedroom using scrap metal, science shop supplies, and what I can only describe as sheer, unhinged desperation.
You're welcome, humanity. No applause necessary.
It started, as most catastrophic ideas do, with an anime.
I was sitting in my usual spot — back corner of the classroom, hood up, earphones in, utterly invisible to anyone who mattered — when the thought first arrived. Not gently. Not like a soft whisper of inspiration. It crashed into my skull like a truck, loud and stupid and impossible to ignore.
What if I could go there?
The anime was playing on my phone beneath the desk. Swords clashing. Magic erupting in brilliant arcs of light. Landscapes so gorgeous they made reality look like a rough draft. The characters were ridiculous and dramatic and alive in ways that made the people around me seem like background NPCs with broken dialogue trees.
What if there was a portal, I thought, that could take me into that world?
I sat with that thought for exactly three seconds before my own brain replied, in a voice that sounded disturbingly like my conscience:
That would be insane.
I agreed completely.
I started researching that same evening.
The first portal took four months to build and exactly zero seconds to regret.
I had gathered the materials with the enthusiasm of a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing but was committed to the bit. Scrapped electronics from the junkyard. Coils and circuits from the science supply shop downtown. A disturbing number of batteries. Some components I'm fairly certain were never intended to be combined with other components, and which the shop owner had sold me with an expression that said, I hope you know what you're doing, and which I had received with an expression that said, same, brother, same.
I built it in secret. In my room. At night. Like a sane person.
When I finally powered it on for the first time, I felt a rush of pride so enormous it briefly crowded out all rational thought.
I am a genius, I told myself. A visionary. A pioneer of—
The portal opened.
And on the other side was a zombie biting the arm off of what appeared to be a six-limbed extraterrestrial creature.
Silence.
The zombie turned and looked at me. The alien looked at me. The zombie, I noticed with dawning horror, had distinctly alien features — grey skin, elongated skull, three eyes, all of which were now glazed over with the universal expression of the undead.
A zombie-alien, I thought, standing very still. Half dead. Half extraterrestrial. One hundred percent my problem.
The alien-zombie made a sound. I will not describe the sound. Some experiences are beyond language.
I closed the portal.
I sat on my floor for a long time.
Right, said the part of my brain responsible for survival. So that's not the anime world.
No, I agreed quietly. That was not the anime world.
I dismantled the entire thing the next morning and started over.
The second attempt took one year and six months.
I want you to understand what that means. A year and a half. Five hundred and forty-seven days, give or take, of rebuilding, recalibrating, failing, swearing at inanimate objects, and occasionally lying face-down on my bedroom floor questioning the choices that had led me to this point.
I watched more anime during this period. For research. Absolutely for research.
I read light novels. Studied physics, which I had previously considered my natural enemy. Drew diagrams that made no sense and then somehow, inexplicably, began to make sense. I burned through three soldering irons, two extension cords, and one eyebrow that grew back slightly wrong and now has a personality of its own.
The portal took shape slowly, the way disasters and masterpieces often do — piece by piece, revision by revision, until one day I looked at it and thought, oh. Oh, that's actually it.
It was not beautiful, aesthetically speaking. Built from salvaged materials and shop-bought science components, it looked like something a very ambitious middle schooler had assembled for a school project and then possessed by an eldritch entity. Wires ran in directions that made physicists uncomfortable. The frame was welded together with more optimism than precision. The whole thing hummed at a frequency that made the neighbor's cat refuse to enter my house.
But when I powered it on this time, the light that poured through the opening was different.
Warm. Golden. Impossible.
On the other side, I could see trees — tall and ancient, with leaves that shimmered in colors that had no names in any language I spoke. Mountains rose in the distance, their peaks disappearing into clouds that moved too slowly, too deliberately, as though the sky itself was paying attention.
That, said some deep and certain part of me, is the anime world.
I stood there for a very long time, staring through.
You should probably tell someone, my brain suggested.
For once, I agreed with it.
My friends, to their credit, took the news exactly as I expected.
Yujiro Kakami stared at me in complete silence for approximately ten seconds, then said, "You actually did it, didn't you." It was not a question. It was the tone of a man reassessing every assumption he had ever made about the universe.
Gzuro Kagechi immediately asked if there would be food on the other side. I told him I didn't know. He said that was fine and that he was bringing snacks just in case. This is why Gzuro is one of my best friends.
Nagami Uzuha crossed her arms, looked at the portal, looked at me, looked at the portal again, and said, "If this kills us, I will haunt you specifically." I found this fair.
Penosuke Haringa, who had once cried at a manga chapter in the middle of a crowded train and felt no shame about it whatsoever, looked like he might cry now. Happy tears, I think. Probably.
And Goro Satoji — quiet, sharp, observant Goro — simply nodded slowly, as if a dimensional portal built from junkyard scraps in a teenager's bedroom was perfectly consistent with his worldview. I have always respected that about him.
The others — my wider circle, the friends who occupied the comfortable middle ground between close and casual — ranged in reaction from stunned disbelief to barely contained excitement. Half of them looked at the portal the way people look at something that might explode. The other half looked at it the way people look at something they very much want to touch.
I understood both reactions. I had experienced both reactions, often simultaneously.
We gathered around it. The six of us — my best friends, the people I trusted most in the world, the people I had chosen to share what was either the greatest achievement or the greatest catastrophe of my short life.
The portal hummed. The golden light pulsed gently, warmly, as though it was breathing.
You have no idea what's on the other side, said the ominous part of my brain, the part that had been very quiet and very patient throughout this entire process, waiting for exactly this moment to make itself known. You know what it looks like. You don't know what it is. You don't know what lives there. You don't know the rules. You don't know if you can come back.
I knew all of this, of course.
I had known it for a year and a half.
I looked at my friends. Yujiro, steady and unreadable. Gzuro, already halfway through a rice ball he had produced from somewhere. Nagami, arms still crossed, eyes bright with something that looked almost like anticipation. Penosuke, practically vibrating. Goro, calm as still water.
We are absolutely not ready for this, I thought.
I grinned.
"Alright," I said. "Let's go."
In hindsight, those were the last words I would speak as someone who had never almost died in a fantasy world.
I didn't know that yet.
I was smiling anyway.