How it started

I was on my way to the toilet, when my phone suddenly rang from my room.

“Who is calling at this time?” I wondered. I don’t generally get calls and when I do I normally don’t pick, you know why, and would rather text and ask, and my friends don’t call me either unless it’s very important. It made me curious, and worried. Did something happen?

I lifted the phone and it said “Nagi”, a friend of mine. I picked it up, concerned.

“Hey buddy!” he said from the other side. He was the over-energetic extrovert one of our group, sometimes makes me wonder where he brings all that energy from.

“What happened?” I asked, “Why did you call?”

“Can’t tell you on the phone” he said, now a bit serious which was unlikely of him, “meet me on your way to school at the location I sent you. Bye now, I gotta get ready” and the call cut before I could say anything.

I looked at the screen, and the message that I had ignored earlier was actually his. He had sent me a location on whatsapp. I checked it.

“That’s in completely different direction from the school!” I thought. This had got stuck in my head now, I couldn’t think about anything else. Two questions, “What was it?” and most importantly, “Why?”

The curiosity from a cliff-hanger in a weekly manga is enough to keep me stuck on one though all through the week, and this was a way bigger question mark. I told myself I was overthinking it and it might just be something stupid, it’s Nagi afterall, but that didn’t work. My brain starts doing overtime when something happens that doesn’t normally happen.

I had no idea what was coming the very next minute.

I messaged back to him, “What is this about?” but he was offline, so I left the phone and went into the toilet with a question mark in my head.

I closed the door behind.

But before I could take my clothes off, I started to hear weird sounds out of the commode, like deep gargling sound from far down in the pipe. I got closer to it slowly, trying to control my imaginations from going wild and telling myself it’s just some problem in the drainage.

I got closer, lowered myself, held the closed lid and flung it open… and that was the worst mistake I did. Huge amount of water straight from the bottom of the commode was sprayed right on my face like a jet spray, with force enough to throw my head back. I threw back my body and landed on my butt, completely bewildered and wet. The fountain of water continued spray out of the commode at full force and made the walls and even the ceiling wet, and I sat there drenched, stupidly looking at it.

Suddenly a feeling of disgust made me tremble and I instantly started to cough and spit out all the water out of my mouth, shivers of disgust running down my spine. But what the hell was that just now? I was not in a state to think on that.

And before I could do anything, something of the size of a tennis ball flew out of the fountain, hit my head (it hurt!) and fell beside me. The fountain stopped, and the lid fell on its own.

I picked up the out of curiosity, the situation still processing in the back of my mind. It was a dice, but a bigger one and the dots were glowing green. It felt like it was metal.

The 1-dot face was beeping, and before I could think anything, I instinctively pressed it.

The beeping stopped, but nothing happened.

Then finally, the realisation stuck me of all that happened.

“Mama!” I screamed, panicking the shit out, “Mama come quickly! Mama!” but there was no response. I jumped up straight on my feet and rushed out of the bath room straight to the wash basin, turned the tad on and literally bathed myself in that water, washing my mouth, gargling and spitting out furiously in disgust and panic.

“Mama!” I screamed, but still no reply. But when I looked at the mirror, I saw her standing behind me, looking straight at me through the mirror with no expression on her face. It was completely blank, like a corpse, and I felt a terrible fear churning in my abdomen. I started to feel sick.

What is happening?

With a trembling voice I turned to say “Mama?” but before I could, she suddenly rushed at me and smashed my head at the mirror. I screamed, and my mind was blacked out completely. Fortunately the mirror didn’t break on my face, but my senses were completely numb and I could neither feel nor think anything. I was completely paralysed, and the hit on my head made me feel dizzy.

What is happening? What is happening? What is happening?

She grabbed my head back and was about to smash it again when something, no, someone came and grabbed her from behind. She let go off me, and I was about to fall back when I grabbed the table near me and somehow stayed, falling on my knees. My head was heavy and spinning, probably due to the hit on my head, too cloudy to understand the situation.

I head someone’s voice, which seemed like it was coming from far away in the mist. That person grabbed my shoulders and was shaking me into sense. Slowly the voice grew louder and closer as the mist slowly cleared and I could now feel a pain in the side of my head and my jaws. It was still blur, but the mist was clearing, and I knew the person had grabbed my shoulders and his face was right in front of mine.

“wheh is theh..” something, I could roughly make out what the voice, a girl’s voice (normally I would be flabbergasted and terrified if a girl, given my god-awful ability of communication with the female gender plus the fact that I have never had a single female friend (I hardly even have friends) in my life nor has a girl other than my mom has ever touched me (let alone shaking me violently as she was), but at that moment I had greater things to process about) was saying.

She kept repeating again and again, and now that the mist was much clearer I could hear screams like roar from distance, sounding like mom but still nothing like her, and there was another voice.

She kept shaking me and I could finally make out what she was saying.

“Where is the dice?!” she was shouting, and now my eyes and head quite clearer, I could see her face faintly.

“The beh... the bed!” I said instinctively, and she instantly let go of me and ran to the bedroom while I looked around stupidly.

I looked around and saw mom in one corner, screaming and trying to escape like a zombie while a man held her. Suddenly floods of emotions and realisations hit me and I gasped. I jumped up screaming, “Mama!” so loud my lungs hurt. I couldn’t bear it, all of that was happening, nor could I understand. I was going crazy.

She snapped at me a look as I screamed, she was in tears, and I realised so was I. She suddenly stopped moving, smiled at me through the tear and suddenly, as I saw, her body fell lump, completely lifeless.

“M… Ma… Mama?” I said slowly with wide eyes, tears rushing down, and tried to go towards her with the weight of my body on the table beside because my legs were dead. I couldn’t handle it. It was too much for me. The pain in my heart, I couldn’t breathe, and a terrifying thought in the back of my head, “Was she…?”

What is happening? What is happening? What is happening? What is happening? What is happening? What is happening?

The man slowly and carefully sat her down on the sofa on the side, and then I saw his face, and I stopped moving, I was froze midway my struggle. It added more to the already fucked up situation.

It was my Dad.

“Pa… papa?” I stammered, and then even I can’t explain what happened inside of me. It felt like boiling magma in my stomach, I could feel my nerves about to burst, like the endpoint of my bearing capacity. But one thing I knew was that I had never streamed so loud in my life, I didn’t even know I could.

I breathed in and screamed, “WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!”

I was drooling out, panting like a dog. My mom just tried to kill me and now lying lifeless in front of me and my dad is standing there, with nothing but sorrow on his face, his eyes not meeting with mine. I couldn’t with it.

“You need to calm down” said the girl coming from my bedroom.

“He didn’t need to see all this” said my dad, me looking stupidly at both, as he added, “or atleast we could have informed him earlier”. I realised this was the first time I saw my dad talk normally with more than 3 words.

“This is how Gagarblue wanted it this way” said the girl with a straight face, “He’s in charge so we don’t have a say”

“W… what is this?” I said finally.

My dad sighed. He looked at the girl and she nodded and went into my bedroom, while he came to me.

He came close, held my shoulders and said, “Sit down” he said, pulling out a chair.

“B… But what… Mama?” I asked. My mind was overwhelmed with questions, worries, everything at once. I sat down, my body frail and shaky, and brain messed up, “I… I don’t… I… I”

“Shhhh…” he said, moving his hands around my head, and for some reason it calmed me down. I took deep breaths and tried to stabilise myself.

He kneeled down in front of me, smiled (I didn’t remember the last time I had seen him smiling… It made me feel weird and soothing at the same time) and said, “Mama will be fine, don’t worry about her”, which relieved me, “She will be back after sometime. I have left a not for her, and she will understand the situation when she reads it. But we can’t stay here too long or else terrible things will start to happen”.

“We have to be quick. I know your mind is bursting with thoughts right now” he went on, his voice unnaturally calm, like he was a monk, and I couldn’t believe he was the same father I’ve been living with and the same one who has never said more than 3 words to me.

“Everything happened so suddenly, and I know it’s too much to take in. But just have faith on your Papa, follow me and you will get all your answers when it’s the right time. We don’t have the time to explain you here what’s going on, but just understand that from this point on, you life will be nothing like it has been until now. From now on you will be living in a world more bizarre and wild than imaginations, and you, you will be the centre of it. And don’t ever be afraid, because no matter what happens, I will always protect you”

“Hurry up!” said the girl from my bedroom. I saw she had been writing something on the wall of my room.

He finished, got up, mopped my tears and said, “come on, it’s time to go” and he went, me following him behind.

I can’t really explain what I was feeling back then, as I walked with him. I was relieved Mama was alright, and my mind was still flooding with questions, with a constant ‘it’s all a dream’ feeling, but in some corner I could feel an excitement, happiness, a curiosity. I didn’t know it but I was feeling like I was going on a great journey, and all the fear had drained away.

I didn’t know it, but I was feeling like a protagonist.

The girl had finished writing on the wall with a weird kind of chalk. She backed away and whispered something.

As I gasped and watched awestruck, all the letters started to glow, and a dot appeared in the centre of the wall, which grew and grew until it was the size of a door. It was glowing in purple and blue, and I was making a deep noise as it slowly sucked the air in the room. And I already knew, but was working on believing, that it was a portal.

The girl walked towards it, looked at me as I gulped, and jumped in, vanishing behind it.

"Come" said my dad taking me closer to it.

"D... Dad" I backed away, obviously, but he looked at me, smiled and said, "be afraid, this is the start of your journey!"

He left my hand and tapped my shoulders.

"Come after me Fudo!" said Papa, standing up, "and don't be afraid" and jumped straight into the portal.

And that brings me to the point where I started the story, and how I was standing in my bedroom with a portal open in front of me, leading to a dimension never seen or heard before.

But I remembered the words of my father, and I was ready. I had lot of questions, lot of confusion, I wasn't even sure it was all true or not, but for some reason, for the first time I felt I was ready for a challenge. I felt the curiosity and excitement in my heart. I felt that this was the moment, I become the main character of my life.

I walked closer to the portal and tried touching the portal door, but my hands went right through and it felt like I was dipping my hand in water, except that it didn't get wet.

But I wasn't afraid anymore. I was uncertain, but I was ready for whatever to come, not having the idea how but I just was.

"Okay, here we go" I said, took a deep breath and jumped in.

And that was the beginning of my story.