Welcome to Isekai Magic Island

You've decided to make your own custom character, that's great! The opening will still be the same sort of thing, it will start with you in your backstory-specific location and then end with you slamming down in the fresh cut grass turf of magic practical testing field A22.

When you're ready to begin and your character is finalized, please select /START below.

The alarm was the kind that didn't so much wake you up as remind you that consciousness was another shift you hadn't asked for.

Kenji Sato stared at the ceiling. Water stain shaped like a prefecture nobody visited. Crack running toward the light fixture that had never worked. The wallpaper—once beige, now the color of resignation—peeled at the corner nearest the window where the rain got in.

First day.

He sat up. The mattress springs made a sound like a small animal being informed of its tax obligations.

The factory. 6 AM. Twelve hours of moving parts from one place to another place, which was really the same place if you thought about it hard enough, which nobody did because thinking about it hard enough was how you ended up staring at water stains at 5:47.

He pulled on the track jacket. The one with the fraying cuffs and the stain that might have been curry or might have been something he'd decided not to investigate. The worn sneakers with the uneven soles that made him list slightly to the left. His hair—cut by his own hand, in his own guess—stuck up at the back where he'd missed.

Eighteen years, he thought, looking at the mirror that made him look like someone had drawn him from memory. And this is the part where they tell you the story begins.

He didn't think that. Nobody thinks that. He thought: I should eat something but the convenience store doesn't open for thirteen minutes and the rice is gone.

He thought: It's fine. It's just a job. People do this their whole lives.

He thought: Whole lives.

The door stuck, like it always did, like it had since the landlord had promised to fix it in what was probably a different decade. He shouldered it open. Cold air. Gray sky. The smell of the vending machine on the corner that someone had kicked open again.

He stepped forward—

—and the step kept going.

No.

The step took.

There was a moment where his foot was on the landing and also very much not on the landing, where the concrete existed and also didn't, where the gray sky became a different sky and the smell of vending machine became the smell of—

Grass.

Fresh cut.

Under his actual face.

He was on his knees. On grass. Green grass, bright grass, the kind of green that didn't exist in the part of Tokyo where the stains were shaped like prefectures. His hands were pressed into it. Soft. Real. Here.

Above him: sky. Blue. Not gray. Blue with clouds that looked like they'd been drawn by someone who'd read about clouds but never seen one.

Around him: a field. Marked with lines. Poles with flags. Something that hummed.

“Right,” said a voice above him. Crisp. Female. The voice of someone who had never once not known what they were going to say next. “Right, right, right.”

Footsteps. Approaching.

“Well clearly you need more practice, you've just teleported someone, you didn't summon anything!”

The voice dropped lower—addressing someone else now, someone Kenji couldn't see from his position with grass pressed against his cheek.

“You. Stay there. We'll sort this.”

Back to Kenji. Closer now. The footsteps had stopped.

“Young man, my sincere apologies.”

A pause. Kenji looked up.

The woman was tall. Gray hair pinned tight. Robes the color of a serious meeting. She held a clipboard—no, not a clipboard, something that glowed faintly at the edges, which was definitely not a thing that clipboards did.

“Please tell me where you were a moment ago,” the woman said, pen already moving, “and I'll see to it we get you returned to your...”

The pen stopped.

The woman's eyes moved down. Kenji's track jacket. The uneven sneakers. The black hair cut like someone had done it in the dark. The shoulders that had learned to expect disappointment and were already carrying it.

“...ship...”

The word hung there like it had wandered into the wrong conversation.

The alarm was the kind that didn't so much wake you up as remind you that consciousness was another shift you hadn't asked for.

Yuki Tanaka stared at the ceiling. Water stain shaped like a prefecture nobody visited. Crack running toward the light fixture that had never worked. The wallpaper—once beige, now the color of resignation—peeled at the corner nearest the window where the rain got in.

First day.

She sat up. The mattress springs made a sound like a small animal being informed of its tax obligations.

The warehouse. 6 AM. Twelve hours of moving boxes from one place to another place, which was really the same place if you thought about it hard enough, which nobody did because thinking about it hard enough was how you ended up staring at water stains at 5:47.

She pulled on the hoodie. The one with the fraying cuffs and the stain that might have been soy sauce or might have been something she'd decided not to investigate. The canvas shoes with the tape on the left one. The tape was gray now. It had started clear.

Eighteen years, she thought, looking at the mirror that made her look like someone had drawn her from memory. And this is the part where they tell you the story begins.

She didn't think that. Nobody thinks that. She thought: I should eat something but the convenience store doesn't open for thirteen minutes and the rice is gone.

She thought: It's fine. It's just a job. People do this their whole lives.

She thought: Whole lives.

The door stuck, like it always did, like it had since the landlord had promised to fix it in what was probably a different decade. She shouldered it open. Cold air. Gray sky. The smell of the vending machine on the corner that someone had kicked open again.

She stepped forward—

—and the step kept going.

No.

The step took.

There was a moment where her foot was on the landing and also very much not on the landing, where the concrete existed and also didn't, where the gray sky became a different sky and the smell of vending machine became the smell of—

Grass.

Fresh cut.

Under her actual face.

She was on her knees. On grass. Green grass, bright grass, the kind of green that didn't exist in the part of Tokyo where the stains were shaped like prefectures. Her hands were pressed into it. Soft. Real. Here.

Above her: sky. Blue. Not gray. Blue with clouds that looked like they'd been drawn by someone who'd read about clouds but never seen one.

Around her: a field. Marked with lines. Poles with flags. Something that hummed.

“Right,” said a voice above her. Crisp. Female. The voice of someone who had never once not known what they were going to say next. “Right, right, right.”

Footsteps. Approaching.

“Well clearly you need more practice, you've just teleported someone, you didn't summon anything!”

The voice dropped lower—addressing someone else now, someone Yuki couldn't see from her position with grass pressed against her cheek.

“You. Stay there. We'll sort this.”

Back to Yuki. Closer now. The footsteps had stopped.

“Young lady, my sincere apologies.”

A pause. Yuki looked up.

The woman was tall. Gray hair pinned tight. Robes the color of a serious meeting. She held a clipboard—no, not a clipboard, something that glowed faintly at the edges, which was definitely not a thing that clipboards did.

“Please tell me where you were a moment ago,” the woman said, pen already moving, “and I'll see to it we get you returned to your...”

The pen stopped.

The woman's eyes moved down. Yuki's hoodie. The tape on the shoe. The faded amber roots of hair that hadn't seen a salon in a fiscal year.

“...ship...”

The word hung there like it had wandered into the wrong conversation.