Chapter Text
The eviction notice sat on the counter like a tombstone—final, inevitable, mocking. Twenty-seven years old, and Marcus Chen had officially hit rock bottom. Again.
His studio apartment wasn't much—a glorified closet with a hotplate and a bathroom that smelled perpetually of mildew—but it was his.
Or had been, until he'd fallen three months behind on rent.
The grocery store management job barely covered food, let alone housing in this overpriced city. And his parents? They'd made it crystal clear five years ago that their disappointment in his "life choices" meant he was on his own.
Marcus collapsed onto his futon, springs groaning in protest.
The ceiling had a water stain shaped vaguely like a middle finger. Appropriate.
His phone buzzed. Another text from his manager: Need you to cover Jake's shift tomorrow. 6 AM.
He didn't respond. What was the point? Show up, get yelled at by customers, go home to nothing, repeat until death. The American Dream, ladies and gentlemen.
Then his vision glitched.
Not his phone screen—his actual vision. Reality pixelated for a moment, and suddenly there was a translucent blue window floating in front of his face, like something out of a video game.
[TRANSMIGRATION SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
You have been selected for world transfer. Do you accept?
[YES] [NO]
Marcus blinked. Rubbed his eyes. The window remained, hovering impossibly in mid-air, casting a faint azure glow across his dingy apartment.
"What the hell...?"
He reached out tentatively. His finger passed through the [NO] button—it wasn't solid, just... there. But when he touched [YES], it felt like pressing a soap bubble. Resistance, then give.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up from his chest. This was it. He'd finally snapped. Stress-induced hallucination, probably. His mind's last desperate attempt at escapism before the eviction, the debt collectors, the suffocating weight of existing crushed him completely.
Well, why not? If he was going crazy anyway, might as well commit to the bit.
Marcus pressed [YES].
Reality tore open like fabric ripped at the seams.
The world around him shattered into fragments of light and color, each shard a window into somewhere else—castles piercing foreign skies, creatures that defied reason, landscapes painted in impossible hues. His body unraveled, atom by atom, as space itself bent and twisted around him.
For one terrifying, yet exhilarating, moment, he existed everywhere and nowhere at once.
Then gravity seized him, dragging his reconstructing form through the dimensional tear.
He was falling.