Hiraga Saito. Seventeen years of age and in his second year of high school.
Athletic ability: normal. Grades: average. Duration without a girlfriend: seventeen years. Overalclass="underline" no positives or negatives.
Teachers' evaluation: “Ah, Hiraga-kun. He refuses to give up, and he has a strong sense of curiosity, but he's a little slow.”
Parents' evaluation: “You should study more. You're on the slow side.”
Being slow, he was rarely bothered by accidents, and accepted pretty much anything — relative to most people, at least. Earlier, when he saw people flying, he made a commotion, but given that an ordinary person would have been so shocked as to be brought to their knees, he owed much to his disposition.
To put it plainly, he just didn't think too deeply about things before acting.
Also, he had a fiercely competitive spirit. In that sense, he might have been quite similar to Louise in personality.
Anyway, a mere thirty minutes ago, Saito had been walking down a street in Tokyo, Japan; on Earth.
He was on his way home after having his notebook computer repaired. He was quite happy, in fact, since he could go on the internet once more. He'd recently registered at an online dating site and had a chance to finally find himself a girlfriend.
Though what he really wanted was something to spice up his otherwise monotonous daily life. However, instead of discovering it on the internet, he found it in the middle of the street.
He was walking past the train station on his way home when suddenly a shining mirror-like object appeared in front of him. Saito stopped to take a good long look at it. Remember, his curiosity was about twice that of a normal person.
It was a large ellipse, about two meters high and one meter wide, with no substantial thickness. Then he noticed it was actually floating a little above the ground.
This piqued his interest. “What kind of natural phenomenon is this?” he wondered, scrutinizing the sparkling mirror-like object. “This is beyond odd, I've never seen or heard of any kind of phenomenon like this.” He considered sidestepping it, but his curiosity got the better of him. He wanted to see if he could walk through it.
No, maybe I shouldn't, he told himself. But it's just a couple of steps, he reasoned. He really did have a hopeless personality.
But first, he picked up a pebble and threw it experimentally at the disk. The pebble disappeared into the middle of the mirror-like object.
Oho, he thought. When he checked the other side, the pebble was nowhere to be seen. Next he pulled his house key out of his pocket. He poked the mirror-like object with the tip of the key.
Nothing happened.
Withdrawing the key, he examined it, but nothing about it had changed. Saito judged that there wouldn't be any immediate danger if he walked through, which only tempted him further to do it.
In the end, even though he knew he shouldn't, he stepped forward. It was much like opening up a manga just after deciding you were going to do nothing but study from now on.
He immediately regretted it, as an intense shock assailed his senses. He suddenly remembered back to when he was a child, when his mother had bought him a strange machine that supposedly made a person smarter by running an electric current through their body. It felt a lot like that. Saito fainted.
When he opened his eyes…
He was in a strange world as if out of a fantasy book.
“Is that true?” asked Louise, looking at Saito with an expression of disbelief. In her hand, she held bread from tonight's dinner.
They were in Louise's room. It looked about 12 tatami mats[3]in size. If you treated the window as south, the bed would be situated on the west side, the door would be to the north, and a big wardrobe would stand to the east. All the furniture looked like valuable antiques. Louise had brought Saito here once he had regained consciousness.
Saito, trying to ignore the ache from the blow earlier, answered her, “So what if it wasn't?”
Saito had never felt the slightest bit resentful of his own curiosity until today. I never should've walked through that stupid thing…This isn't Japan. It isn't even Earth.
If there were a nation with wizards who flew through the sky, even only a few, he certainly hadn't learned about it in middle school geography. And even if there were, what about those huge moons floating in the sky? They were easily twice the size of Earth's. Their huge size was not the issue; it was entirely possible that in some countries there were nights like that. However, that there were two of them was strange. Could the moon have multiplied into two without Saito noticing?
No. It couldn't. In other words, this was definitely not Earth.
It was dark now… Night had already fallen. I guess my family is worrying about me right now, he concluded sadly.
From the window, he could see the grassy plains where he'd been lying. Across the plains, illuminated by moonlight, he could also see a tall mountain range. Over to his right was a vast expanse of dense forest. Saito let out a sigh.
Evergreen forests like this one simply should not exist. It's totally different from what you'd see in Japan.
The castle and the grounds he had passed on his way looked very much like something directly out of the Middle Ages. It had been a breathtaking spectacle that would've amazed him if he'd come here on a trip.
An entrance arch and a sturdy staircase, both made of stone… This was the Tristain Academy of Magic, Louise had explained. All the Academy students lived in dormitories on the school grounds.
Academy of Magic? Wonderful! Dormitories? Splendid! It's just like a movie!
But this isn't Earth…!
“I can't believe it.”
“Look, neither can I.”
“By another world, what do you mean?”
“There aren't any magicians. And there's only one moon.”
“There's such a world like that?”
“I'm telling you, it's where I came from!” Saito shouted.
“Don't yell at me, you commoner.”
“Who are you calling a commoner?!”
“Well, you're not a mage, right? So you're a commoner.”
“Why does it matter if I'm a mage or not?”
“Look, do you really know nothing about the world?”
“As I've been telling you all this time, I'm not from this one!”
At that, Louise set her elbows on the table with a troubled look.
On the tabletop was a lamp with an art deco style shade. Its flickering light filled the room with a pale glow. It seemed as if electricity wasn't used.
Jeez, electricity isn't that complicated to set up, is it? I feel like I'm back in the old foreign settler's hut that our family went to ages ago.
Wait, 'setup…'Oh, could it be… This is…
“I've got it.”
“What did you get?” Louise asked, looking up.
“This is one of those candid camera programs. It's just a trick everyone is pulling on me, isn't it?”
“What's a 'candid camera'?”
“They stopped airing a while ago after someone got hurt, but you don't have any material so you're resorting back to the same kind of stuff, are you? So where's the camera?”
“What are you talking about?”
Saito sprung upon Louise.
“Kya-! What are you doing?!”
Knocking over a chair, he bore down on her.
“Where's the mike?! Is it here?”
Grabbing her roughly, he started to unbutton her blouse. However, a swift kick to the groin brought that to a halt… This left him on the floor in pain.
3
Rooms in Japan are measured jō (畳), which is the number of tatami mats required to cover the floor. A tatami mat is 90 cm by 180 cm for an area of 1.62 m2 each. Twelve jō is slightly more than 19.5 m2 or almost 210 square feet.