Prologue
I SAT AT A SMALL TABLE AND WATCHED THE clock. It was 11:55 p.m., and the day would soon turn over. Then it would be my long-awaited birthday.
To be clear: I had no friends, family, or partner there to celebrate with me. I was all alone, making a surprise party unlikely at this point. I didn’t know anyone who’d throw one for me. Even so, I was excited for the simple reason that I would be turning thirty.
Tick-tock. The clock was the only sound echoing through the room.
I was getting restless. I swallowed back drool. Midnight was just a few seconds away, at long last. How long had I been waiting and wishing for this day? I waited for time to pass with anticipation and fear.
Both my phone and clock alarm went off. It was midnight! I sprang up with the cheery ringtone, pumping both my arms up, shouting, “I did it! I made it! Happy thirtieth birthday to me!”
I was alone, but this strange behavior didn’t stem from loneliness. I was now a proper, thirty-year-old adult. As I looked up at the ceiling, I trembled from the strong feelings surging within me.
“When a virgin male turns thirty, he can become a magician,” I whispered. “Finally! Finally, it’s time to test it out!”
I lived in a cramped and scantily furnished studio apartment. All I had was a bookshelf lined with instruction manuals and fantasy novels. It’s true—I’ve always dreamt of fantasy worlds, from my youth to now. I especially fantasized about magic. My passion had no limits when it came to magic.
I knew that there was likely no such thing. But I never found any evidence that disproved it, either. Part of me just figured that all of this would be more interesting if magic really existed.
I’m sure you’ve imagined it, too, once or twice in your life: your fingertips shooting fireballs, unleashing lightning bolts, spouting fountains of water. Imagine soaring through the sky, learning incantations, and drawing hexagrams. I always carried my hopes of those things, all the way up through to today.
It was the rumor that kept my hope alive. I knew that it was fictional. I knew that. I couldn’t shake it off, though. I always carried a thin thread of hope tied to the myth: “When a virgin male turns thirty, he can become a magician.” Today, I’d learn the truth.
Doubt lingered in the corners of my mind. No, there’s simply no way. I’m sure everyone would laugh at me at first. They’d tell me of course it was impossible. But I couldn’t know until I tried.
The time had come. I lowered my arms and stretched them out in front of me. I opened my mouth.
“Fireball!” I screamed.
My shout echoed around me. The room didn’t stir.
“Thunderbolt!” I tried. “Tempest! Blizzard!”
Nothing happened. Maybe I needed to try a full incantation.
“I summon thee, deepest mysteries of the universe! Emerge, fusion of the light and darkness, born from your void!”
Nothing emerged. Of course, demons or summoned beasts weren’t showing up in my room. That’d be ridiculous.
I kept trying for a while. I attempted every magical technique and incantation I could, all to no avail. I tried spells from games, comics, even from my dorky notebooks. None of it did a thing.
I crashed against the wall in exhaustion.
“It’s only a myth, I guess.” Of course it was. The chances of anything happening were slim to none. It turned out that turning thirty as a virgin did not, in fact, allow one to use magic. I thought perhaps something like a fairy might appear to teach me, but a look around the room revealed no such presence.
The truth was obvious. Magic wasn’t real. Its spells and powers weren’t real.
“How lame,” I muttered.
The world was full of information. All you had to do was experiment, and you learned something new. I wanted to know the truth and found that it wasn’t anything exciting after all. What this confirmed was that all there was to life was to live normally, work normally, and die normally. It turned out that really was all I had.
What a disappointment. What a big, fat disappointment.
It was time for bed. My birthday was on a weekday, and I had to get up for work in a few hours.
At that very moment, something inside me twisted. I felt a vacant dejection, or a vast futility, fill my chest. It hurt. My chest hurt. I screamed in pain. My heart was on fire.
My muscles spasmed. My knees buckled. Pain shot through me, bringing me smack against the ground. I didn’t understand what was happening. This had never occurred before. I had never suffered a major illness or injury in my entire life.
Still totally clueless, the pain spread everywhere. As the pain grew bigger, so did my terror. I was scared—terrified. Was I dying?
The pain wouldn’t leave. My heart thumped into my ears and sounded like the earth rumbling. My vision began warping until everything went black.
✦ ✦ ✦
I opened my eyes. Everything looked hazy. This must be what the world looks like when you need glasses, I thought to myself.
The world moved, but my body wasn’t moving. I was being carried. Was that a ceiling above me?
I felt swaddled within something warm. I finally realized that I must have been alive. What a huge relief.
I must be in the hospital, I thought. Maybe someone called the ambulance? Thank goodness. Although, I have no clue who would’ve done that.
Perhaps it was my neighbor. I had been screaming and smacking the wall just moments before. The memory brought a jolt of pain and sorrow. I never wanted to experience something like that ever again.
I started to see someone. They must’ve been who saved me. I opened my mouth to speak.
“Gah,” I said.
Gah? Hang on, that wasn’t my voice, but it definitely came out of my mouth. What the heck?
“Gah?” Again, that was what came out. No doubt, my mouth made the sound. I could tell that much. I felt my throat quiver and everything, but my voice was strangely high. It didn’t sound like me.
“Oh, what is it, my darling Shion?” The voice came down from overhead. My vision was obscured, but when I strained my eyes, I started to see a person. It was a woman. She was gigantic and was carrying me. How could a woman possibly swaddle a full-grown man in her arms like this?
Something was off. What was happening to me? A panic set in, and I tried to look down at my body. My neck wouldn’t move. I tried glancing down instead. All I could see was a tiny hand. It was so small…way too small.
Don’t tell me… I began to realize what was happening. I couldn’t believe it—I had turned into a baby.
“Goo, goo, gah!”
“Hm? Oh, are you hungry? Or did you go potty?”
The same kindly voice floated down from above. I couldn’t hear her well. It sounded like she spoke to me from underwater. It was hard to focus and pick out the sounds.
Yep. I was a baby, all right, and the person holding me was either my mother or a nursemaid.
Are you kidding me? I had read about this kind of thing before. Like, a bunch of times. In all likelihood, I had been transported to another world, or reborn into one, anyway. Seriously?! This can’t—shouldn’t—be possible!
This thought led to another: if I was really reborn, then what was coming next?
All was blurry, but judging by the shape of the woman’s face and the furnishings around me, it appeared we weren’t in Japan. The woman’s clothes and the room interior looked pretty old, even for another country. Shion—the name that she called me—wasn’t a Japanese name. Yet, she was speaking my language.
That settled it. The chances were high that I was in another world.
Could that mean there was something else here? Something incredibly important and only possible because I was in a different world now. Could there be monsters, fairies, spirits, heroes, or demon kings?
No! It was magic! Just plain magic! Everyone knows that when you get sent to another world like this, there’s always magic! Guaranteed, 100 percent of the time!
Yes! Heck yes! I realized this was the blessings of the gods. They recognized my deep interest in and love for magic, and granted me this new life. Thank you, gods! You might not be real, but thank you!
Ugh, there was one problem, though. My body wouldn’t move. I was a baby now, and couldn’t do much. I couldn’t even speak. I was also getting very, very sleepy. Maybe I was thinking too much and my baby-body couldn’t handle my adult thoughts. I was probably just tired.
What if this is just a dream? Oof, that was a scary thought. Now I wanted to stay awake. I didn’t want to go back to boring reality. I wanted to stay here where the magic was.
The strangely warm sensation wrapped around my body, readying me for slumber. I fell asleep draped in perfect happiness.