Alright, calm down. I should calmly analyze the situation.

So… There had been a portal to a game world in my room this whole time. How was that even possible? Rogue Life Online had first launched only five years ago, but this portal had been here for way longer.

No, no, more importantly, what was I supposed to do with this?

Other people couldn’t see the purple cracks, but could they see this? Was there a way to close it again? Should I go ahead and explore? What if the portal closed behind me and disappeared? Would I be stuck in a game forever then?

…

I turned to my computer, which had booted up a long time ago while I had dealt with the portal. I needed to at least confirm something.

I sat down at the computer with the portal ominously humming behind me, launched RLO non-VR version, and logged in. I ignored all the greetings from my clan members and immediately grabbed a teleport flower to the Golden Woods.

Then, I realized I didn’t know where exactly the portal was supposed to be. I got up, carefully approached the portal again, and scanned the surrounding area on the other side.

“Alright, that tree over there… and then there’s a group of flowers here… Oh, I think I know where this is.” I memorized a couple of landmarks and went back to the computer.

A few minutes of navigating my character later, I found the spot. Unfortunately, the portal was in an untraversable area just off the main road. Still, I moved my character into the general area and then went to the portal again to see.

“No fucking way…” I whispered to myself as soon as my eyes caught the sight of the fox-eared girl character standing in the distance. My game avatar.

Caution forgotten, I squeezed through the portal into RLO again. I traversed the supposedly untraversable woods and walked onto the path where my character stood.

Light blue fox ears and shoulder-length hair, a battle dress in matching colors, and a katana on her hip. Yeah, I’d made a fox girl character. Because both foxes and girls were cute. Even though I was neither.

“Uh, hi,” I awkwardly greeted her.

She stood in place with the default facial expression plastered on her face, staring off into the void.

“A-are you actually alive…?”

No response. I began to feel a bit dumb. But at the same time… seeing her like this felt surreal. I felt like I was dreaming.

Since she wasn’t responding, the awkward me decided to poke her face with a finger. It felt like real human skin. I kept poking her cheek, bewildered. I also tried grabbing her shoulders, her ears, shaking her… but nothing produced any reaction. She was like… a doll, or a robot without any instructions.

“Alright…”

Although I was still confused, my caution caught up to me again, and I decided to leave before the portal vanished for some random plot-convenient reason. I ran off into the forest again and, to my relief, found the portal still there, ominously humming in mid-air. I went through into my room, but my foot clipped the portal’s rim.

“Ack!”

It shocked me again. Stupid thing…

Once I made it back into my room, I headed for my computer and sat down with a sigh.

Just as another test, I hovered my mouse on the log out button and then turned to look through the portal at my character. There were trees and leaves in the way so it was hard to see, but I could still see the bit of blue among all the yellow. I clicked and it vanished.

“What the hell…”

Everything about this was surreal. Moreover, this was just one of many purple cracks I’d seen. Would all of them lead to somewhere in RLO?

…

Could people come from the game into my room? Could monsters barge through while I was sleeping?

With that scary thought in mind, I approached the portal once again, this time with the intention to close it. Could it be done? Should it?

A minute of glaring at the portal later, I steeled myself and grabbed the portal’s borders. It shocked me again, but I persevered and did my best to force it shut.

It crackled and fizzled, resisting my hands, but eventually gave in and the portal snapped shut back into its familiar purple-crack-in-space form.

I fell down with a tired sigh. But as soon as my fingers touched the floor, I recoiled.

“Ow!”

My fingers were smoking.

“Oh shit!”

I had done my best to ignore the pain, but this wasn’t funny anymore.

I quickly ran to the bathroom, opened the cabinet, and took out some bandages. Even as I treated my poor fingers, I thought about the absurdity of what I had just experienced.

Was the game not actually a game? Could it be a real alternate world we humans had invaded with our player avatars?

Absurd.

Ridiculous.

I should investigate the developers of the game in more detail. There had to be more to this. They had to know RLO was a real world, right? Why were they hiding it? Why make a game out of another world?!

As I finished wrapping my fingers up, I looked at them and realized…

“Ah, crap… How am I gonna explain this to Mom?”

I deflated on the ground with a sigh.

If only there was an easy way to magically heal them like in a… a…

…

… a game.

I picked myself up, walked back into my room, and stared at the closed portal.

On one hand, it felt really dumb and stupid. I would be damaging my fingers even more for a chance to heal them. It wasn’t even guaranteed healing potions from a game would work on me.

But on the other hand… If it worked… If it freaking worked…

“Oh, what the hell,” I mumbled, losing myself to the temptation.

Once again, I gripped the portal with my fingers, ignoring the rising pain, and tore open a hole in space like it was paper. The same scene of golden yellow trees awaited me.

Well, at least it seemed like the portal didn’t randomly change destinations.

“Alright.”

Meaning I could open and close the portals at a whim at the cost of injuring my fingers.

“Now…”

I turned around, stepped over to my computer, carefully put my hurt hands on the keyboard and mouse, and logged into RLO again without even sitting down. I proceeded to search my inventory for a healing potion and dropped it on the ground. All while checking the portal and seeing my character perform all these actions.

Once done, I logged out, and stepped through the portal, nervous but also kinda excited. I ran to the road, found the dropped potion, picked it up, carefully uncorked it, and poured half of it over my left hand’s fingers.

“Huaaa?!”

It was the strangest sensation. Both scorching hot and ice cold. I felt my entire body shiver even as I hyperventilated.

But a few seconds later, when the sensation passed, I realized… My fingers didn’t hurt anymore.

“Oh my god…”

I put down the potion, undid the bandages on my left hand, and stared at the completely pristine fingers with unblemished skin.

My mind raced with the possibilities. But once again, I didn’t want to risk getting stuck in this world should the portal randomly disappear.

I grabbed the potion and the bandages and made my way over to the portal again.

Still there. Good.

I crawled through it back into my room, the potion and the bandages in hand.

The potion didn’t disappear, didn’t despawn, didn’t turn to plain water, or anything.

I had just smuggled a magical healing potion from a video game into the real world.

…

That was when I realized I had a huge grin on my face.