Hopping Celestial Fox

“– then I returned back home and tried to relax for a bit. But then I got the call from you, packed a few potions, and went to the hospital,” I finished my retelling of the last few days.

Mom had only occasionally interrupted to ask for clarification, but otherwise let me tell the whole story from the moment I’d gotten mad at the floating purple things and tried to rip one apart, all the way to now.

“I see…” Mom nodded for the last time, deep in thought.

She was a lot calmer about things than she had been yesterday, but some things still seemed to astonish her.

She sighed.

“It all still feels so unreal…” she said, giving me a long look and a slight frown.

“Yeah… I know…”

“I don’t like just how dangerous this is… Did going inside the portals have any side effects on you? Did you contract any otherworldly illnesses? From Wi? Or just the environment of these worlds?”

I blinked.

I hadn’t even thought about something like that.

But in hindsight, I really should have. After all, Wi had been a slave living in terrible conditions, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think she might have been sick with something. And since I’d been carrying her in our mad dash away from the spider…

“Umm, I don’t know…? I don’t feel sick or anything…”

She nodded but her thoughtful frown didn’t drop.

“Do the healing potions cure viral or bacterial illnesses as well…?”

Another thing I hadn’t really thought about. In the game, it wasn’t really relevant since there weren’t any illnesses…

No, wait. There were. There was that one long and convoluted quest where you had to procure some miracle cure for an NPC exactly because a healing potion didn’t work. And there was also that one sickness status effect that couldn’t be healed by them either, wasn’t there…?

“... No, I don’t think they do, actually.”

Her lips thinned in worry.

“I’ll book a check-up for you then. Just in case. Your friends should get one too.”

“Right… Yeah…” I nodded in agreement. Then a thought occurred to me. “Actually… I could also just ask Casey if there are any pathogens from that world we should be careful about.”

Mom’s frown deepened.

“That’s… I suppose that’s true… Gosh, this is just so strange… But still, even if she says there aren’t, there might be things even she doesn’t know about that world. You said yourself that you don’t fully understand the portals, so what if the world isn’t perfectly in line with what Casey has written? Not to mention, the video game world could also have some foreign viruses.”

“You’re right…” I pursed my lips. “I can’t believe I haven’t thought about that…”

She patted my head between my ears.

“It’s okay. That’s what I’m here for. I’m just glad that you didn’t wait even longer to tell me everything.”

“Sorry… I should have told you sooner…” I mumbled. “Even if you banned me from ever opening a portal again.”

She then hummed and her thoughtful frown appeared.

“About that… I told you not to because I was terrified at that moment… It was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, to be honest.”

I looked up at her in surprise.

Was she saying what I thought she was…?

“I might not be the best mother…” she continued softly. “But I realize that banning you from ever doing anything with these portals would be a mistake. Sooner or later, you would open one again for whatever reason… And because of the ban, you wouldn’t even tell me about it.”

“I…”

“And to be honest, I’m curious about them as well,” she admitted, making me blink in surprise.

“You are…?”

“Of course, I am, honey.” She gave me a wry smile. “Interdimensional portals to fictional worlds? Who wouldn’t be fascinated by that?”

My surprised expression slowly shifted into a small smile as well.

“So, I’m not banning you from doing anything with the portals, but we will have to have some ground rules, alright?”

I nodded.

“Firstly, I want you to always tell me when you’re about to do anything related to the portals. Don’t leave me in the dark.”

“Right. Of course.”

“Secondly, I want you to always decide on a clear goal when going inside a portal. Stick to whatever goal you set, and if things go pear-shaped, leave as soon as you can.”

“Okay.” Another nod from me.

Both rules were very reasonable.

“Thirdly… I want to see it. I want you to show me how you open a portal.”

Our eyes met and I could see the curiosity in hers. I gave her another smile.

“Of course! Follow me!”

I jumped up from the couch where we were sitting and skipped back into my room, Mom following right behind me.

Once we were inside, I eyed the closed portal and remembered the idea I’d had about redirecting it, but quickly shook it off.

“It’s right here,” I said as I stepped closer to it and gestured with my hands around it.

Mom hummed, her eyes narrowing.

“I can’t see anything,” she mumbled, confirming what we already knew.

With that, I grabbed the portal’s edges, idly noting the slightly different feeling it gave compared to Wiland’s portal, and ripped it open, revealing the Golden Woods once more.

Mom’s eyes shot open wide as she stared at what had to look like a hole in reality to her.

“Oh my… What in the world…?” she muttered as she walked closer and eyed the bushes on the other side. “Hearing about it is one thing, but seeing it for real…”

I gave her a wry smile.

“Yeah… Everyone has a similar reaction.”

She stood right in front of it, and slowly raised her arm with some trepidation, before moving it inside the portal. Her eyes widened even more as she did.

She pulled her hand back and stared at the edges of the portal.

“What happens if I touch the edge?” She pointed at it.

“Well, it should be rock solid like a wall.”

“Even for you?” She looked at me.

I looked back at her for a second, before lifting my foot and putting it through the portal… and then stepping on the boundary where the portal’s rim was. It didn’t budge even when I applied more force to it.

“Even for me, I guess…”

But Mom was frowning.

“How come it stops your foot but not your hands?”

I blinked. Then I pulled my foot back and tried to push the portal’s rim down with my hand, and although it took a bit of effort, I managed to enlarge the portal a tiny bit.

I looked at my hands in confusion.

Why did my hands work but not my feet?

Mom hummed, her frown deepening.

“Maybe it’s because of your socks?”

“Uh, my socks…?” I looked down at the white socks on my feet.

“You said it yourself, only you can interact with these portals. And your socks aren’t you, even if you are wearing them.”

I was floored for a moment, but then I quickly took off my right sock, raised my bare foot above the portal’s rim, and…

“Whoa?!” The portal widened a little in the direction I’d pushed with my foot while the rest of it stayed where it had been. “Seriously?!”

I’d briefly remembered tripping over the portal and getting shocked once upon a time. Did this mean that if I had been naked, I could have instead torn a bigger hole in reality instead?

Mom was shaking her head.

“How big can you even make these portals? Could you fit anything through? Like a car?”

More questions I’d never bothered trying to ask.

I took off my other sock and grabbed the upper side of the portal with my hands while stomping on the bottom part with my right foot and pushed.

It took some effort, but I managed to expand the portal so that it reached all the way to the floor. With my footing a bit more stable, I put my other foot on the portal and then continued to push in all directions.

The more it stretched, the harder it became to stretch it even more. And it might have been my imagination, but I felt like the purple rim also got thinner on all sides as the hole in reality widened.

I huffed a breath and jumped off the portal inside the Golden Woods before looking back into my room.

“It’s getting a lot harder to stretch it more. Don’t know if you could fit a car…” My eyes swept through my room, catching a glimpse of the door. “Not like we could get a car in my room anyway…”

Mom sighed.

“No, it was just an idea… Actually, maybe you shouldn’t try to open the portals any wider than this. If it’s getting harder to open more, then… What if it… snaps, or something? What if you couldn’t close it anymore?”

I froze for a second.

I hadn’t thought about that either. What would have happened if I stretched a portal too much and it… snapped? Could it snap? I didn’t think I wanted to find out.

“You’re right… I should…”

“Hey, it’s her!” A familiar voice suddenly caught my attention.

My head whipped around in surprise and I spotted three figures in the distance. Three annoyingly familiar figures. It was the trio who had helped me get into the city, and they were here again, sprinting on the road, looking at the giant hole in reality that led to my room.

Why?!

Acting on pure instinct, I quickly jumped back inside my room, barreling into Mom who had been standing in front of the portal. She gasped in surprise and I mumbled my apologies before quickly untangling myself from her, standing up, and grabbing the portal’s rims, intending to close it again.

For some reason, the portal didn’t resist as much as it normally would have, and I managed to snap it closed with a loud clap.

The ease caught me off guard and I stumbled right after I closed it and fell through the closed portal and face planted the floor.

“Ow?!”

I blinked as I lifted my head and looked behind me at the closed portal.

…

Maybe I had overreacted a bit but… Dammit, why did I keep running into these three? Why couldn’t they–

… Hold up.

Why was the closed portal way taller than it was before…?

“Renee, what happened?!” Mom exclaimed as she stood back up and looked at the frown on my face.

“Oh, uh, sorry. I think I overrated a bit… There… There were some players nearby – those three I told you about – and they saw me, so I wanted to hide again…”

Mom stared for a second before letting out a sigh mixed with a light chuckle.

“I see… Sorry, that was my bad. I got a little too curious about what the portal could do.” She shook her head. “You know what? If I’m banned from working for a week, then you should leave these portals be for a while as well.”

I stood up as well and gave her a sheepish smile.

“Yeah… I did want to take a break from them, too. I guess I just can’t help myself…”

“That’s alright, honey. We have all the time in the world to figure these things out. How about we relax for the rest of today?”

I nodded.

“Yeah. Let’s do that.”