Cary found it hard to retrace his steps to remember how he got here. There were no footsteps to track back to. Of course, he would know. After all, he was standing on top of thick snow in the middle of a silent forest. And from what he knew about the properties of snow, it was quite easy to deform them just from the sheer weight of a human being. He looked behind him and only smooth, undisturbed ground showed—the sight was the same when he looked in front of him. For all intent and purposes, Cary was dropped here. Except he wasn’t, being dropped would leave a noticeable mark as well. No, it was as if he was teleported to this very spot so perfectly that he did not lose his balance and fall down.

What the hell is going on? Cary was shocked, so shocked that he did not move a muscle. Calm down, let’s remember where I was before this. He thought. 

Cary recalled being fired from his mall security job earlier today. The pandemic that ravaged the world decreased mall attendance to an unprecedented rock bottom. As if malls were not dead enough before, they were the symbol of reckless consumerist euphoria that turned obsolete with the introduction of online shopping. After the pandemic struck, profits and revenues for on-site shopping like malls went slump. Cary knew it was a matter of time until management laid him off. The bottom of the rung would always be the ones sacrificed first.

To make matter worse, as it turned out, being stuck in quarantine with your longtime spouse might provide some revelations on the sustainability of your relationship. Cary’s mother and father had decided to finally call it quits after thirty years of seemingly happy marriage. Their split had caused a rift in his family and created an extra burden on Cary’s psyche. All the good memories he cherished with both of his parents were now tainted by this everlasting stain.

Cary himself was suffering through bouts of depression and anxiety. Graduating from a film school, he found that connections to the industry were vital to survive and thrive as a filmmaker, something he did not have. For the past few years, he had to make do making short films and submitting them to festivals in hopes of some production house or distributor noticing him. Being a mall cop to pay the bills was not something he was particularly proud of. And juggling between his full-time job and dream meant he sacrificed any semblance of a functioning social life, something he felt highly insecure about.

And so he entered his small apartment after getting fired still wearing his blue security uniform with black trousers. He wanted to take his mind of everything so he picked up a random book from his bookshelf. And coincidentally, he chose Doraemon, a manga he loved as a kid about a futuristic cat robot with fantastic gadgets that cause miracles and he uses them to help out Nobita, a dumb bespectacled kid whose future descendant sent Doraemon back into the past to improve his circumstance. He started reading through all the volumes, knee-deep in nostalgia and fantasizing about how he would use Doraemon’s magical gadgets to improve his life. Heck, he would even try to improve the world as a whole, that’s how amazing those gadgets were. 

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

That was the last thing he remembered; reading Doraemon in a darkened room, crickets buzzing outside his window in nighttime. Suddenly he was here, in a snowy forest. It was cold, he’s still wearing his uniform, and he could see that the sun was about to set.

What is this? Cary just noticed that he was holding something on his right palm the whole time he was pondering his past: A nondescript pure white pouch. As a storyteller himself, Cary was not ignorant about the common narrative conventions, he quickly put two and two together. Reading Doraemon and then being teleported into this mysterious forest holding this white pouch? Could it be? He thought. 

It was an idea too absurd. Somehow, the popular portal fantasy genre that ravaged through popular fictions like a pandemic with all its promise of power fantasy and adventure was easier to accept as being his current circumstance than this pouch in front of him to be the 4D pocket owned by the futuristic cat robot. Such a thing was too powerful. Even as a kid Cary knew that if the gadgets inside the interdimensional pocket were to be used in real life, that person could take over the world, shaping it for the better or the worst. 

Unless? Cary ran his hands through the surface of the pouch. It was soft, almost like a skin. It's a texture that he never felt before, something pleasant yet alien. While rubbing against the top part of the pouch, he found the opening. He put the tip of his fingers inside, then his hand, then his entire arm was devoured by it. The white pouch was small, Cary looked as if he was putting his arm into a bottomless magician's hat to pull out a rabbit.

What the hell? Cary thought as he was almost shoulder-deep inside the hole. He continued trying to grasp anything he could find inside. Finally, he felt something. A small object. He grabbed on to it and pulled it out swiftly. 

"This is...." Cary's voice trailed as his face showed utter surprise. "It's....."

"Take-copter!" 

[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/doraemon/images/e/e8/Bambo.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20130708031038&path-prefix=en]