He opened his eyes.
From nothing. From darkness. From silence.
A dim sky hung overhead, cracked and clouded with smog. The air was thick, and everything smelled like rot and metal.
"Where… am I?" he said aloud, voice trembling with confusion.
A sharp, foul scent burned at his nose.
"Ew. What is that smell?"
He tried to sit up, only to realize he was lying on top of a pile of trash. Molded food scraps, rusted tin, torn cloth. Flies buzzed around him like he belonged there.
"Why the hell am I on a trash heap?" he muttered, disgusted.
He stumbled to his feet, unsteady, and caught a glimpse of something reflective in the mess nearby. A broken shard of a mirror.
He hesitated, then picked it up.
What he saw made him freeze.
The face staring back at him wasn't his.
His features were different. Softer. His nose smaller. His hair was dark and unruly, his eyes a color he didn't recognize. Even his arms looked shorter. His body felt smaller.
His heart began to race.
"Who is this? Is… is that me?" he whispered.
He ran a hand across his face, as if touching it would break the illusion. But it didn't.
It was real.
A sudden, absurd thought crossed his mind.
"Is this… one of those reincarnation stories?"
The kind he used to read to escape reality. Fantasies about people dying and waking up in strange new worlds, blessed with magic and fate.
He turned in a slow circle. The alleyway was unfamiliar. The buildings were tall but crooked, made of old stone and strange metal. There were signs in a language he didn't recognize. Strange birds screeched overhead. The entire world felt off, like a dream trying too hard to look real.
"This clearly isn't the Japan I know," he said under his breath.
He looked back down at his hands. Small. Foreign.
Whoever he was now, it wasn't the same person who had fallen from that rooftop.
And yet, somehow… he was still alive.