Leon's alarm rang at 6:30. He hit the button without looking and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. The same hairline crack ran from the light fixture to the corner. He traced it with his eyes like he did every morning. Then he got up because that was what he did.
Shower. Toothbrush. Shirt and trousers from the chair. Wallet, keys, phone. He checked the time twice even though he never missed the 7:10 train. He locked the door and walked down two flights of stairs that smelled faintly of damp concrete and detergent. The corridor light flickered, as always. He didn't think about it.
Outside, the street was cool and gray. Delivery bikes hummed past. A woman walked a dog in a little coat. Leon turned toward the station and joined the flow. He didn't hurry. He never had to. His body knew this route better than his mind did.
On the platform, he stood where he always stood, by the second pillar from the front. When the doors opened he stepped in, moved three paces left, and grabbed the overhead rail. The car was full. Heads were down. Everyone was a small island. A boy in a school uniform tried to balance a heavy backpack and kept bumping into people. Leon shifted back to give him room. The boy glanced up, surprised, then looked away.
Two stops later, an elderly man with a cane got on. No seats were free. Leon didn't think; he just touched the man's sleeve and pointed. The man nodded, grateful, and sat with a soft groan. "Thank you," he said. His voice was rough like paper. Leon nodded. He felt better for a minute.
The train rattled through the tunnels. Ads rolled on the screens: shoes, loans, a vacation he would never take. At Central, Leon stepped off with everyone else and went up into the light. The air smelled like coffee and traffic. He crossed two streets, waited for the long red at the third, and entered his building.
The office was rows of desks and screens. A fake plant stood in the corner. The windows looked at another building that looked back. Leon sat at his station. His keyboard had a shiny spot where his thumbs rested. He logged in. Mail loaded. The first message was a reminder to finish a monthly report. The second was a calendar invite for a meeting that had no purpose other than to say "we met." He opened the spreadsheet for the warehouse audit and began to type codes into cells.
This was his job. Compare a list to another list. Mark differences. Send a note when numbers did not match. He didn't hate it. He didn't like it. It was a task that filled hours in exchange for rent and food. When he focused on the numbers, the day moved faster, so he focused hard.
At ten, a coworker named Raj asked if anyone knew how to clear a paper jam in the printer. No one moved. Leon stood, crossed the aisle, opened the side panel, and eased out a crumpled sheet. He put the panel back and pressed the green button. The machine clicked and then whirred. Raj smiled. "Thanks, man." Leon nodded and went back to his chair. They did not talk again.
At noon he ate at his desk: rice in a plastic container and a boiled egg. He scrolled the news without reading it. A message popped up from his boss: "Can you pull last quarter's variance too?" He typed back, "Yes." He always typed yes.
At two, he stared at the screen and realized his fingers had kept working while his mind drifted. He had finished a section he didn't remember doing. It scared him a little that his body could do that. He flexed his hands and shook out his wrists. Then he kept going.
At five, people stood and stretched. Some made plans to go for drinks. Someone laughed too loudly at something. Leon closed his files, sent the report, and shut down. He put on his jacket, walked to the elevator, and rode down with two strangers in silence. Outside, the sky was turning orange. He took the train back, found a spot by the door, and watched their reflections move in the glass.
He stopped at the small grocery near his building. He bought eggs, rice, onions, and milk. At the counter the cashier looked tired. He smiled anyway. "Evening," he said. She said, "Evening," in a flat voice and scanned his items. He paid and thanked her. It cost nothing to be kind. It helped him feel like a person.
In the alley by the dumpsters, he heard a thin sound. A kitten, small and dirty, stood with its tail puffed and mewed at him. Leon crouched. "Hey," he said softly. The kitten did not come closer. Its ribs showed. He set his bag down, went back inside, and bought a small pack of cat food. He tore it open and squeezed it onto a clean spot by the wall. The kitten sniffed, then ate with quick, desperate bites. Leon waited until it finished, then picked up the wrapper and left the rest alone. The kitten looked up once with yellow eyes and then disappeared under a crate. Leon felt a quiet warmth that had nothing to do with food.
His apartment was one room with a small kitchen and a bathroom. He put the groceries away, washed his hands, and cooked. He chopped an onion, fried it with a little oil until it turned soft, added rice, water, and salt, and waited. He boiled two eggs. While he waited, he wiped the counter. He liked to keep things tidy. It made the small space feel controlled.
On the nightstand sat a framed photo of his parents in a park, smiling at something just off frame. He picked it up and looked at it for a few seconds. He had not visited in months. Work, he always said. Busy. They didn't push. They were kind like he tried to be. He set the frame down.
He ate at the small table by the window. Outside, a couple argued in low voices. Somewhere above, a TV played a game show. He ate slowly and finished everything. Then he washed the dishes and wiped the table. He checked his phone. No messages except one spam text. He turned the sound off and set it face down.
He showered, brushed his teeth, and changed into a soft shirt. He pulled the curtains but left a small gap so he could see a strip of sky. He turned off the light and lay down. The bed creaked the way it always did. He listened to the building settle, the distant traffic, the fridge's little rattle. He thought about the day and felt nothing strong. It had passed. That was all.
He closed his eyes.
Sleep came quickly because he was tired.
He did not dream of anything he could keep.
When he opened his eyes again, the ceiling was gone.
He did not understand at first. There was light, but not from his window. It filtered down in narrow beams. He could see leaves above him. Green layers, thick and moving a little. He smelled earth. Damp, clean earth like a park after rain, only stronger. He heard a drop fall from one leaf to another and then to the ground near his ear. He heard birds, but the calls were sharp and strange. His back was wet. He sat up fast.
There was no bed. He lay on grass and old leaves. A large root ran behind him like a low wall. The trees around him were tall and thick. Their bark was dark, tough, and flaked in big plates. Moss grew on one side of the trunks and on the rocks between them. The air felt cool and tasted fresh. It did not feel like the city. It did not feel like any place he knew.
Leon's heart began to pound. He looked for a wall, a door, a window frame, a sign that this was a joke or a set. There was nothing. The ground was uneven. He put his hand down and felt soil, bits of bark, small stones. He stood slowly. His legs worked. His clothes were the same ones he had fallen asleep in: soft shirt and old sweatpants. His feet were bare. Dew stuck to his skin. He rubbed his arms and breathed in. The smell was strong and real.
"Hello?" he called, quietly at first. The sound died in the trees. He tried louder. "Hello?" No answer. The birds kept calling. A distant trickle of water came and went with the wind.
He patted himself down. Phone. It was still in his pocket. He pulled it out. The screen lit. Battery 62%. No service. No Wi‑Fi. He opened the compass app. It spun and then stayed still without pointing anywhere. He opened the map. Nothing loaded. He stared at the little blue dot sitting on a gray grid that could not find him.
He put the phone away. He checked his pockets again. No wallet. No keys. There was nothing here to unlock.
He looked up into the canopy. Thin pieces of sky showed through like torn paper. He could not see the sun. He stepped over a tangle of roots and moved a few meters to where the ground sloped. He took careful steps because he was barefoot. The soil was soft. It gave under his toes.
"Think," he said out loud. His own voice sounded odd in the open. "You fell asleep. You woke up here. How?" He tried to remember if he had left a window open, if something could have gassed him, if this could be a staged room, if he had been moved. Nothing made sense. He knew what a dream felt like. This did not feel like that. His breath made his chest rise and fall. His heart made a steady thump he could feel in his fingertips. He did not float. He did not control anything by wanting it. He was just standing in a forest.
He listened hard. The water sound came again, clearer this time, from the left. A stream meant water to drink and a way to follow. He hesitated. He remembered a sign at a park once that said not to drink from streams. He also remembered that he had no bottle to carry anything anyway. He decided to at least find it.
He moved slowly through the trees. Ferns brushed his shins. A thorn snagged his pant leg and he freed it. He put his hands on rough bark to steady himself going down a small bank. The smell grew stronger and cooler. Beyond two big roots, a narrow stream ran over small stones. It was shallow, clear, and fast. Sunlight made shifting patterns on the bottom. Tiny insects skated on the surface like it was glass.
The water looked clean enough to drink, but he squatted a meter back and just watched it for a while. He cupped his hands and dipped them in, then only wet his lips and spat to feel the taste. It was cold. No metal taste. No chlorine. He wanted to drink so badly that he had to look away.
His body began to shiver because the air by the stream was colder. He stepped back into light and stood until his skin warmed. He looked up and tried to decide which direction was "out." The forest did not offer a hint. Trees in all directions. No path, no boot prints, no broken branches. The ground was littered with leaves. If he walked far, he would leave no clear sign for anyone to find him. If there was anyone to find him.
He picked a tree with a scar on the bark and used his fingernail to scratch a small line at shoulder height. Then he walked ten paces, turned, and checked that he could see the line. He could. He did it again for the next tree. It felt foolish and slow, but it gave him a sense of control, and that was something.
A low branch cracked somewhere behind him. He went still. Not the sound of a bird. He held his breath and listened. Leaves whispered. The stream talked to itself. Then he heard it again. A footstep, heavier than his, careful and then careless for a half second. He turned very slowly.
Between two tree trunks, something moved in shadow. He could not see a shape, only a darker patch where the shade was already dark. The hair on his arms rose. He looked around for anything he could use as a tool or a weapon. There was a branch on the ground as long as his arm and thick as his wrist. He picked it up with both hands. His palms were slick. He wiped them on his pants and gripped again.
"Hello?" he said, but he did not mean "hello." He meant "I know you're there."
Silence. Then the sound of leaves being pushed aside. Closer. A faint, different sound, like breath. Not human breath. He took two slow steps back until the stream was at his heels. He did not want to fall in and soak his pants and lose what little warmth he had. He glanced down to see the edge and then looked back up fast.
Two points of yellow light floated in the dark strip between the trunks. Eyes. They blinked once. The lights dropped a little and moved, smooth and low. The shape stayed in shadow. Leon's mouth went dry. He raised the branch and tried to make his stance wide so he wouldn't topple if he swung.
"Easy," he said, to himself, because the thing in the dark did not care about easy.
The eyes held. The thing did not rush. It watched him. In that long second, Leon felt a small, stubborn line inside himself harden. He had felt like a machine for so long that he had almost forgotten he was a person. He was a person. He could stand. He could act.
The eyes shifted. A twig snapped under weight. The shape coiled, like a muscle gathering to leap.
Leon tightened his grip.
He knew, with cold, simple clarity, that he wasn't in his world anymore.