Awareness came like a punch to the head. A sharp, throbbing pain that drilled behind my eyes.
"Ow. What… what hit me?"
My thoughts were sludge, slow and sticky. The first thing I registered was the cold. A deep, damp chill that seeped right through my clothes and into my bones. Then, the smell. Oh god, the smell. It was like someone had mixed rubbing alcohol with rotten eggs and a handful of pennies. It made my stomach do a nauseating flip.
I forced my eyes open.
"Okay. Not my bedroom ceiling."
I was lying on a cold, concrete floor. All around me, glittering like evil little diamonds, were shards of broken glass. And splattered everywhere, all over me, the floor, everything… was this glowing green goop. It was thick, slimy, and stuck to my skin like snot.
"What the actual hell? Did I fall into a dumpster behind a chemical plant?"
I pushed myself up, my arms shaking. They felt… thin. Weak. Everything felt off-balance. I looked down at my hands.
"Those are not my hands."
They were too small. Too smooth. No calluses, no scar on the knuckle from where I'd punched a locker in high school. Just… small, pale kid's hands. A cold dread, totally different from the floor's chill, started to spread through my chest.
"This isn't right. This isn't me."
I patted my chest. My face. My… everything. It was all wrong. I was swimming in this skin, like a little kid wearing his dad's oversized coat, except the coat was my whole body. A wave of pure, dizzying vertigo hit me.
"Did I get… shrunk?"
And then it hit. Not a memory. A sledgehammer.
—The crosswalk. The "walk" sign blinking. Those girls, laughing, not looking, stepping out—
—The blare of a horn. So loud. The huge grille of the truck swerving—not toward them, no, toward ME—
—The world spinning. The crunch. The pain—then nothing—
—A last, lonely thought in the dark: She's gone. No one will even care I'm gone.
I gasped, the air burning my lungs. Satoshi. My name was Satoshi. And I was dead. I remembered dying.
"So why am I… here? Wherever 'here' is? And why am I… tiny?"
All I remember is this body belongs to the child named Arin.
I had to get up. I had to figure this out. My legs felt like wet noodles as I stumbled to my feet. The room swayed. I was in some kind of… lab? A really messed-up one. Rusted metal tables. Weird machines that looked like they hadn't been turned on in decades. And everywhere, rows of giant glass tubes, some shattered—that explained the glass and the goop—and some still intact.
I looked into one of the intact ones.
"Oh, god."
Something was floating in there. Something that might have been a person once. But it had… extra arms. And its face was twisted in a silent, endless scream. In the next tube was… some kind of animal… a dog? A wolf? It was fused with shiny, sharp crystals that grew out of its back.
A cold terror, sharper than any I'd ever felt, locked my feet to the floor.
"This is a nightmare. This is some seriously messed-up nightmare. What is this place? A freak-show factory?"
"Hello?" My voice came out as a high, shaky squeak. It was this kid's voice. This stranger's voice. It echoed in the silent, terrifying room. "Is… is anyone there?"
Nothing. Just the slow drip… drip… of that green sludge.
"Okay. Okay, Satoshi, don't panic. You're alive. Somehow. That's… good? Now get out. Get out NOW."
I saw a big metal door, hanging half-off its hinges. I stumbled towards it, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. I squeezed through the opening.
And stopped.
The air hit me first. Clean. So clean it felt like I was tasting it for the first time. And it was… buzzing. A faint, tingling sensation on my skin, like static electricity.
I was standing at the edge of a forest. But these weren't normal trees. They were huge, ancient, with leaves that shimmered with faint silver veins. The sky was a blue so deep it looked painted.
"This… is definitely not Japan."
I took a deep, shaky breath.
And I felt it.
That tingling in the air? It flowed into me with the breath. A warmth spread through my chest, soothing the headache, easing the ache in my weird new body. It was incredible. It felt like drinking sunlight. Like I'd been starving my whole life and didn't know it until now.
A word popped into my head from all the manga I'd read, all the games I'd played.
"Mana."
The air was full of mana.
I am Satoshi. I died. And now I'm some kid, in the middle of some magical nightmare forest, breathing in magic.
I looked back at the creepy lab. My tomb. My starting point.
Then I looked at the vast, unknown world in front of me.
I didn't have a choice. I took a step forward. Then another.
I had no idea where I was going. But I couldn't stay here.