The cough didn't just start; it erupted. It was a violent, jagged thing that felt as if Li Yichen's body were trying to turn itself inside out.
It tore through his throat, the sound flat and lonely against the thin plastic walls of the isolation unit. Every convulsion set his chest on fire—a deep, radiating heat that made his lungs feel like they'd been swapped for bags of hot sand. He slumped forward on the narrow cot, hacking until the world turned into a watery, gray blur.
He still couldn't trace the mistake. He had played by the rules: the masks, the stinging scent of sanitizer, the lonely distance. One week he was a person with a life; the next, he was a data point on a clipboard, sealed behind glass.
"COVID-19."
The word still tasted like salt and static in his mouth. It was a headline, a global tragedy, a ticker at the bottom of a news screen—it wasn't supposed to be the thing that took his breath away.
Li Yichen tried to drag in a lungful of air. His ribs refused to expand.
"Damn it…" his voice was a ghost, scraped raw by the constant friction of his own breath.
He braced his palms against the thin mattress and forced himself upright. The room revolted instantly. The white walls swayed like a ship at sea, and the harsh overhead LEDs bled into stinging needles of light. He hissed through grit teeth and stood anyway.
The vertigo hit like a physical blow.
His knees buckled, sending him crashing back onto the cot. Another fit seized him—louder, more rhythmic, a desperate barking sound that echoed the panic in his mind. Each breath felt thinner, like he was trying to breathe through a pinched straw.
"Is this it? Do I just… go out like this?"
There was no answer. No heavy boots of a nurse in the hallway. No hum of a ventilator. Just the distant, indifferent buzz of electronics and the ragged rhythm of his own failing organs.
The coughing reached a crescendo, a final, lung-tearing snap—and then, silence.
The light didn't fade; it vanished.
--
When the world returned, the first thing Li Yichen noticed was the smell.
It wasn't the sharp, artificial sting of bleach or the cloyingly sweet scent of industrial disinfectant. This air was heavy. It smelled of damp earth, of ancient timber, and the deep, loamy scent of mud after a summer storm.
He swallowed. His throat didn't feel like it had been scrubbed with steel wool.
That realization alone sent a jolt of ice down his spine. He cleared his throat tentatively. The sound was rough, yes, but it was solid. Deep. There was no lingering tickle, no fire in his chest. His lungs expanded with a terrifying, effortless smoothness.
His eyes snapped open.
Above him, there were no fluorescent tubes or drop-ceiling tiles. Instead, he saw dark, hand-hewn wooden beams crisscrossing over rough-cut planks. A single spiderweb hung in the corner, dancing in a draft that carried the scent of woodsmoke.
His heart hammered against his ribs—not with the weakness of a sick man, but with the frantic energy of a trapped animal.
He sat up. No dizziness. No graying vision.
His body felt… substantial. Heavy in a way that spoke of muscle and bone rather than the hollowed-out shell he'd been for the last week. He lifted his hands, and his breath hitched.
These weren't his hands.
The skin was tanned and roughened by wind. The knuckles were thick, the nails short and stained with the kind of grime that only comes from manual labor. A pale, jagged scar sliced across one knuckle—a mark he'd never seen in his life.
"Where… am I?"
The voice that vibrated in his chest was not his own. It was a register deeper, resonant and young.
A sharp, panicked cry cut through the silence from outside.
"Ah—!"
Heavy footsteps thudded against packed earth. Voices rose—urgent, frantic, shouting in a dialect of Chinese that felt both familiar and strangely archaic.
The door, a heavy slab of wood on iron hinges, swung open with a groan.
"He's awake! He's back!"
A woman burst in. Her clothes were made of a coarse, indigo-dyed fabric, and her hair was pinned back in a messy, practical knot. Relief washed over her face so intensely she looked like she might collapse.
"Thank the Heavens," she gasped, clutching her chest. "We thought your soul had already crossed. We thought you were gone."
Li Yichen stared at her, his mind a kaleidoscope of impossible images.
The hospital. The masks. 2020.
None of it fit. None of it was here.
He tried to stand, his mind grasping for the reality of the man he used to be, but the floor stayed solid beneath his feet. The woman stayed real. The air stayed thick with the scent of a world that shouldn't exist.
As the woman rushed toward him, a cold, sharp realization settled in his gut.
He was alive. He was healthy. And he was very, very far from home.