And Then, A Forest

Life might as well have been a long lucid dream. The kind where you can walk around, think like normal, but when you try the light switch nothing ever happens. Nothing ever drowns out the fact that you're still asleep.

So... this must be what being awake felt like.

They said being born was the most uncomfortable thing a human being could go through, so I was always glad babies forgot such things.
But I wouldn't soon forget the feeling of air whipping by at hurricane speeds, nor the laughable squeak of my own voice as all my momentum suddenly died inches above the ground.

There were a lot of feelings I wouldn't forget, as a flutter of nostalgia for the place from which I'd fallen already began to take up perch in my chest.
I pushed it down.

"Ow..."

There was another thing I'd be feeling for a while, I thought, as I tried to reach around to where a sharp root was digging a hole in the small of my back. The skin wasn't broken, but what was underneath sure felt like it.

I sat up, watching leaves disentangle from all the catching surfaces above my neck, and breathed.
It wasn't particularly graceful, but... I made it.

Was there a custom to follow when you got reincarnated?
My head went on a swivel for a clue of some kind.
A summoner? I supposed that would've been the Goddess.
A special path to a spectacular view? Some kind of castle, or at the very least, the encounter that was the hallmark of all the RPGs I'd loved watching streamers play?
"Hmm..."

Light filtered through the branches, never reaching the same spot all at the same time.
The subtle buzz of life and growth suffused the wind hinting its presence through old, wide trunks.
Human beings had grown up in forests. From what I knew, there was a lot of our instincts that activated when we saw leaves, trunks, mulchy undergrowth stretching out in all directions.
Especially when the scene was totally, utterly unfamiliar.
The instinct to freeze. To, despite my pounding heartbeat, shrink, slowly.
At least to peer out from between the leaves, from a space small enough to fit me.

This was a new feeling. Even if the echoes of it had haunted my previous life.
Unfamiliarity meant anxiety.
Anxiety meant threat.
Threat meant I was in danger. With no way to deny it.

No familiar walls or paths to walk.
No signs of people nearby.
No running water. Not even any birdsong.
Just a low flux in the air.
If I wanted to believe it, the forest knew I was here.

Knew I'd disturbed it.
And there was no way for me to know how it felt about that.

And for a while, I went undisturbed. Drawing in a new shock of air reminded me of the smell of thick earth, moss, fertility, clumps of fallen leaves. The smell of the forest.
The smell of its decay.

My body filled with the scents, perking to the crisp sound of my weight shifting against the undergrowth. As the minutes went on, I found I moved a little smoother with every breath.
My eyes cleared a little with every glance around the stretching glade, and I filled my lungs a little deeper.
Even without the voice or visage of the Goddess, I felt a twinge behind the corners of my eyes.

This decay wasn't mine.
After all those years of wishing the stench would disappear, the stench of me, I'd finally been given the chance.
Thank you... Goddess.
I wiped my face pre-emptively, and steeled my lower lip.
Enough wherewithal had flown into me to stand, at least. See how the forest would my first steps into this world.

---

Not at all, it seemed.
Sweating, stumbling, shivering. I collapsed on an elevated root, stubbornness finally giving way to the burning of my muscles, of my lungs, of my throat.
It'd been years since I'd walked this much. To add to the fact that wandering in an oldgrowth forest with no sense of sense of direction made me easy prey to exposure, let alone hungry direwolves or slimes.
I hadn't taken the chance to ask the Goddess about this world, and now I rued the long moments of silence I'd wasted on my last death.
It was a worthless death.
Is this one gonna be the same?

I swallowed on dry tastebuds, looking up from the path I'd walked so far.

... Which was...

"That way?"

I looked one way. Scrutinised the other.
My heart quickened.

I couldn't get lost now. I was already lost.
But what would be worse was to lose my way so completely that I just wandered back and forth until I was forced to lay down forever.
The forest punished mistakes like that.
Who knows how much of the mulchy forest floor, or the fabric of the bark or the texture of the leaves filtering sunlight through layer upon layer of green was made of mistakes like that.
I felt the air around me pushing down. The subtle buzz of trees that had lived long before me, and would be here long after.
Even without intending to, this place would eat me.

That decided it, I hopped up with as little movement as I could muster, sourcing a conspicuous stick from the more tangled layers of undergrowth that dotted the little patches of sunlight escaping between the trees.

"You are 'been'", I took the stick and broke down the middle, keeping it just intact enough to lay it down as one complete, if snapped, object.
I set it down in the mulch of 'Way A', my best guess at the way I'd come.
"And you are 'going'", I gathered up a handful of the sticks, none of them longer than a ruler, but easy enough to carry.

I turned away from 'Way B'. It was darker-looking. Longer-looking. I wanted to reach the sunlight, I thought.

I can't believe I never stood in the sun like this. Gazing up into the canopy wasn't enough to quench my thirst or heal my muscles, but there was a strange strength rising up from inside me, something I thought the sheer itching, sweating, bruising, tripping experience the forest had shown me so far implied wasn't there.

It was a long walk. But I felt like the motions of my legs, of my whole body, was only getting faster, stronger, smoother. Like I was remembering something I forgot long ago.

Maybe I should've gone to the mountains more, I smiled quietly to myself. The forest proceeded without a slope, but climbing over raised roots, mounds, in and out of dips in the earth made the trail seem familiar to the few distant, precious memories I had of nature.

I wondered if it was just me, or if the trail was getting brighter.

I breathed in, feeling the breeze enter me. Pass through me.

And then I heard the first trickle of birdsong echo through the branches above.

I smiled, a pulling sensation at my face and in my eyes that was far more than just joy.

For the second time in not so long, I bowed my head.

Thank you, Goddess.

---

"What do you mean, you're quitting?"

A dark entrance hall awaited me, but I stood in my shoes still, pinned to the very inner edge of my door.

I'd waited almost a quarter of an hour for the call to go through.

I knew I was right. So why had my hand shook like that against my ear, as my dad's voice crackled through with the exact tone I'd expected?

"I've saved." I said. "My job was paying me the same as the other people in my level, so I have enough to keep me going for a while. I..."
My hand shook. I hated that my father was the type to wait, never to interrupt.
"I want to look for something that suits the way I want to live."

"I said, what do you bloody mean?!"
But my father was never the type to listen, either.
"Do you have any idea what it took our family to get you that position?" 

The crackle of rage coming through was more than just emotion. I could feel destruction on the other side of the line.
And on this side, too. The sense of it made me want to stab at the 'end call' button  and destroy my SIM card.

I'd never confirmed with my parents where I was staying.
They'd be able to find out via the company, but it would take time. By then I could probably...

That phone call was the first time I'd cried in front of my father, though he never realised that. That phone call had been the moment I realised I never needed to see him again.

"I..." I'd wiped my face. "I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you--"

"How?"

"..."

"How in the bloody hell are you going to make up for two decades of work on mine and your uncles' parts? Do you even understand what you've just thrown away?"

I grit my teeth. "I..."

Do you have any idea what it was like?! I wanted to scream.
I've worked more hours in five years than anything you put in for those two decades.

"I can't live like this, dad." I said. "What am I doing this for?"

"That position was the path to your happiness!" Came a crackle, signifying a scream. "You out-earned anyone in your age group, you had access to endless social occasions and opportunities for upward mobility -- what more do you think I would want for you?!"

The money...
The money, the money it's always about the money--

Money that, no matter how much I made, or found a way around taxes to scrape into savings, wouldn't afford a proper house anywhere that mattered. Social occasions that were meticulously designed to be impenetrable for any kind of socialising, anything that wasn't for leading or closing new deals for the company.
Upward mobility into a world that was inflating, consuming, manufacturing, entertaining, killing itself to death.

What am I supposed to do?
Save it?

...How could I say any of that to him?

"This is what I want, dad." My entire body stiffened, as I clenched my jaw into the microphone. "I'm moving somewhere more low-key. I need to recuperate. Maybe make some friends--"

"You've always claimed a delicate constitution."  The man who was my father snarled. "Friends? Is there a single person left in this sea of worthless ingrates who'll make up for what you've just abandoned? You and I Miro, we're going to have a fucking talk--"

"No. Dad." I bit back the flood that was already sluicing the edges of my face, and moved my thumb to the only button that was left. "We're not."

There was a dark silence, amid crackling that sounded like moving.

...Goodbye.
And I killed the line.

I left the SIM card behind in that drawer when I moved apartments. I asked the office to notify me if my address was ever looked up, but that day never came.

I remember the nights after that phone call ended, after I was let down from the rush of moving again to a newer, lower-maintenance apartment some part of a ward without any real connection to anywhere.
It took three days for exhaustion to win, for my eyes to finally close.

---

The sunlight flared. I opened my eyes, and gasped into a clearing unlike any I'd ever seen.
For the first time in my long trek, my eyes fell upon glistening, running water, and birdsong added harmonies to what sounded to my ears like gently flowing music.

Goddess. I smiled, trudging forward with renewed breath, practically with a spring in my step. Thank you.

But there was little time to take in the unique scene, as a shrill echo sent a few of the avian singers flapping to the other side of the clearing.

I craned my neck. I was still getting used to a new sense of hearing, but something in my body knew the air had shifted.

A scream.

"Nooooo!"

It had taken a little while, I nodded to myself, but I needed to get ready to run.

Here comes my isekai moment.

I threw the sticks behind me and broke into a sprint.