A new world

Back then, before everything started, I was a simple office worker. I think I was 20 when I started to feel something like a tinge of dissatisfaction. My high school life was what people would widely consider average. I was on the unpopular side of the male population when it came to girls and I was glad if they avoided me, because it made navigating through my daily life somewhat easier. After school I immediately started to work. My family didn’t necessarily have the means to pay for additional studies and I didn’t have the grades or the brain to make it an investment that would have been worth it.

Due to this reason I gratefully took the first job somebody was actually willing to offer me. Little did I know that I should have waited for the next opportunity. My Boss was a person, like you would expect him to be. Even after several years of enduring his persona he would try to steal a glance at your name sign, before yelling your name at you in a way that was supposed to sound like he had already searched the whole building for you. His appearance usually meant only three things: Extra tasks, a scolding or somebody getting kicked out. Sometimes I wished he would have finally done the latter.

I went to work when it was still dark and it would be dark again when I left work. Assuming of course I would be done with my tasks in time to make it even worth returning home.

As one can imagine nobody would want to live or rather work like this, especially not for an extended period of time. It would sooner than later turn you into a soulless zombie, depraved of sleep and without any visions for one’s future.

Even more it makes you question your life choices up until this point and makes you wish to start over again, at least from some point in your past, if not entirely new, somewhere else.

I was around 25 when I for the first time saw where this could end. One colleague of mine was “honored” with yet more extra tasks. That day I was able to actually leave on time and made a run for it before somebody could call me back for yet another extra report scheduled for tomorrow at the begin of working hours.

That was the last time I saw him.

Everything they ever found of him was a letter he wrote, stating only, that nobody should try to search for him. And nobody did. But that night, the look at the river Edo, which I always came across on my way home, sent chills down my spine. It was about that time that I realized that I myself wouldn’t manage to endure all of this much longer.

I tried to recall his name, but I can’t seem to manage. There was a time when I was doing my best to remember everything, I ever knew about him, like it would make me a better person or at least different from my coworkers if I did, but soon life took over and brought its own problems with it. As soon as I realized I had forgotten everything but his sole existence, I felt ashamed of myself. Not for forgetting him, but for becoming as indifferent as everybody else in this company.

As soon as I stepped outside the company’s building, I was no longer a different person from who I was inside. I used to have interests, none of which survived the first year of my working life. Along with it came a feeling of alienation. Whenever I got close to people or had to talk to them I would soon have a feeling like they were living off my energy and doze off into daydreams. On other instances, usually while sitting at a bar or izakaya to indulge in the tradition of people getting drunk and complaining about their lives to each other, I felt myself like a really boring person, which led to the attempt of making up somewhat more interesting events in my life. It was futile.

In the end I gave up on it and basically hoped for the chance to turn life around, like it ever came to people by themselves.

The days and years went by and I didn’t even realize what happened to me, until it was too late. Apparently, the human body can handle just so much lack of sleep, recreation and somewhat decent food, before he suddenly, and in my case without any warning, does what I couldn’t and just entirely quits his job. Maybe I realized it before but was just too tired to take actions against it, but it doesn’t change the result anymore.

Last thing I remember from this life is that I sank into a deep sleep right on top of my desk.

The next thing I had known was that I woke up in a field of long green grass that gave a silver shimmer as it wove in the wind. A warm breeze brushed upon my skin and in the distance, I could hear the buzzing of insects which seemed to be lurking somewhere between the blades of grass.

I looked at my hands, which were pressed against the slightly wet ground. Apparently, the sun had just risen over the horizon. I pinched myself. I felt pain. I slapped myself as hard in into my face as I could and yet again felt the expected pain.

“What a strange dream.”, I was mumbling to myself. I just hoped I would wake up before somebody noticed. The dream felt a little off. Until this point I never had a dream that was this clear. Not to mention that usually my level of exhaustion didn’t allow any dreams to appear at all.

The surrounding area felt like basically every normal field. But something was off. Was it all the grass waving in the wind? Or the insects? The mountains in quite some distance were almost completely hidden in a blueish haze, which looked rather picturesque but still wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

With a somewhat sticky sounding thud something landed closely next to my feet. It was without certain form, of a similar blue like the sky above, which also just as well might have been because the thing reflected the color of the sky, and jumped up and down while moving.

A moment passed by during which I looked at the thing in sheer disbelief, before I finally realized, that I definitely didn’t want it to touch me. I jumped up. The all too male urge to poke it with a stick came over me, but I couldn’t find a stick laying around, so I squatted down and had a look at it from a distance that felt kind of safe.

The thing didn’t seem to notice me as it was totally invested in jumping on a small pebble which was laying around and absorbing it completely. It was obviously enjoying what it was doing because it started to vibrate a little as the stone disappeared inside of it. What was this thing? Some time passed until the thing moved again. It didn’t have any eyes or other distinct features that could have told me that it was looking in one direction or another, but I got the feeling that it was looking at me in this moment. A feeling of unsettlement started to come upon me. This thing wasn’t going to dissolve me inside of it next, was it? But then again all that would happen was, that I would wake up. On the other hand, thinking back to when I slapped myself, regarding the realism of pain in this dream, I wasn’t too eager to get myself dissolved in some form of slime. During that moment it struck me and my breath came to a halt. Yes. That was what I was looking at right now. A slime.

I suddenly remembered playing an old videogame on my fathers old console back then. What was it called again? Dragons hunt? Dragons adventure? I can’t seem to remember but I remembered that in said game the first enemies you would encounter after being entrusted with the task to defeat the demon lord, were in fact slimes.

What a strange dream. Why, after all this time and hardship, would exactly this be my first dream in years? I could dream of everything. I could be rich, successful, desired or at least even with nothing on my bank account whatsoever, happy. Maybe even several of these points at once. But here I was, standing on a field in front of a slime.