The Endless Forest

Hokuto's eyes snapped open to sunlight filtering through leaves he'd never seen before.

He sat up, dirt and grass sticking to his hoodie. The apartment ceiling should be above him, cracked plaster and a water stain that looked like a deformed cat.

Instead, towering trees stretched overhead, their canopy so thick it blocked out most of the sky.

His phone. He patted his pockets frantically. Gone. Keys, wallet, everything. Just him in yesterday's clothes, sitting in the middle of a forest.

"What the hell?"

The words came out hoarse. When had he last spoken? Yesterday? Last week?

The harder he tried to remember falling asleep, the more the memory slipped away like water through his fingers.

He pushed himself to his feet, legs shaking. The forest was wrong in ways that made his skin crawl. Too quiet. No birds, no insects, no rustling of small animals.

Just the whisper of wind through leaves and the distant creak of wood.

But it was beautiful, in a way that made him hate himself for noticing. The trees were massive, ancient things with bark that seemed to shimmer silver in the dappled light.

Moss carpeted the ground in shades of green he'd never seen in Tokyo's concrete wasteland. The air tasted clean, almost sweet.

He'd been walking for ten minutes before he realized he was moving.

His feet had carried him deeper into the forest without any conscious decision. No destination in mind, no path to follow. Just one foot in front of the other, like a puppet on strings.

Hokuto stopped dead.

In front of him stood a tree that didn't belong. Where the others reached toward the sky with confident strength, this one twisted in on itself, branches curling like arthritic fingers.

Its bark was black, not the warm brown of its neighbors. No leaves. No moss. Nothing grew near it, as if the earth itself rejected its presence.

"Why was I walking toward this thing?"

The question hung in the air. He hadn't been heading anywhere specific, just... drawn. Like metal to a magnet. Like prey to a trap.

A sound drifted through the trees. Soft. Rhythmic. Almost like breathing, but too slow, too deep.

It came from everywhere and nowhere, seeming to rise from the ground itself.

Hokuto's pulse quickened. He turned in a slow circle, searching for the source, but the forest looked the same in every direction. Trees, moss, and silence broken only by that steady, unnatural breathing.

Then he heard the whispers.

They started as a murmur at the edge of perception, words in a language that felt familiar but made no sense. The voices multiplied, overlapping until they became a chorus of urgent, unintelligible pleas.

Or threats. Hokuto couldn't tell which.

The whispers grew louder, closer, until they seemed to come from inside his own head.

"Stop," he said, pressing his palms against his ears. "Stop, stop, stop."

Silence.

The forest held its breath. Even the wind died, leaving only the thundering of his own heartbeat.

A branch snapped behind him.

Hokuto spun around but saw nothing. Just trees and shadows and the growing certainty that he was no longer alone.

Another snap. Closer.

Movement in his peripheral vision made him turn, but whatever it was stayed just out of sight. Playing with him. The way a cat plays with a mouse before the kill.

Something wet touched his neck.

He bolted.

Branches whipped at his face as he crashed through the underbrush. His feet found roots and holes, sending him stumbling, but he didn't stop. Couldn't stop.

Behind him came the sound of pursuit. Not footsteps, but something else. Something that moved wrong, with too many joints in the wrong places.

He risked a glance back.

The thing following him had once been a deer. Maybe. It moved on four legs and had the general shape, but evolution had taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Its skin was raw pink, like a burn victim, and it pulsed with visible veins.

Worst of all was its face. A gaping maw that split open like a flower, revealing rows of needle teeth and a tongue that unrolled like a carpet.

Four black eyes tracked his movement with predatory patience.

It wasn't running at full speed. It was herding him, staying just close enough to keep him moving but not close enough to catch him.

Hokuto changed direction, weaving between trees, but the creature anticipated every move. No matter where he went, it was there, cutting off escape routes, driving him deeper into the forest.

His lungs burned. His legs felt like rubber. He couldn't keep this up much longer.

The creature knew it too. It let out a sound like grinding metal, and suddenly it stopped playing games. Now it was running to kill.

Hokuto had never heard anything move so fast through the forest. It didn't dodge trees. It crashed through them, splintering trunks like matchsticks.

The ground shook with each impact.

He was going to die here. In this impossible place, chased by something that shouldn't exist.

The thought should have terrified him. Instead, it made him think.

His foot hit something hard. Rocks, scattered around the base of an old tree. Without hesitation, he scooped up two of them and dove behind the nearest trunk.

The creature's footsteps were getting closer. Too close.

But something nagged at him. How did it always know where he was? It had tracked him through every turn, every direction change, like it could see through the trees themselves.

Unless it couldn't see him at all.

Hokuto held his breath and went completely still. The footsteps slowed, then stopped. Through the forest came a sound like sniffing, but deeper, more rhythmic. Searching.

Maybe it was the vibrations. Maybe it felt him moving through the ground.

He hefted one of the rocks, aimed at a tree about twenty meters to his left, and threw.

The rock struck bark with a sharp crack.

Immediately, the creature's footsteps changed direction, crashing toward the sound. Hokuto pressed himself against his tree, moving as little as possible, and threw the second rock at a tree on his right.

Another crack. Another change in direction.

He closed his eyes and waited.

THUD.

The creature slammed into the tree where the second rock had hit. The impact was so violent it shook the ground beneath Hokuto's feet.

When he opened his eyes, the thing was circling the tree in confusion, that split-open face turning left and right, searching for prey that wasn't there.

Hokuto's heart pounded with relief. His gamble had worked.

He grabbed every rock he could find, stuffing them into his hoodie pocket. Then he threw them all at once, each one striking a different tree in rapid succession.

Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.

The creature's head snapped toward each sound, spinning in circles as it tried to process multiple targets at once. For a moment, it stood frozen, completely bewildered.

Hokuto bolted.

He couldn't believe his desperate plan had actually worked. The creature was relying on vibrations, not sight. But as he ran, exhaustion was catching up to him. His vision blurred at the edges, and his legs felt like they were made of lead.

Behind him, he could hear it recovering. The confused thrashing stopped, replaced by those wet, deliberate footsteps. It was learning. Adapting. Getting closer again.

Then he saw it.

The twisted black tree from before, branches curled like arthritic fingers. The same tree he'd been walking toward when this nightmare began.

That was impossible. He'd been running in a straight line, changing directions only to avoid the creature. There was no way he could have circled back to the same spot.

Unless he hadn't been running in circles at all.

Unless the forest itself was moving.