This wasn’t the train home

There’s a kind of quiet that doesn’t feel peaceful. It feels wrong. Like the air is holding its breath, waiting for something to start or something to end.

That's the quiet I woke up to. Not the murmur of late-night trains or the rustle of tired bodies commuting home. No screeching brakes. No neon signs blinking past. Just quiet. Too quiet . This was the first red flag.

The second came when I opened my eyes and realized I wasn’t on the train anymore. I was lying in a meadow of dew-soaked grass, the sky too blue, the silence too clean. Above me, cherry trees swayed gently in full bloom, their pink petals floating down like they'd been cued by a director. 

I stood up, slowly brushing off my wrinkled uniform. The same black skirt and apron I wore at the café. My shoes, worn at the toes. My name tag, Nia Wyn, is still clinging crookedly to my chest. Familiar but out of place, and my bookbag was nowhere in sight.

“Where’s my bookbag?” I muttered, squinting around in confusion. That’s when I saw it perched at the base of a wooden bridge arched like something straight off a postcard. And somewhere nearby, wind chimes clinked wildly in the breeze, like they knew I didn’t belong.

Because I didn’t.

I was supposed to be on the 10:17 train back to campus. I was supposed to be dragging my feet into my apartment, peeling off my apron, and passing out mid-scroll on my phone. I was not supposed to be… here.

Then came a voice. Soft. Feminine. Shaky. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Like I didn’t already know that. I turned around slowly with caution. A few steps behind me stood a girl beneath a blossom-heavy tree, her white dress glowing like a shard of moonlight in the sun. Her parasol was carved with silver vines, which felt unnecessary since there wasn’t a single drop of rain in the sky. And her violet, unnatural eyes were fixed on me with something between pity and dread.

“You weren’t summoned,” she said. Her voice was clipped and formal. “You’re not the oracle.”

“I’m… sorry?” I offered. “I think there’s been a mistake.”

“There has.” Her voice went colder, sharper. A very specific tone I didn’t like. The kind that made the back of my neck go tense. My third red flag.

And then something flickered at the edge of my vision. A translucent screen. Faint white text against nothing.                                                 

 ⟡ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION⟡
New Objective: ESCAPE BEFORE YOU'RE CAPTURED.
Error: You were not meant to spawn here.

I blinked. “What the hell—”

But before I could even process what was going on, the girl’s parasol sliced through the air as she shouted, “Guards!” 

I didn’t need further explanation. The clank of metal boots hit the ground behind me, fast and too organized to be anything but serious. I could already hear the synchronized rhythm of approaching footsteps, trained and tactical. So I ran. Through petals and shadows. Down uneven cobblestone paths I hadn’t noticed before. My lungs burned. My pulse pounded like I was sprinting through the wrong chapter of a fantasy novel. 

I stumbled, caught my breath. “This better be a lucid dream.”

Spoiler: it wasn’t.

This was a story. It tugged at the edge of a memory I couldn’t place. I've read it before, back in high school—late nights, scrolling through poorly formatted fan translations, avoiding homework and reality. A girl falls into a magical world. She gets chosen. Saves everyone. Finds love. Only, that wasn’t me. I wasn’t the oracle, I wasn’t summoned, I was a glitch. A shadow that slipped in through the cracks of someone else’s plotline. And whatever this was? I had been written in by mistake.

And now I had a flashing objective telling me to escape.

So yeah. This wasn’t the train home.