Traveler from Another World

Daniel Grace cursed his own luck.

His parents were always absent due to work, and that month he had overspent. That’s why, instead of taking a bus or the subway, he was walking home.

Either he paid for public transportation, or he balanced the budget. Simple! So he wouldn't run out of food.

At least, on that day, the club’s activities had been canceled. He would get home early and could enjoy what was perhaps the best thing he’d discovered since moving to Japan: light novels.

A gentle rain was falling that late afternoon. The avenue shimmered under the glow of ideograms he barely understood, flashing in 3D ads on the LED screens that covered the building façades, drowning the masses in the void of consumerist obsession.

The reflection of the streetlights stretched across the wet asphalt, in the faint glow of a dying dusk. Grace stopped at a crosswalk, surrounded by a horde of office workers, checking their watches or staring down at their phone screens, searching for anything to distract them from the hurried monotony of daily life.

The air smelled of damp earth, even in the heart of the bustling business district, and puddles scattered along the pavement mirrored both the distorted skyscrapers and the ugliness of ashen faces. Like masks, these people wore disdain every day, hoping to conceal their inexorable march. They called such alienation life.

Everything happened too fast.

The truck was moving at a steady speed, but Daniel noticed from the muffled roar of the engine that it accelerated when the traffic light turned yellow. In a nearby store, bright panels advertised a sale to the sound of a slow jazz tune, which seemed muffled by the steady rain.

Grace had no raincoat to ease his situation and was already getting wetter than he'd like, waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green. He was already cursing his luck when…

She appeared.

The umbrella partially shielded him from the raindrops the moment the girl leapt into the crosswalk on his left. Daniel gaped at the grace of her movement: a light, almost acrobatic jump.

Her legs opened in a straight line, forming a perfectly symmetrical angle. Her pointed feet balanced her midair, and her arms formed an arc above her head.

For a moment, she floated in the air as if time had surrendered to the beauty of her impulse. The skirt was the same as his school’s, the jacket fluttered in the moist wind, but her face was hidden beneath the hood.

The vehicle headlights lit her for a second, just before the sound of twisting metal and shattering glass flooded the intersection. He heard the truck tremble, skidding in the puddles, unable to stop.

People rushed out from the nearby shops to see the body, tossed across the street with a harsh crack of broken bones. Where Daniel stood, little by little, screams and voices filled the dazed silence.

To the store’s ad, playing its melancholy jazz, a somber arrangement was added: the funeral tune of a saxophone and the discordant notes of death. Grace stared at the umbrella that had recently hovered above his head, now blown away by the wind.

And to his astonishment, even as the city drowned in chaos, he felt peace.

***

On his way home, Daniel reflected on what it would be like to die in a boat.

He was sitting on the pier, letting the wind dry his clothes. The rain had passed at the start of the night, but the darkness of death had no end.

Grace gazed at a few models that looked quite comfortable. A fine coffin to spend eternity in the sea’s icy depths. Looking farther out into the dark waters, he felt his guts soften.

He hadn’t yet forgotten the lashes of the storm that night, illuminated by fleeting flashes that only served to expose the terror above and below. And there were screams. Both from nature, in its furious, howling rage, and from her…

No!

He threw his backpack over his shoulders and turned his back on the old fear. It wasn’t time to give in to sinister temptations.

He saw a group of kids playing nearby and joined them, mimicking the poses of a TV superhero. To forget the horror of the void in adults’ faces that had dug a wormhole into his mind. Yesterday and today.

Gradually, the memory of the body hidden under a reflective tarp, behind police tape, began to fade. As he ran, free from the chains of unease that permeated every detail of his trivial existence — as only children could do…

Until the world’s harshness found him again. And Daniel Grace cursed his own luck.

The children scattered when they encountered a group of delinquents smoking in a small plaza. With hair gelled and dyed blond, red, and even more absurd colors, they looked like caricatures of Japanese thugs from stories, in their confident postures, squatting in circles or full of swagger, hands behind their backs. They blatantly ignored the dress code, wearing the school uniform—Daniel's school—sloppily, when they wore it at all.

In general, they never bothered him, and he didn’t bother them either, having seen worse in his home country, but on that particular evening, three of them seemed to take notice.

“Oi, oi, oi, gaijin!” called the trio’s leader, his face covered in acne. “We’re a little short on cash for smokes today. Got some change you can spare?”

“I’ve got nothing,” Grace shrugged, telling the truth.

But his response earned him unpleasant looks.

“What’s your deal, gaijin?!” barked the thug to the leader’s left, shorter and stockier but with a surprisingly high-pitched voice. “Isn’t it rude for a foreign piece of trash living off our country’s kindness not to help his superiors?!”

The third one, tall and slightly hunched, grabbed him from behind, his outdated pompadour — more like a black unicorn horn stiff with excessive gel — brushing the top of Daniel’s head.

Pointless violence…

That’s what it smelled like. There was no reasoning with these guys — oppression was simply the fate of the weak.

Grace let his backpack fall from his shoulders and faced them, raising his eyebrows.

Maybe he could take on one of them. Maybe two. But three was out of the question — not to mention the others, pretending not to pay attention. Escaping wasn’t an option either.

He’d take a few hits, the guys would search his bag, find nothing of value, and let him go with some threats. Pacified, for whatever reason they decided to pick a fight that day.

Daniel cursed his luck.

There was palpable tension between the four teens, and Grace decided to at least strike first. But as soon as he flexed his arm to throw the first punch… he froze.

A portal opened in the middle of the plaza.

The whole gang fled, while Daniel remembered his older sister. Swallowed by the darkness.

Strangely, even with a chill running through him, he began to approach the portal. Maybe because it was light, not darkness. Drawn by the same feeling of indifferent peace he felt when he witnessed the earlier suicide.

The radiant swirl of colors flooded his mind with vivid images of protagonists crossing portals to other worlds, where they gained incredible powers, lived lives full of adventure and beautiful girls. Worlds they changed by their providential actions, where they forged their own destinies.

Different from the oppressive horrors that bound ordinary people to Earth. Heroes who had the power to turn their backs on death’s cold, indifferent face. To live without fear.

He kicked a pebble, which crossed the portal and disappeared.

Perplexed, not hearing the sound of the stone hitting the ground on the other side, he stepped forward — against every instinct screaming to avoid the unknown. That could lead to a million horrible deaths.

Or worse, the fantasy might just be a product of broken minds longing for nothing more than banal escapism from daily suffering.

And still, something spoke louder within him. Daniel touched the portal… and was sucked in. Powerless to resist.

The light faded. And as he feared, Daniel Grace vanished into the dark.