Chapter 12: The Unmoored Man

I open my eyes, expecting to see the familiar gray ceiling of my apartment.

Instead, I see a canopy of impossibly green leaves, dappled with sunlight.

I sit bolt upright, my heart instantly hammering against my ribs. I am not in my bed. I am not even in my apartment. I am lying on a bed of soft, mossy earth in the middle of a dense, tropical-looking jungle. Towering trees with thick, gnarled roots surround me. The air is hot, humid, and filled with the cacophony of exotic birds and buzzing insects.

Panic, cold and absolute, seizes me.

"What...?" I scramble to my feet, my eyes wide with disbelief. I am still wearing the same jeans and sweater I had fallen asleep in. My wallet is in my back pocket, my phone in the front. I pull out my phone, my hands trembling.

No signal. Of course.

The time on the screen is 7:30 AM. The date is correct. But the location... the location is impossible.

"This is a dream," I say out loud, my voice sounding small and weak in the vast, overwhelming jungle. "This has to be a dream. I am going to wake up."

I squeeze my eyes shut, then snap them open again. The jungle is still there, vibrant and terrifyingly real. I pinch my arm, hard. The sharp sting of pain is undeniable. I am awake.

My mind races, trying to find a logical explanation. Have I been kidnapped? Drugged? It seems unlikely. Who would kidnap a broke university student and dump him in the middle of a jungle? And how? My apartment door was locked.

I start to walk, pushing through thick ferns and ducking under low-hanging vines. I have no idea where I am going. I just know I have to move, to do something other than stand there and scream. The sounds of the jungle are a constant, oppressive presence. Every rustle in the undergrowth, every strange animal call, sends a fresh jolt of fear through me.

After what feels like an hour of aimless wandering, I stumble out of the dense foliage and onto a dirt road. Relief washes over me, so intense it makes my knees weak. A road means civilization. It means people. It means answers.

In the distance, I see a plume of dust. A vehicle is approaching. It is an old, beat-up pickup truck, rattling along the bumpy road. I stand in the middle of the road and wave my arms frantically.

The truck slows to a stop beside me. The man behind the wheel is old, his skin weathered and brown from the sun, his eyes kind. He looks at me, my pale face, my inappropriate clothing, with open curiosity. He says something in a language I do not recognize. It sounds like a mix of Spanish and something else, something local.

"I am sorry, I do not understand," I say in Japanese, then switch to the halting, basic English I have learned in school. "Hello? Can you help me? Where... where am I?"

The man's brow furrows in concentration. "English?" he asks, his accent thick. He points to himself. "Brazil." Then he points to the jungle around us. "Amazonas."

Brazil. The Amazon.

The words do not compute. My brain simply refuses to accept them. I have gone to sleep in my apartment in Tokyo, Japan. And I have woken up in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, on the other side of the planet.

It is impossible. It defies every law of physics, every rational explanation. I feel a wave of dizziness wash over me, and the world starts to go dark at the edges. I think I mumble something, a plea for help, before I collapse onto the dusty road.

When I come to, I am lying in the bed of the pickup truck, a damp cloth on my forehead. The old man is driving, occasionally glancing back at me with a worried expression. We eventually arrive in a small, dusty village, a collection of simple wooden houses with corrugated tin roofs. The man helps me out of the truck and leads me to his home, where his wife, a warm, smiling woman, gives me a glass of water and a plate of rice and beans.

They do not speak English, and I do not speak Portuguese, but through a series of gestures and simple words, I manage to convey that I am lost and have no idea how I have gotten there. They are kind, compassionate people, taking in a strange, panicked foreigner without question.

I spend the day in a state of shock, sitting on their porch, watching the village life unfold around me. Children play in the dirt, chickens peck at the ground, and the jungle looms at the edge of the clearing, a constant, menacing presence. My phone is useless. I have no money, no passport, nothing but the clothes on my back and a story that no one will ever believe.

I am completely and utterly stranded.

As night falls, a deep, primal fear sets in. What is going to happen to me? Will I ever get home? And the biggest question of all: how has this happened?

The family gives me a small room with a hammock to sleep in. I lie there in the dark, listening to the alien sounds of the jungle, my mind a whirlwind of terror and confusion. This has to be connected to Minaki, to my past. Her appearance was the catalyst, the stone thrown into the placid pond of my life. But this... this is a tidal wave. This is a complete shattering of reality.

I eventually fall into a fitful, exhausted sleep, praying that this is all a bizarre, vivid nightmare.

I wake with a gasp. The air is cold, not hot and humid. The sounds are not of the jungle, but of a distant siren and the hum of traffic.

I am lying on a park bench. A very familiar park bench. I sit up, my heart pounding. I am in Tokyo. In the park near my apartment. The sun is just beginning to rise, casting a pale, gray light over the city.

I am back.

I scramble to my feet and run, a wild, desperate sprint, all the way to my apartment building. I fumble with my keys, my hands shaking so badly I can barely fit the key in the lock. I burst inside.

Everything is exactly as I have left it. My bed is unmade from where I have slept. A glass of water sits on my nightstand. It is as if the entire trip to Brazil has never happened.

But it has. I can still feel the oppressive heat of the jungle, still smell the dust of the village, still taste the rice and beans the kind woman has given me. It was real.

I collapse onto my bed, my mind reeling. I have teleported. I have gone to sleep in one location and woken up in another, on the other side of the world. And then I have teleported back.

This is my new reality. A world where the laws of physics are optional. A world where I am an unmoored man, liable to be swept away by an invisible current at any moment, with no warning and no control.

The hope Aiko has given me feels like a distant memory. My quest to find my past seems trivial now. My new quest is simply to survive, to hold onto my sanity in a world that no longer makes any sense. And I am terrified that with the next blink of an eye, the next time I fall asleep, I will be ripped away again, to some new, unknown corner of the earth, with no guarantee that I will ever find my way back.