The Wonderful.

Lately, every time I closed my eyes, the same dream came back.

It never stayed long enough to leave any specific details for me to remember.

It always started the same way, on a street I knew. A yellow color of a streetlight at a corner I had walked past hundreds of times. The sound of my own footsteps, and then something behind them.

In the dream, I never turned around. I kept walking as footsteps followed me, until there came a moment when they stopped, which was worse than anything else.

And finally, I opened my eyes.

I was sitting in a chair, my palms flat against the armrests. The wood beneath them was very cold.

Everything was blurred, just like waking up from a deep sleep, but enough to make out where I was.

A table stretched before me.

I sat at its head. It was made of pristine wood, covered in a beautiful red and gold cloth that gave it a luxurious look.

Twenty chairs ran along each side, and mine, and the empty one at the far end, the total came to forty-two.

There was food on the table. A lot of it.

Yet none of it was right. The meat was dark, almost black. The fruit was rotten. The wine seemed normal at first, but its color was a brighter red than it should have been.

What surprised me was that it didn't smell disgusting. it gave off the sweet scent of a garden in bloom.

In front of every chair sat a teacup, and the steam rising from all forty-two of them moved in perfect unison.

Oh.

The sky was red.

Completely red, a bright redness comparable to that of the wine.

The expanse looked bizarre; there were no clouds to break the color. There was no sun, just the color and its endless hue.

I might have written it off as a dream. But the weight of the chair, the feeling of the wood under my palms, and the coolness of the air all existed. This was real.

All of it was real.

I took a deep breath and pressed my fingers against my temples, trying to understand where I was.

Where was I? No. That was the wrong question.

Who was I?

I didn't remember anything. Nothing came up, no matter how hard I tried.

It was like pressing your hand into still water and finding no bottom.

And in that empty space, I walked, searching for anything. An identity. And I found one thing.

Naoki.

That was my name.

I looked around me again. My eyes focused on a figure that had been sitting there the whole time; I just hadn’t realized it.

Opposite me, at the other end of the table, sat the White Rabbit.

Its fur was pale, its waistcoat neatly pressed, Its eyes were red, human in shape and color. The rabbit’s expression was unreadable; I looked at him and found nothing I could name with certainty.

I tried to read him.

Anger, maybe. Or perhaps something closer to pity? I couldn't place it

He opened his mouth, this time saying something. Despite the vast distance created by the unnaturally long table, I heard his faint mumble.

"Alice," He said.

In a blink he had disappeared.

"..."

I lowered my hands from my temples and looked slowly at my palms.

They were clean. That was what I noticed first. I didn't know why, but it felt unnatural.

Impeccably so.

I kept staring at them, not understanding why.

I closed my hands into fists and looked up.

This was not the time for small observations. I had to move. I stood up from the chair; my body felt heavy.

I was in a courtyard of some sort, lined with trimmed bushes. Each one had red roses, which made it look beautiful. The arrangement was precise like it was maintained by someone knew who what they were doing.

A stone path ran along the edge. I followed it. My eyes were looking forward to where it was leading.

A colossal castle stood ahead, its walls pristine white. It looked like something from a fairy tale.

I continued walking, my eyes scanning the castle. It looked normal at first, but upon closer inspection, something strange became apparent.

The windows had no interiors. They just existed, and beyond each pane was pitch darkness that shouldn't have been there.

I also noticed something else: the place was devoid of sound.

Since arriving, the only sounds had been my own breathing, the rabbit's voice, and the rhythmic strike of my steps on the stone path.

The weather was neither warm nor cold, yet it was oppressive. A soft breeze moved through the area, which surprised me.

The white shirt and black pants I was wearing held well against it.

I finally reached the big double door. It wasn't built to human scale, but it matched the castle around it.

As I approached, it opened on its own without a sound.

I walked forward without waiting.

The red sky was gone. A softer, sourceless light filled the place evenly.

This was a corridor. Its walls were mirrors. Each panel reflected the next panel's reflection, the image cascading inward until the repetition consumed itself and became something else entirely.

I kept my head up and walked. I didn't look at the mirrors. I had no interest in my own reflection. I had more important things to attend to. A memory to regain, and an explanation, if I was lucky enough to get one.

The corridor curved in gentle waves. I followed them until, peripherally, I caught my own reflection in one of the panels.

I wouldn't have noted it if it were normal. It moved half a second behind me.

I stopped in place, looking at myself in the mirror.

Now we were synchronized.

The glass distorting things. Probably.

And I continued walking. I don't know for how long—maybe a few seconds, one minute, a few minutes, or half an hour.

I reached a standard-sized door. Before it stood a figure that resembled a man.

More precisely, he was a puppet. He was wearing a blue uniform with a police hat, and his face was painted on. The artistry wasn't good. It looked like a child's doodle.

The face was smiling, with wide, friendly eyes.

Strings ran from his wrists, his elbows, his knees, upward into the mirrored ceiling, where they disappeared into their own reflections.

When the doorman saw me, he gave a slight bow.

"Ah, Alice! Welcome." His voice was a child's, which was unexpected given his adult proportions.

He had called me Alice, and that sat wrong with me, so I corrected him.

"My name is Naoki, not Alice." I said, my voice sounding strange to my ears. It seemed I hadn’t spoken for a long time.

"Yes, of course. Sorry, Alice," the doorman said, bowing even lower.

I wanted to correct him again, but a part of me told me that it wouldn't work.

Like talking to someone who had already made up their mind, or correcting someone who knew they were wrong and simply didn't care.

It didn't bother me much anyway. I didn't know anyone named Alice. So perhaps they were mistaking me for her? But that was also bizarre. I was a man. How could anyone mistake me for a girl?

This world was strange. I needed answers.

"Do you know what this place is?" I asked, my tone flat.

The doorman straightened up, and only then did I notice how tall he was. He was unnaturally tall—his head reached the ceiling; no, his back was pressed against it.

His head was hunched; his drawn-on face looked at me in response. "This is Wonderland, of course. It can't be anything else."

I looked up at him, keeping eye contact. "Okay. Is there a way to leave? Or to recover my memories? I am, as you can see, somewhat lost. And I don't think I am from here."

The doorman laughed. "Alice is from here. Alice belongs to Wonderland."

As he spoke, the door behind him swung open, and the red sky bled through. It also revealed another stone path, which stretched forward.

The doorman used his left hand and pointed to the door, his hand longer than normal now. His index finger extended far past the length of his arm.

"You may find your answers somewhere in Wonderland," he said.

I nodded before walking forward, leaving the castle behind me completely. I couldn't help but take a glance back, and I saw the doorman again, still inside the corridor.

He was waving, his proportions returned to something that looked normal. I raised one hand briefly in return, then turned and continued walking

The only sounds were my breathing and my footsteps.

The courtyard remained unchanged as the door closed behind Naoki and he entered the castle's Corridor of Mirrors.

The red hue of the sky covered it completely; the table of rich food continued to exist, waiting to be eaten.

Yet the far chair at the head of the table, where Naoki had once sat, was now occupied by a young woman.

The chair faced away from the table.

Her face wasn't visible, but it was apparent that her short blonde hair was well-kept.

The green grass didn't keep its color for long.

A pool of red, the same shade as the wine, began spreading beneath her chair.

It spread patiently, overtaking the grass like a disease before moving onto the pale stone. However, the growth eventually ceased, halting after a short distance.