The morning light filtered through the blinds in Taro's room, cutting the space into stripes of weak illumination and shadow. Sitting to my left, Taro, my cousin, kept adjusting his grip on the edge of the wooden table. He seemed restless, a common human trait. His father, my uncle, was across from us, his presence quiet and unassuming, much like the cooling tea in my cup. We were in his village, a place that felt distant in more ways than just geography. It wasn't somewhere I belonged, merely a location I was visiting. The simple act of being here required a certain level of performance, a polite engagement in conversations that held no real interest for me.
Breakfast had finished without incident. The meal was basic, the talk predictable. They discussed local happenings – the state of the rice fields, the recent rain, the health of relatives whose names I barely recognized. It was all background noise, requiring minimal energy to process and respond to. My focus was internal, observing the subtle shifts in expression, the unconscious gestures. Taro's slight tension, his father's calm acceptance – data points collected, filed away. Humans often reveal more in their non-verbal cues than in their words.
The quiet routine was broken by a sudden noise. The front door, old and heavy, creaked loudly as it was pushed open. Standing there was Akane, another cousin, her arrival a small ripple in the otherwise still pond of the morning.
"Sage, let's go to Aunt's place!" she called out, her voice clear and direct, cutting through the calm air.
Aunt's house. I pictured it instantly – a building that belonged to a different time. Not a modern home, but something much older, like a farmhouse from generations past. Simple, perhaps even primitive by today's standards. The distance was about two kilometers, a fact I processed quickly. Two thousand meters. I estimated the time and energy required.
"Alright, let's go," I replied, the words coming out smoothly. There was no reason to refuse. It was a change of scenery, if nothing else.
Thinking about the walk, the physical effort, registered as a slight negative. Conserving energy was usually my priority. Yet, a strange feeling accompanied it, a flicker of something... positive. Happiness? Perhaps being around my cousins, even in this uneventful setting, evoked some faint emotional response. It was a curious sensation, not unpleasant, but unexpected.
We left Taro's house and stepped onto the dusty path. The start of the walk was exactly as expected. The sun was higher now, brighter. The path was worn smooth by countless feet, lined with the familiar, modest homes of the village. Taro and Akane walked beside me, talking softly to each other. I listened casually, letting their words wash over me while keeping my attention focused on the path ahead and the surrounding environment. Two kilometers wasn't a long walk, but maintaining awareness was always important. You never knew what you might encounter.
We had covered about one kilometer when it happened. The world didn't change slowly; it snapped into something else entirely. One moment, we were walking on the path with village houses behind us; the next, the view was completely different.
The path itself was still there, an odd constant. But when I looked back, the houses were gone. Vanished. And ahead? The landscape had transformed. The trees were enormous, their leaves unlike anything I recognized. And then I saw them.
Huge creatures. They looked like wild titans, though the word felt too simple, too much like something from a picture book. There were three of them, their massive bodies moving slowly. They were eating leaves from the tall trees, their heads lowered. They seemed completely unaware of us, as if we didn't exist. They weren't blind, but their focus was entirely on their food. They showed no interest in us at all.
Taro and Akane reacted with sudden, loud shouts. Fear and confusion filled their voices. "What the world is going on?!" they cried, their panic evident.
Their reaction was predictable. When faced with the illogical, most people resort to noise and panic. It was inefficient. My mind, however, immediately began processing. The path was the same. The houses were gone. Giant, seemingly harmless creatures were eating trees. This wasn't a shared delusion; it was a shared, inexplicable reality shift. Panicking wouldn't provide answers.
"Don't panic," I said, keeping my voice level. Calm in the face of the absurd is often the most effective stance. "Just follow me."
My thoughts raced. The situation was impossible, yet it was happening. Shouting wouldn't change that. I needed information. "Maybe it's just imagination," I offered, though I didn't believe it. It was a phrase to manage their fear. "And I hope we find some clue."
Finding a clue meant moving forward, exploring this new environment. The direction we were heading was towards Aunt's house. It was a fixed point in my mind, a potential destination even if the world around it had changed. "Let's follow me," I said again, a quiet instruction they seemed to accept.
They looked at me, their eyes wide with a fear they couldn't hide. But they nodded and fell in behind me. As we started walking in the direction I believed Aunt's house to be, I began to count my steps. Each step was a unit. A way to measure our progress. If we didn't find the house, or if things changed again, having a step count would give us a reference point. It was a basic method, but in an unpredictable situation, simple methods were often the most reliable.
The walk felt different. The air seemed heavier, quieter, except for the sound of our footsteps and the faint rustling of the giant creatures in the distance. Their presence was a constant reminder of how unreal this was. We kept our distance, not wanting to test their apparent indifference. I continued observing – the feel of the ground, the strange patterns on the giant leaves, the quality of the light. I was looking for anything that felt familiar, or anything that could explain the shift.
After walking for what felt like a strange amount of time – the passage of time itself seemed altered – guided by my step count and the direction, we arrived. And there it was. Aunt's house. It looked exactly the same as it did in the real world. It hadn't vanished like the other houses. It stood there, old and simple, an island of familiarity in an ocean of impossible changes. This fact alone was significant. Why had this specific building remained?
The large, old gate groaned as I pushed it open. The sound was normal, grounding. We stepped inside. The house should have felt like its exterior looked – solid, old, full of history. But it was wrong. It was empty. Not just bare of furniture, but empty in a way that felt hollow, unreal. The roof was gone. I could see the sky directly above us, a color that didn't seem quite right. The walls were there, but they felt thin, temporary.
Then, another shift. Not sudden like the first, but smoother, like a scene dissolving and reforming. The strange sky above vanished. The feeling of hollowness disappeared, replaced by the solid, cluttered reality of Aunt's actual home.
Standing by a pot of flowers, a watering can in her hand, was Aunt. She looked just as she always did, her face lined with age, her movements slow but steady. Fifty years old, a fact stored in my memory. She turned, her eyes finding us.
"Oh, where did you come from, ghostly?" she said, a common phrase she used, her tone one of mild surprise.
Her presence, her normal reaction, in this normal house, after what we had just experienced, was the most disorienting thing of all. My mind struggled to reconcile the two realities. Wild Creatures, vanished houses, an empty, roofless building... followed instantly by a simple question from my aunt. The question formed in my mind, What the hell is going on...?