Every breath in Tokyo felt expensive. It wasn't because of the pollution, but because of a lifestyle that was far beyond my reach. They called me a genius—the brilliant mind who secured a scholarship at the most prestigious civil engineering faculty in Japan. But behind that title, I was nothing more than a man without opportunity. Buried behind rows of engineering textbooks—the only friends I ever truly had—a seed of envy grew fertile in every corner of my heart.
I remember it vividly: my late mother's frail smile in the hospital room. Her eyes were weary yet overflowing with hope as I showed her my scholarship acceptance letter. "Haruki, you are the pride of the Morikawa family," she whispered. Those words became both my anchor and my burden. That scholarship was my only ticket out of poverty, the only way to prove that an ordinary person like me could actually shine. And so, every hour, every minute, was dedicated to study. To maintain perfection. To never disappoint.
Sometimes, as dusk crept in, I would sit in a small park near campus, letting the cool breeze brush against a face stiff from exhaustion. In the distance, I watched my classmates laugh without a care. I saw them smile as they headed home to comfortable apartments and expensive dinners. For them, life was a vast, vibrant canvas. But for me, for Haruki Morikawa, life was an unfinished construction project—a series of rigid blueprints that had to be calculated perfectly just to survive. One night, I sat with my head bowed, cursing a fate that felt so cruel. If only I had one thing... one chance to change everything. To taste that same luxury, or at least, to never feel this envy again.
***
Slowly, I raised my head.
The Tokyo skyline, usually adorned with skyscrapers and flickering neon lights, had been replaced by a sea of brilliant stars illuminating the dark void of the universe. The blaring car horns had vanished, replaced by desperate screams and pleas for help. My body felt heavy. My feet pressed against dry, parched earth instead of the solid stone of the park path. Before me, a village was being torn apart by the shadows of bandits in full gear, destroying everything they touched. At that moment, I realized: I was no longer in Tokyo. I was no longer in my world.