His light brown hair was gone. Those golden highlights that sometimes caught the sun too. In their place, reflected on the screen and carelessly tied back with a hair tie, a silver mane covered his head.
But that wasn't the worst of it.
The one thing Kai was proud of on his face—his eyes, that grey-green that shifted with the light, and those rings: one like a hazel explosion surrounding the pupil, the other a deep blue at the edge of the iris. Gone.
What looked back at him from the phone were impossible eyes: a crimson red border that had come into conflict with a metallic white around the pupils; both colors seemed to have tried and failed to blend together, creating a chaotic landscape in his gaze.
"What's next, green fingernails?!"
Just in case, he yanked off a glove to check. Thankfully, his nails were still normal.
Kai scoffed. He obviously knew who was behind that little 'aesthetic joke'.
"God… if I ever see that idiot again, I don't know what I'll do with him. He's ruined my new life before it even started…"
He was talking about the entity that had brought him to this world, of course. That vile thing.
"Aesthetic changes…" he repeated mockingly. "You know what? It's actually my own fault—the bastard warned me… But that doesn't fix the problem."
That being had kidnapped him, forced him to start from scratch, and on top of that made him believe he had a choice—when the outcome had probably been the same from the very beginning.
It had recolored his entire palette and expected him not to care just because it had given him a heads-up?
And to top it all off, after promising to leave him close to one of his friends… it had dropped him in the middle of some random forest.
Kai sighed, trying to push it all aside. In front of him was a massive obstacle.
A steep drop, apparently over thirty meters, almost completely vertical.
At the edge of the cliff, Kai looked out over the green carpet formed by the treetops below.
"A paraglider would really come in handy right now. I'd just have to keep an eye on my stamina bar and glide down smoothly."
There he was, thinking about video game scenes instead of how to actually get down.
But why the hell was he going down at all?
He turned his head and looked back. There was no guarantee he'd find another river, and he didn't want to retrace ground he'd already covered… It made sense, didn't it? Whatever—he just didn't want to turn back.
He scoffed, took off his backpack and tied his hoodie around his waist. He thought he knew how to do this, but he wasn't exactly thrilled about it.
He pulled out the vines, unrolled them and stretched them out on the ground. Then he rummaged through his keys. Blessed be the day he'd thought to clip a folding ruler onto his keychain wedged between a spider-themed hero and a wanted poster of a pirate in a very recognizable hat.
Calmly, he measured each vine. Just around twelve meters each. If he'd guessed the height of the ravine right, together they'd be more than enough to cover the descent.
"Great…" he muttered with disdain, as if he'd just confirmed his own sentence.
The one upside was that Kai could vouch for the vines' resistance—they were very sturdy but elastic enough.
He knew it was a waste of battery, but Kai couldn't take it anymore and put his earphones in to listen to music while he tied the vines together.
After securing them to a nearby tree, Kai stared into the void with empty eyes.
He opened his backpack, drank some water and ate the last bun he had left. He was pretty hungry—it didn't fill him up, but it would do for now.
After putting the bottle back in his backpack, he tied it to the far end of the rope and carefully lowered it down to give it some weight.
There was no turning back now—either he went down or he abandoned his stuff. Though he could always pull the rope back up and retrieve it…
When the backpack reached the bottom, Kai braced himself to do the same.
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
"I'm going to turn back."
Would that make sense? Every bit of sense in the world—but it was too late. He was already hanging and descending.
What had been a gentle breeze now wrapped around him as he climbed down, threatening to swing him from side to side.
Kai had taken his earphones out before starting the descent, but he could still hear a loud rhythmic pounding. It was his heart—it felt like it might explode at any moment. His hands had turned into faucets; without his gloves he would have slipped the instant he grabbed on.
"What was I thinking?"
The wall was rough—though there were some rocky sections, most of the surface was covered in earth. Every time Kai put his foot against the wall carelessly he ended up slipping and nearly plummeting.
The odd root or curious plant lived on the cliff face, but Kai was in no position to study them.
The descent was slow and grueling. With every passing minute Kai's muscles throbbed more. His heart had only just started beating normally again and his breathing had settled, but he couldn't afford to relax. He was already halfway—the perfect moment to let his guard down and end up splattered at the bottom.
The sweating situation hadn't improved—if anything it was getting worse, and it wasn't just his hands anymore. He was close to sweating from his brain.
"Yeah… not much… left…" He paused briefly. "I don't know who… am I kidding," he said between gasps.
Kai wasn't sure why it was taking so much out of him. It was true he barely left the house, but he'd been to climbing walls a few times for something to do—he liked climbing things.
Getting into the last quarter, Kai had nothing left. He just wanted to let go and pray he survived the fall. It felt like his muscles were tearing. He felt like he was wearing armor instead of clothes, everything pulling him downward.
He knew he shouldn't, but he looked down—he could see his backpack barely touching the ground, slowly getting closer. He'd apparently forgotten to account for how much the rope would shorten when tied to the tree. What he didn't see when he looked down was the last knot, the one he'd just passed, slowly giving way.
A chill ran through his body with a peculiar sensation—as if his body was trying to warn him about something. He looked up and saw the knot coming undone, slowly but steadily and unstoppably.
"Damn me! Can't I… can't I do a single thing… right?"
Kai started speeding up his descent. He knew it would probably accelerate the unknotting, but he didn't want to be far from the ground when it happened.
When he was about five meters from the ground, on pure instinct he turned at an indescribable tingling sensation throughout his body—and then it happened. He heard the rope snap through the air as it gave way under the tension. At least he wasn't at a lethal height… as long as he didn't land badly.
Kai's heart shot back up to a hundred miles an hour. He would have liked everything to seem to slow down like in the movies, but each fraction of a second seemed to fall faster than the last. He didn't even have a second to think.
Just before he hit the ground, on pure instinct, he bent his knees, making contact with just the balls of his feet. Less than a heartbeat later he rolled forward, pushing off with his arms to absorb as much of the impact as he could, finally ending up flat on his back on the ground.
He was hyperventilating so hard it felt like he was going to vomit his lungs out. A drumming in his chest made him think it might stop dead at any moment, every limb was shaking and he was drenched in sweat.
"Easy… almost broke a sweat there…"
Kai got to his feet with visible effort, picked up his backpack and the vine that had come loose.
"At least I get to keep one…"
He rolled up the vine and put it back in its place in the backpack.
As much as he wanted to sit there and do nothing, he had to get to the river.
Of course, nothing was ever that simple—he had a nagging pain in his left ankle. It hurt quite a bit actually; calling it a nagging pain was being optimistic. He was lucky he could still walk more or less normally, but he'd rather not put too much weight on that leg.
Kai remembered where the river was—it wasn't too hard, he just had to go straight perpendicular to the ravine until he reached it. But just in case, he made small marks on the lower part of tree trunks every few trees.
On the way he turned on his phone. No internet connection, but he'd always wanted to do a lot of things—camping was one of them. He'd downloaded a guide for it, of course. He'd downloaded guides for a lot of things 'just in case'—they'd probably come in handy going forward, but right now he just wanted to know how to survive.
Having been such a dedicated internet explorer, he naturally had a rough idea of a lot of things, but he couldn't be certain about all of them. That was why he needed the guide.
By the time he reached the river, he'd already found what he was looking for.
He tucked his phone into the side pocket of his backpack to focus on what was in front of him. The murmur of the water was soothing, the liquid pure and crystal clear, almost inviting him to drink.
Suddenly he felt a pang of hunger and without thinking reached into his pocket and popped a few fizzy candies into his mouth.
'It's… really sweet, and soft…'
Kai didn't remember bringing gummies, so he inspected his hand. And saw some of the berries he'd picked earlier.
He'd finished his fizzy candies while waiting at the fountain, and in a stroke of genius had stored the berries in the same pants pocket.
His expression shifted as it dawned on him.
'Is this it? Is this how it ends? Lasted longer than expected…'