The problem with dreams, Kai had long decided, was that they required hope. And hope was a luxury he'd stopped affording himself somewhere between his third student loan rejection and his fifth consecutive month of night shifts at the Lawson convenience store.
His mother's voice echoed in his head—a memory as persistent as the fluorescent lights that hummed overhead. "Just one more semester, Kai. Just keep pushing." She'd sold her small jewelry collection to help fund his computer science degree. cancer treatments and university tuition had consumed everything she'd saved.
Now she was gone. And he was here.
Thirty-six cents. Literally thirty-six cents separated his bank account from total collapse. The numbers mocked him every time he checked his banking app, which he did compulsively—a nervous habit born of constant financial anxiety.
The convenience store was his entire world. Twelve-hour night shifts. Restocking energy drinks. Watching salarymen shuffle in, defeated by corporate Tokyo. Watching university students burst with the kind of hope he'd long since abandoned.
His computer science degree hung in his cramped apartment—a testament to potential unrealized. Four years of coding. Countless job applications. Zero callbacks. The tech world didn't want graduates. They wanted experience. But how do you get experience when no one will give you a chance?
The static electricity was the first sign something was wrong.
His arm hair stood on end. The fluorescent lights above the energy drink display began to flicker—a dance between light and darkness that felt almost deliberate. The metal shelves seemed to warp, reality bending at impossible angles.
Kai blinked.
Then everything went white.
When consciousness returned, the first breath was like diving into pure possibility. Gone was the sterile smell of cleaning products and stale coffee. This air was different. Charged. Alive. Each inhalation felt like drinking pure potential.
Two moons hung in a sky the color of a fresh bruise. Lavender mixed with deep indigo, creating a canvas that defied everything he understood about planetary physics.
His convenience store uniform had vanished. Soft leather embraced his body—a vest that fit like it had been crafted specifically for him. Trousers that moved with liquid grace. Boots that seemed to understand the contours of his feet better than any footwear he'd ever worn.
A curved dagger hung at his hip. Its handle was etched with symbols that looked like a bizarre marriage between circuit board schematics and ancient runic language. When he touched it, a strange warmth pulsed through his fingers.
In the distance, something that violated every biological law he'd studied grazed peacefully. Part deer. Part dragon. Scales that caught light like living prisms, refracting colors he didn't have names for. Silver-leafed trees swayed in a breeze that carried hints of ozone and something metallic and unknown.
A blue light flickered at the edge of his vision. Not quite a hologram. Not quite a screen. Something in between materialized—numbers, text, a clinical voice echoing in the recesses of his mind.
*Welcome, Traveler.*
Kai laughed. It wasn't a sound of joy. It was the laugh of someone who had been pushed too many times. Who had watched opportunities slip through his fingers. Who had been told "not good enough" so many times that the words had become a personal soundtrack.
"Welcome?" he said to the impossible landscape. "I haven't even agreed to be here."
His mother's last words came back to him. Whispered from a hospital bed, weak but determined. "Don't give up, my son. Your moment will come."
Maybe this was that moment.
The two moons continued their silent watch. The impossible creature continued grazing. And Kai Nakamura—failed computer science graduate, convenience store worker, son of a woman who believed in him more than he believed in himself—adjusted the dagger at his hip.
Whatever came next, he was done being a passive participant in his own story.