You know there’s something not right when you’ve woken up and you’re not where you’re supposed to be. This room… It’s not right, it’s not mine.

Faces staring, voices arguing flashed in my memory. I screamed.

A young girl came running in. She’s maybe ten, her eyes were flickering around nervously.

"Are you okay, is everything okay?" Her voice was quiet. A potted plant in her hands, the eerie way it seemed to move on its own entranced me. My head felt dizzy.

Eventually my breathing evened out, but my brain was still going a mile a minute and what happened before I passed out catches up to me in an instant.

A man. A portal. People yelling. Impossible things happening.

Where am I?

The girl came closer, obviously not used to asserting herself in any kind of situation. My eyes immediately scanned for details. The girl had black hair, her face was Japanese. Did that mean I was still in Japan? There was something off about her clothes, though. The stitches were big, as if her clothes were not made by machine.

I tried to make a noise in response, wanting to ask questions as she came closer, but nothing came out. I notice now my throat is parched as if I’d been asleep for days.

The girl chewed on her bottom lip. "I’ll – I’ll be right back. Mimori will help."

She was gone then and I was left alone. I studied the room around me, under me. I was on a futon, laying across the floor, but what it was stuffed with I couldn’t identify. Under the futon was tatami style mats. I was definitely still in Japan. The walls around me were not thin paper walls, they were like how the walls in my apartment had been, covered in texture. My eyes then catch sight of a window. I got up.

My legs wobbled underneath me. I wondered again at how long I had been out. I leaned towards the window and grab onto the ledge as I found myself unable to hold my own weight.

I looked out.
My face blanched.
My brain couldn’t comprehend the sights before me.
This had to be some kind of dream. It had to be some kind of nightmare.

Where was I?

--

I had wondered what had killed it in the end. Had I fed it too little? Or maybe it had been too much? Had the old man lied about Osaka’s tap water lacking the chemicals to kill or maybe hadn’t change the water often enough. I guesssed now that there was a small bloated body floating in my fishbowl, there is not much I could do about it anymore.

I sighed.

"Get a fish," my mother had said "it will keep you from feeling lonely."

"I’ll only be here for two years," I had replied, "anyway I’m fine."

My mother had responded but the look had been the obvious. I’d ended up complying in the end.

Six months. Six months was how long that fish had ended up lasting.

I closed my eyes and took in a breath. My hands wrapped around the plastic bowl as I stood up. I walked into the bathroom.

In my tiny shoebox apartment, it wasn’t too far from my kitchen counter. A toilet, sink and bathtub were unceremoniously squished into a small space. I opened the toilet lid and dump the contents of the ball inside. I flushed and watch the water circle round, taking the small bloated body down into the sewer system.

It had been about a year since I had come to Japan. And I had a year yet to go on my contract and visa. Contracts were not easy to break. Promises to older meddling brothers were even harder to break. But, I was about ready to go back home. I wouldn’t say I was miserable living in Japan per say, but I wouldn’t say I was happy either. Life had been easier in my parents’ house.

I turned away from the toilet, setting the bowl down. Sure, I hadn’t wanted the fish, but I had gotten attached. The loss made me feel a bit empty. It made me…

It made me... want some ice cream.

My phone blinked the time at me, it was two twenty-eight in the morning. I picked it up, slipped it into my pocket along with a thousand yen bill. I opened the door to the outside. A wash of humidity came over me.

August was a time of trials and tribulations in Osaka, Japan. A time of heat and overly expensive air conditioning bills. I didn’t spend much time outside though, so I was surviving it all right.

I headed down the stairs of my apartment building. The only places open at this time of night were the various convenience stores scattered around. I started towards the closest one.

Unsurprisingly, no one else was around. Even in the big city, those wandering around this late on a weekday were few.

It was calming, walking the streets alone, but it also further depression I was hoping to stave off with a cup of chocolate ice cream. It wasn’t that Japan was a bad place, I found my mind wandering about to as I moved further into the silent night. I had never fit in anywhere, so being a foreigner in a foreign country wasn’t an issue at all. It was just so hard for me being away from my family with no studies to distract. It was being in a job I wasn’t good at and that I didn’t enjoy. It was –

"Hey."

I froze. I hadn’t heard any footsteps, sensed any presences. My fists hovered on my keys, ready to thread them through my fingers to defend myself if needed. I steeled myself and turned around.

A man my age stood a couple of meters behind me. He was standing so still, a practiced grace. His hair was styled oddly, long and drawn up into a high ponytail. His clothes were even stranger, a weird mix of historical and modern Japanese styles. His eyes met mine. They were a light brown.

A smile grew on his lips then and he started walking closer, closing the gap between us. Two meters, one… I tried to take a step back, but with my heart in my throat I found my body unable to move. My brain raced through old, forgotten lessons in self-defense. My fists clutched tightly, house keys jutting from them.

He was an inch away.

"Yes," he started, his Japanese dialect different than normal. "Yes, you’ll be perfect."

He reached out and touched my cheek then. My fist came up to strike him, to do something, anything but – everything shifted. My vision went blurry. Everything went wrong, felt wrong. I wanted to curl up in the fetal position. I was frozen. I wanted to cry out, but I had no voice, no mouth, no throat, no – it all went black.

And then just as suddenly, there was color again. Different colors. I thought myself collapsing, bile my throat. Everything. felt. wrong.

"What have you done?" The Japanese words barely registered in my brain as my stomach wretch.

"Exactly as you asked, my Lord."

"This was not what I asked for."

I tried to list my head, tried to view what was happening around me, but nausea and pain continued to rip through me and my eyes squeezed shut.

"You never specified what to bring back. Just that you needed something displaced."

"You know I meant a coin! Or a small stone! I should turn you in! Send her back!"

"I can’t."

"What!?"

"Something’s off with –"

My ears grew muffled. The shaking in my body grew worse. A door slammed open. A female voice started yelling. Arms wrapped around me. And then…

Nothing.

--

"How are you feeling?" I turned from the window of the offending site of the not quite right buildings and see a girl, no a woman, standing in the doorway. Like the by the convenience store, her Japanese was accented in ways that weren’t familiar to me.

She was striking in her red and gold kimono and the poised way she held herself. Dark tightly curled hair was pulled back and up with the gel of some kind fastened with an ornate pin.

I felt struck dumb by her appearance. She fit in so perfectly with the rest of this wrong scenery. Her appearance furthered the twisting in my stomach, the belief that this had to be some kind of dream. I felt my body trembling as I leaned against the windowsill.

A sigh escaped plump, painted lips and she seemed to whisper something I couldn’t quite catch. The woman then calmly walked towards me. With every step, I felt my body relaxing, my legs strengthening.

"I apologize for earlier. Though I can’t say much for that damned con man who brought you here, Ryou, the other man, he knew better."

She took my hand and led me back to the futon.

"Ryou?" I croaked out. It was the first word I had uttered since I’d woken. The woman smiled.

"Yes, he’s a dear friend of mine. He’s usually much better behaved than to leave someone on the ground in pain. Luckily. I had sensed you."

"Sense me?" I had never felt dumber than I did at that moment, just parroting back what this woman said. Nothing anyone was saying was making any sense.

The woman stopped for a moment, noticing my distress. She laid me back down, placing the back of her hand on my forehead. "Still a bit warm."

I noticed then three black dots on one of rich dark cheeks. Three dots in an upside down triangle shape. A tattoo?

"But yes, I am a certified Lifemancer, after all, if I can’t sense when someone’s body is in trouble, what’s the point."

My eyebrows furrowed. Lifemancer? I had woken up. I remembered the act of waking up. This stunk of one of those nightmares where you feel like escape is impossible. The ones where you wake up over and over again, only to find that you were still dreaming.

The trembling all over my body began again. "Where... am I?" My voice crackled as I talked, my heart in my throat, I was terrified. "Who are you? What’s happened? I don’t understand." The woman drew back, a painful look of pity on her face.

"My name is Mimori…" Her words trailed off. "As for where... my dear…" She closed her eyes. "You’re very far away from home."

"I’m sorry. I don’t know how I could even start to explain it. I don’t even really understand what has happened myself." The woman, Mimori opened her eyes again, there was a sadness there.

"All I can tell you is that right now you in my home, in the Imperial City of Osaka, capital of Japan."

I froze. "No, you must be mistaken, Tokyo is the capital of Japan, not Osaka."

The woman tilted her head. "Tokyo? An eastern capital? You must be mistaken, the only big city out east is Edo."

I felt sick.
Like I had suspected.

Everything was wrong. Everything was so, so wrong.