Outside a shop, in a business district, hundreds of passersby passed by. One of them was a young man named "Skylet."

He didn't want to have to think about anything right now. His heart was pulsating rapidly as his feet greeted the pavement.

Meanwhile, shifting to his head, memories flashed like currency signs in a bank. One of the memories showed him a scene. There, he and a friend named "Rino" were talking.

"Skylet, you remember what it was like to be there again when we were younger?" said Rino.

"I don't know," Skylet said.

Rin's words entered his ears like knives striking against his back; his heart pummelled against the wall of his heart.

Returning to reality, in the moment, in the distance, he engaged in contemplation, looking around several times.

First, he looked at the setting sun bowing gradually toward his doom.

Second, he stared at the sky; his mind was full of worlds beyond his comprehension.

However, as he was looking, a portal abruptly appeared behind him.

Before he was able to think about what was happening, a tendril reached out and pulled him. He pushed it, but the pull was like the chain used for dragons. It dragged him and forced him away.

He teleported and found himself falling downward before levitating softly upon the ground.

"What's happening?" he said, now realizing that he had come down in such a smooth way.

Before anything, he felt an urge to move around and keep himself alert. He obeyed this urge, looking at the tropical rainforest all around him. Surrounding him, the darkness of early morning covered the earth.

"What a wonderful world," he muttered confusedly. "This reminds me of Rino's favorite music. Dystopian, yet beautiful." He was confused with what he was saying.

How was he so calm? He thought this as his hands shivered, his legs struggled to stay strong, and his posture slouched like a bat.

He wandered, both in his head and in reality.

Not a single footstep lay dormant.

Each was alive and active, each representing his path in this world.

An hour later, a man approached him, asking him questions: "Where are you? Where am I? Where are we?"

The man was a spirit floating around, repeating the same words.

Skylet ran, and the man was soon gone.

Two hours later, a god appeared, flying above him. "I am Matthew," he said.

Skylet stopped. "Who are you? Asterisk? Who's there!"

The god made himself visible. "Damn, hey, it's nice to see a newcomer. How are you? Feeling fine. All that thinking's gone to your head? Hahahaha. Anyway, I'm Matthew."

"Hi, Matthew." Skylet removed his hands from his head.

"So, what I want you to do is focus... This new world's going to be terrifying, so you need to take up inner..."

"Inner strength?"

"Yeah that one. You need to be strong and recognize your inner strength, you know. Anyway, see ya." He rode off on a horse into the horizon, disappearing in a fleeting cloud of smoke.

Skylet was confused, but he realized that this was a part of being forcibly removed from Earth.

He also didn't know what the god was on about.

Anyway, he saw a projection of the forest and noticed there a river that separated the tropical forest from an open grassland.

He walked up to it and saw a variety of animals.

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It felt like God's Eden, but it was only a small area in this vast world where mountains embraced the land.

This bright world. Was it reality?

Or was it just something birthed from his mind?

He didn't know, but he knew that the only option left was to take a stance through it all.

Unlike the woman, he had a soul.

He found himself riding a wagon.

The driver was a kind man who shoved onto him a clean path forward, aggressively so.

He rode with a friendly smile on his face, his heart floating in multiple directions. The sun was too bright not to feel himself glitter.

The beauty of the world marched on like a man tired of arguing in a dysfunctional relationship, but he kept going.

"Keep going," the world said.

Skylet couldn't help but smile. The sound of the wagon wheels roling against the earth was soothing. The trees swaying in the wind put a light touch of gracefulness to his day. The march of the wagon to the village ahead felt purposeful and highly prepared.

After he reached the village, he couldn't help but be excited.

The village offered a variety of different things—food, drink, fresh rice wine, and strange individuals.

He saw a man who could create pies out of thin air, saying that the process happened "elsewhere."

Skylet didn't know what that meant, but he pressed forward.

He saw a man combining wine and magic and creating rabbits.

He saw a woman raising her hand and then pulling it off only for a new arm to grow magically to replace it. She didn't look pained; in fact, she looked engaged and meaningfully inspired.

He saw a dog walking on two legs and they called it a "beastman."

Skylet saw many things, but what shocked him the most was how normal the village looked in defiance of it all.

He saw humans with their eyes tied together into ribbons and their heads shaped like bowls instead of people. He saw that each man wore a dress and each woman wore a skirt as long as trousers yet elusive to an extent such that they were called "skirts." This confused him and gave him pause, leaving him as if he was broken and his desires not carefully assuaged to allow such heedlessness of being.

His heart became as tight as a ribbon piece against the neck sometimes; those parents who resolved to have it tied strictly exacted a great deal of forbearance.

The night was a careful song, strictly obedient to Skylet's wants and needs, at least for the moment. The next day would involve tedious things, he thought, maybe things beyond his "things." Maybe, the things that he put so close to him back on Earth would lose their unadulterated flavor in his mind that the things in this world that he called "New Worlde" surpassed them in memory priority queue.

He was not too bothered, but a little careful even with the momentary pauses in his head, each thought delineated ideas that made him dance and spin like an acrobat. Understandably, he kept a quick glance in case he was treated badly by the people around him.

If the village did think he was a threat, they would put him down and break his little toes as his mother used to spank them when he was a child. The toe-spanking was a careful way to hide the spanking when wearing shoes threw them away from sight.

However, for now, he relaxed like a man removing his toenails one by one with a nailcutter. He liked the sound of the rain that poured; it sounded soothing and pleasing to his tongue because petrichor added a revealing touch to his food when he ate that tied him together throughout eras of his life. It was sombre sometimes, but it always carried the will to live.

Before this, he was close his cutting off his life from Earth permanently, but that was months ago. Now, he was okay and things had changed. Maybe his own thoughts were flavorful insofar as he kept the comes-and-goings of his own well of imagination.

Drifting away into his thoughts, he himself felt his own disappearance in the physical world.

However, the villagers, however strange they were in their appearance, along with the driver of the wagon who had brought him to this village, were noticing his introspective demeanor like children bunched up behind a corner and peeking interestedly. They thought of offering him food since he looked drowned imaginitively in the petrichor-racked rain, a light touch, and magical wisps: each sound looked to bind him within a state of stoic acceptance.

In the end, Skylet had yet to resolve completely his own tendencies with the innate imaginary worlds that he had built up so well.

Yet, that benefitted him because he was not so weak so as to rest so easily into the night.

The god that met him earlier had a plan for him.

Skylet was given a chance to explore his own mana well, the fountation which produced mana in great quantities. He would be able to spawn attacks that struck enemies from afar, enough that he would beat them and force them into his side if possible.

He noticed his hands raising on their own, as the imaginary mind that Skylet had fostered became real.

He blast the side of a village cottage wall, disturbing the peace of the village.

However, the villagers were watching, so they saw the distinguishable tension and confusion in his face and eyes.

They approached him cautiously and said, "You are okay?"

"Yeah," Skylet said. "I'm okay. What happened to me?"

"You have magic. Why are you confused?"

"I didn't know that. What is this?"

"You're surprised to have magic? Did you only find that you have magic now?"

"No, I never had this before."

"You have discovered your magic late then."

"This is crazy. Guys, be careful. It might happen again."

"Sure."

"Why am I like this?"

He had never questioned this new world until it hit him that he could really die if he wasn't careful. He didn't want to die.

He ran to the edge of the wilderness, fearing that the magic would hurt the villagers.

Since the magic came from his hands, he kept his hands directed toward the forest, hoping that he didn't start a wildfire.

He wanted to be okay. He really did.

An hour of tension later, he realized that it was actually fine.

He walked back to the village, very hungry, thirsty, wet, and sweaty. He smelled because of the rainwater that soaked him.

He got some fresh clothes. Even if the villagers looked strange, they were normal, very kind people.

They helped him recover in case he got sick and gave him food and water.

He realized that whatever this new situation had to offer him wouldn't hurt that much as long as he relied on others.