目覚めたら異世界

 

"Wow, what a beautiful beach..." This was the impression I got upon setting eyes at the scenery before me.

 

The sun in the azure sky looked beautiful and its warmth was hitting my skin in all the right places. The breeze was soothing and the fresh air relaxing. The air had a scent of breezed but, then again what would you expect? I was standing on the sandy beach and beside it was the open sea.

 

How long has it been since my last vacation on a beach? Were the beaches even this beautiful? From the looks of it, this was not some beach anyone would be able to visit so readily. This was one of those luxurious beaches that my income and time would always covet. The sands were white and so refined that even without removing the leather shoes I was currently wearing I could still feel that fineness.

 

This place… I could definitely get used to it... 

 

...Only

 

The question was…

 

What am I doing in here?

 

How did I even get here?

 

Wait, the better question is who am I?

 

For some reason which eludes all common reasoning my name, the reason why I was here, or even how I got here had been wiped out from my memory.

 

As one born in a modern-day society and someone who has watched a few too many genres of movies and television shows, this all seem like a cliché on many overrated telenovelas I have watched countless times in my younger days. Right, amnesia this term is given to an abrupt memory loss due to trauma or heavy injury to the head and I might have acquired that very amnesia.

 

******

 

Okay, while we are still calm about the current situation let’s test the extent of my memory...

 

It should be a given that I have a family, which is composed of a Father, a mother, two sisters, and a nephew currently living together with us.

 

Working as a public school teacher, teaching Social Studies, my hobbies include watching anime, reading manga and light novels, and playing video games.

 

I hail from a certain small country in the southeast on a planet called… single since birth, little social life, and almost non-existent love life.

 

“...”

 

Okay from here it should safe to say that this case is slightly off from having amnesia.

 

…Or at least partially…

 

For one the recollection of my life was almost perfect, but for some reason important NAMES, like the names of my parents and siblings, my nephew, the nine dogs or the small town I am currently residing in, the name of the country I am living and of course even my own name completely eludes me.

 

They say amnesia can sometimes happen partially, coined officially as ‘Partial Amnesia’, as it happens some fragments of the memory is unremembered, while most are intact or so at least that is how I interpreted it from an article I had once read from the internet.

 

“hmm...” I tried to focus my mind more on those elusive memories to jog some of them as much as possible but the pain that followed was excruciating which prompted me to stop then and there if just to stop that pain from getting deeper in my head.

 

“Okay let’s stop thinking about the amnesia matter here...” I said out loud to convince myself to stop craving for the missing memories.

 

Since partial amnesia heals over time there is no need to think about it too much at the moment (plus I don’t like the pain that follows when thinking too much about it, it is almost unbearable), given some time the missing memories should return to me in due time or so I read... eventually… I hope.

 

Now we should focus on the more pressing matter...

 

Why was I at a luxurious white sandy beach, watching the beautiful blue sky?

 

 

To try and nudge some logic as to the reason for being on this white sandy beach, I tried to recall the most recent memory.

 

*****

 

It has already been recollected earlier about me being a secondary teacher from a school in a certain public school, teaching Social Studies in a certain small country in the east.

 

While there is no hate or dislike in being a teacher I have considered it as just a form of work and working, in general, was just a form of survival as most people in my society.

 

For most work is not a matter of choice but a necessity. That small country (whose name still eludes me, by the way) I live in was family-oriented by nature, as such, we tend to focus more on providing for our family’s immediate needs, than being happy with what we are actually doing. We choose to work for the benefits of it and the money we received then use it to procure for our daily necessities.

 

Some of us however may have enjoyed work and still able to provide for their respective families, but for me, those types of people were just minority.

 

Of course, all those stated above are just my bias and prejudice with the work and educational system there in that small country to the east.

 

Enough of my biases let’s continue with the memory test.

 

Today was nothing more but the ordinary day-to-day life. Waking up early exactly at 5:00 rode a one and a half ride bus from my home to the school I am currently affiliated with then taught 6 social studies classes with 50 students each, check and rated their works and performances. The usual thing I have been doing every single day.

 

After class ends at 2:30 PM, like usual I go home and ride another one and a half an hour on the bus to get back home.

 

Upon arrival and getting my body refreshed from a good bath you’d think that since the day has ended so did work but unfortunately, I still needed to proceed to record all rated performances and works and make sure to answer midnight queries from my students about their home works. It goes without saying that I still needed to perform duties that are outside my academic scope from both my students and my employer.

 

This kind of daily occurrence always send me stressed out and mostly recover it by tending to my hobbies, either watch a full-length anime series, read some chapters of manga or light novels, or even play a few minutes on games.

 

Today however was such a tiresome day to top it all a certain school event that will occur the next day had prompted me to dismiss my hobbies and so decided to sleep early, I really wanted to watch a few episodes of animes to recover from stress but my body was just simply too tired and my eyes too droopy to stick them on the lighted screen.

 

And just like that my daily normal routine, my life is the absolute incarnation of NORMAL should have ended, only to start anew the next day.

 

"That's all for tonight, I guess" stretching my arms to mark the end of a day’s work and finally reach for the bed. Thankfully my room was neither too hot nor too cold which was the perfect temperature for sleeping. While it was not the most comfortable bed in the world, it assured me and should be able to provide my body the needed relaxation for that sleep, and soon after a few seconds of looking at the dark ceiling, my eyes shut and my mind finally dozed.

 

*tzuuuuuuuuu

 

While entering in that deep sleep, a familiar sensation hits me. The feeling of being sucked in the darkness deep in the consciousness. When greatly stressed due to overwork or doing other strenuous activities from my day-to-day life such sensations sometimes occur, it is a scary and yet strangely fulfilling sensation of slipping into a dream. While sometimes it hurt my sides there was no need to wake up and as it should stop at some point.

 

…But…

 

'Ha?' it was longer this time, the sensation would have only lasted for a brief second and yet it feels like it was going forever, and for some reason, my arms that usually cannot be seen are now pretty much visible in front of me. What normally was just a slip in the consciousness had for some reason became a lucid dream...

 

Lucid dreaming is a terminology coined by psychiatrists as a dream in which a person is aware that he/she is dreaming.

 

Normally, you are not able to do anything in these lucid dreams, you are simply a viewer and should be unable to move freely and yet here I am moving my arms normally like I always do when not in a dream.

 

Although I say dream, the vision I am seeing is not any place I have been or a place I wanted to be. Instead, darkness as far as I can see… or perhaps I cannot see. It was like in deep space, or so at least that was how movies depicted it.

 

The new development did not stop there too.

 

“F….ly fo… …. I …s …, …..in.” a voice I have not heard before yet strangely familiar reached my ears. Can sound travel in a vacuum… but then again, if this was indeed in a vacuum I should not be able to breathe, and yet I am.

 

*thud...

 

While I was trying to ascertain this lucid dream and locate the source of the voice that lingered in this darkness, something had bumped my head. Looking at the direction where the bump originated was a gigantic ship floating in the darkness.

 

It should not have been possible to see it. I mean, darkness should not allow light to press through yet my body and the ship were completely visible to me.

 

Completely forgetting about the voice, the strange development continued while the ship that had bumped my head earlier for some reason made a large turn and it was heading...

 

"Wait! Stop…!" right the ship that had completely turned was now heading towards my direction dangerously and it looks like my head was going to be hit a second time.

 

"Ahhh!"

 

Then my eyes opened.

 

"Finally that was a scary dream." yup scary indeed. I had read this in some articles from the net and it mentioned that some people die when they get killed while sleeping stressed, had I not woken up I wonder if death could have occurred while in the dream.

 

“???”

 

"...Or did I really die and finally went to heaven?"

 

*****

 

This led me to where I was at the beginning.

 

Now fully awake, I was not in my room... I was not even in my house... I don't even think I was in my neighborhood.

 

Surveying the area and rubbing my eyes a couple of times to try and dispel the illusion that I am currently seeing. But, it was to no avail... the scenery was definitely a white sandy beach, something I had only seen on the television as luxurious Vacation Island and would not allow my meager salary to go on just a simple whim.

 

"I don't think my parents had suddenly gotten rich and secretly dosed me with sleeping pills (drugs that had side effects like partial amnesia) and transported me to this beach with white sandy beach..." laughing inside at the otherwise odd joke made the situation even more awkward.

 

"The other logical explanation would be is that I am still in the state of LUCID Dreaming. the state in where the person dreaming is relatively aware that he or she is dreaming. If that is so, there should be a way for me to wake up..." (Who am I even talking to?)

 

To assess that theory:

Smelling the salty sea breeze, felt the rough textures of the sands, and tasted the salty water. Right, if this were a dream it was pretty well made.

 

"The last test is...?"

 

*slap

 

"Ouchhhhhh!" That hurt! The force I had used to slap myself was something that would get me in trouble if I used it against another and yet I did not wake from the Lucid Dream and was still standing at the white beach.

 

"Okay, this is no dream. So did my parents really became rich, dosed me, and transported me to that vacation island with white sandy beach!?"

 

One of the traits of that certain small country in the southeast is the ability to joke around even in the extreme predicament, and this time it was running in full throttle just to compensate for the situation I was in.