The Armor of a Stranger
The first thing Kenji noticed was the smell—wet moss, crushed pine needles, and something underneath it all like burnt copper. Not the smell of Tokyo. Not exhaust fumes or convenience store ramen or the faint chemical sweetness of vending machine coffee. This was earth. Raw and old, pressing into his nostrils like it had something to prove.
He opened his eyes to a canopy of unfamiliar leaves, each one edged in a faint phosphorescence that pulsed like a heartbeat too slow for any living thing he knew. For a moment he simply stared, certain this was a dream dissolving at the edges, the kind where you knew you were dreaming but couldn't claw your way back to waking.
Then the pain arrived, and the dream theory collapsed.
It came in a wave from his chest, sharp and deep, as though someone had driven a fist through his ribs and left it there. He gasped, and the gasp turned into a cough, and the cough brought the memories crashing down on him in jagged, incomplete pieces.
*Screeching tires.*
*A horn, too close, too loud.*
*Someone's face—an old man, mouth open in a scream, eyes wide with a horror that wasn't for himself.*
*The feeling of being lifted, weightless, before the world…
