The land slowly changed—grass faded into stone, and the air grew colder. Broken structures began to appear around us, half-buried under time. Cracked roads. Fallen towers. Symbols I didn’t recognize, yet felt strangely familiar.

The man stopped.

“These ruins are over two thousand years old,” he said.

I looked around. “Who built them?”

He hesitated for a moment.

Then spoke a name.

“Tokyo. Japan.”

The world tilted.

“…What?”

My heart skipped. My breath caught in my throat. That name wasn’t supposed to exist here. It belonged to my world. My time. My reality.

“That’s impossible,” I whispered.

He didn’t argue.

We continued walking through the ruins. I saw shapes that looked like roads, rail lines twisted into rusted skeletons. Buildings collapsed into memories of glass and steel.

My memories.

“You’re not from this time,” he said calmly.

I stopped.

“What did you say?”

He turned to face me.

“You didn’t come from another world,” he continued. “You came from another era.”

My mind refused to process it.

“You’re from the past,” he said. “From a world that already ended here.”

My thoughts scattered. Everything blurred—my room, my mother, school, the desert, the town. None of it connected anymore.

“So that’s why,” he added quietly.

“That’s why destiny brought you here.”

My head started to ache.

No… not ache—collapse.

If this world was my future…

If my world became this…

Then what was real anymore?

I clutched my head, trying to breathe, trying to think, trying to stay myself.

“Stop…” I muttered. “Stop saying things that don’t make sense…”

The man watched me in silence.

My thoughts shattered into one final question.

“…Who are you?”

He didn’t answer immediately.

But for the first time—

He looked at me like someone who had been waiting for that question for a very long time.