David opened his eyes. He looked around his surroundings and instead of his bedroom, saw an unfamiliar place. David stood in front of the gate of a massive palace. There was no one around as the entire area was empty with not a single person to be seen. At least that was what David thought until he spotted a man sitting next to a wall who seemed to have just woken up. The man wore ragged clothes which included a badly torn trench coat and a bloodied shirt underneath which he tried to cover up. The strange thing was that the damage and the blood on them seemed quite recent. He looked around and spotted David looking back at him. The man stood up and started to walk away but David ran towards him and called after him. “Excuse me, mister.”

The man stopped and looked back at David. As he got closer to the man, the clearer he could see his face. He had light skin which seemed rough and red which usually happens from being one too many fights. He was pretty tall and had a bigger build than David. Long, brown, and unkempt hair hung in front of his eyes, but David could make out the brown eyes behind it. He had a roughly cut beard that covered his face and hung down to his chest. Perhaps the strangest thing to David was that he looked foreign to David and not someone from the U.S.

“Umm, excuse me, sir.” David said politely, “But can you tell me where I am?”

The man looked at David and raised an eyebrow. “You’re in front of the Palace Museum kid.”

“What?” David said, stunned by the revelation. He had traveled halfway across the globe from New York to Beijing all from his bed.

As David started to wonder what was happening, the man was beginning to wonder more about David.

“Hey, kid.” He said. “Where are you from? And how did you get here?”

David looked up at him and realized something else. The man wasn’t speaking English, but David was still able to understand him.

“Well I was just in bed but suddenly appeared here,” David answered.

“Where do you live?” The man asked with even more curiosity as he realized that David was not speaking Mandarin or any other dialect in the country.

“New York.”

“What is that supposed to …” Before he could finish the sentence, a light shone on his face. The origin of the light was a security guard’s flashlight.

“Hey, what are you doing there?” The guard asked the man as he walked forward. “The museum is closed at this time.”

He saw the bad condition of the man’s clothes and thought of him as a beggar.

“Come on sir.” The guard said. “I’ll escort you outside.”

He moved forward and guided the man towards the exit. He did not complain at first but throughout the entire interaction he noticed that the guard made no mention of David and it seemed that he was completely invisible to him.

“What about the kid?” The man asked. “Back there.”

“What kid?” The guard replied as he looked back in confusion and saw no one. “You must have been imagining things, sir. Time for you to leave.”

As the man was getting further away from David, a strange force started pushing him towards the man as he was taken out of the gate, and it was shut behind him while David remained inside. He did not understand what was happening but then he started getting pushed more and he was about to hit the gate, but instead, he phased through it and on the other side stood the man, who looked at him and David looked back.

“Why are you following me?” The man said.

“I don’t know. It’s like there is a mysterious force keeping me close to you.” David said. “Who are you?”

“Come on.” The man said as he beckoned David to follow him. “Let’s talk about this over some food.”