Stranger From a Strange Land (canceled)

Chapter I, Part 1: The world as I know it

My name is Daisuke Tsuchiya. I'm an office worker at a large tech company. My day mainly consists of sending e-mails and helping people fix their broken or malfunctioning devices, because that's what a tech support worker does. This is not the life I wanted. My ultimate dream was to become a parkour instructor at some big-shot company so I could travel all around the world teaching people how to do the closest thing to flying without wings a human can get to. Parkour is my passion, and I often look up at the rooftops on the way home and fantasize about jumping from one to the other, kinda like Spiderman, just without webs.
Truth be told, I was the top student back in my days of attending school, but I was never really interested in that, it never concerned my dream. At one point I taught parkour for a while, even coming to be called the best local teacher around, but the company got cocky and put their prices too high. As a result, people stopped coming because they couldn't afford it, and the company went out of business. I'd tried to find somewhere else after that, but nothing arose. I found myself running out of money and had to choose a job, even if it wasn't what I had hoped for. That brings us to present day. Me, sitting behind my boring desk, in a boring office building, doing a boring job to earn money so I can pay rent on my boring apartment. It's the complete opposite of what I wanted, and now after three years of working here, I still haven't gotten anywhere. In fact it just feels like it's no longer possible to chase dreams like that. It just seems unrealistic, childish even.

But today... Today just seems worse in a way. Things don't feel right and everything is going wrong. It's almost as if the world is trying to get me, and there's this feel of impending doom looming over my daily routine and it's giving me a monstrous headache. I lean back in my chair, staring at the ceiling. Why does today just feel so... Off? It's hard to explain. It feels like the universal balance has been tipped. My vision gets a bit blurry, and it looks like everything starts turning. I'm dizzy, I have a headache and I am having an incredibly bad day. While wondering what could be wrong, I break out into a big, loud yawn that could give a wolf's howl a run for it's money. Ah, that must be it, I'm just incredibly tired. Come to think of it, I did spend the whole night helping old people figure out how to turn Bluetooth on. It makes sense that I'd be robbed of sleep. I should turn in for the day, I'm already working crazy overtime shifts, so a day off is the least they could do.

I pack my desk up for the day, thankful that I was able to negotiate a day off. "Already turning in, Deisuke?" Asks my coworker. "Yeah, been pretty tired lately so I'm just going to take a nap for the day" I say. "And here I thought you didn't need sleep" he says, getting back to work. I leave the building, ready to go and take a nice, long nap.

The sky is clouded, and it looks like it's about to rain. Crap, I don't have an umbrella. I quickly start running to avoid the rain since I don't want to have to call in sick after I asked for a day off. Thankfully, I make it back to my apartment just as the first drops begin falling. As I close my door and turn my light on, it begins falling harder. Just in time, I think to myself. I'm so tired that I could go into hibernation for the month, but everyone knows you can't sleep without eating first. I quickly make a jam sandwich before I go to sleep, and quietly eat it. It's days like this when you realise just how lonely it can get in the modern world. I haven't had any recent love interests, I'd given up on that long ago, so the apartment can get pretty quiet and lonely at times. I finish eating my sandwich, and turn the light off to go to sleep. When I get onto bed, I fall asleep almost immediately, as if I'd had some sort of eternal sleep spell caster over me. Of course, that's not actually the case, everyone knows that things like that are fairytale gibberish, like something out of an isekai anime. Come to think of it, going to another world wouldn't be so bad, especially if I meant I could leave this boring life behind...