The two of us

Chapter 4

Heavy.

That's the word Michikatsu first thought of as he barely gained control of his consciousness.

It's heavy and... I'm falling?

Michikatsu inhaled abruptly, gasping in the air desperately with his mouth gaping open, catching his breath as if he had just finished running a race. The atmosphere is strange, his senses were disturbed by an unknown control of distortion. Everything is muddled. His body felt so heavy like he was dropped down lifelessly to the ground.

His memory was hazy, but as Michikatsu rested himself for a short while, his vision started to clear and he could recall his previous action.

I jumped to the portal and lived?

Michikatsu is still breathing heavily, every inch of his muscles refused to move. He blinked rapidly, trying to remove the blur slowly decreasing in his view. Then... everything darkened.

His mind and body couldn't handle it.

~

Michikatsu didn't know how long he was asleep. But the surprising temperature woke him up. Michikatsu opened his eyes and then moved his limbs. The first thing he saw is a mattress, then a wooden table and a chair. Michikatsu's aching body groaned as if he had woken up from centuries of slumber.

Despite the heaviness and a new change of reality, Michikatsu still stood up. And when he did, his knees wobbled and fell once again.

"What the hell?" Michikatsu is utterly confused. "The gravity is..."

It's heavy. The gravity here is slightly different from Mars, but this is quite new and strange. Michikatsu ignored it, focusing on himself, opting to stand up with great effort. The portal must've lost his sense of balance for a short while. However, after a few tries, Michikatsu managed. He leaned on a wall, placing his weight on it as a guide to gather his balance, and sighed.

Michikatsu then studies his strange environment.

There are things he is familiar with, but there are some that are odd-looking. Michikatsu tries to recall where he had seen some of these items before. When suddenly, a wooden door beside him opened.

If Michikatsu is stunned seeing these odd-looking items, well, he is surprised a hundredfold seeing a teenager that looks exactly like him.

As expected, the teenager immediately spotted the man and had his dark purple eyes blown wide, stumbling backward in shock. Meanwhile, the man remained leaning against the wall, not knowing what to do, also in shock. And for a long while, the two simply stared at each other in silence until––

"What the fuck!?" The two exclaimed simultaneously.

Michikatsu blinked, their voices similar yet the only difference was the deeper and lighter tone. His voice is obviously the deeper one, however, this teenager before him emits the same sound albeit higher.

The teenager was immensely confused and terrified as he eyed the man. "Who the fuck are you?" He shook his head, deciding to ask a better question. "No, no... How did you get inside?"

The man did not answer right away, rather, he returned with a question of his own. "W-Where the hell am I?"

"I ask you first!" The teenager shouted, still eyeing the man with nervousness.

Strangely, this was enough to speculate the situation correctly as the man put two and two together. The portal his brother, Yoriichi, had built was unexpectedly successful. However, Michikatsu doesn't know if it was intentional. Either way, the portal he recklessly entered was a passageway to a world different from his own. A world in which it does not only visit the past but in a whole different dimension or universe.