Chapter 1
You saw the trash first.
It was a mountain, crumbling stone and dented cans, with broken shards of glass, wood, and stone haphazardly scattered within the mixture. It was rotting, too, you realized a second later. Flies were buzzing around, and there was a thick stench of rot that was now clinging to your skin.
You should have been confused, as you distinctly remember going to bed on a twin-sized mattress in your university dorm and not in a landfill. And it should have been overwhelming—to be around such filth—but for some reason, you aren’t bothered. No, you’re not sure if you could even begin to think about how you got yourself in this situation right now, because all you’re able to do is fixate on a single glass container buried in the mountain of junk, the surface of which is smeared with dirt.
It’s filled with something that’s sickly green and might have resembled vegetables once. It’s disgusting. You reach out for it.
Your hand breaks through the air, closing the distance. Hunger, instinct, something primal within you that you could not name—something stronger than disgust, stronger even than shame to be seen reaching out so desperately, compelled you to grab it.
And when your fingers curl around the dirty, cold glass, you run.
You focus on putting one foot after the other. All you can see is the uneven ground beneath you. It’s only when you finally reach the crumbling frame of a tiny house, little more than a shack held together by splintered wood, that you finally skid to a stop.
Immediately after, you collapse, crumpling to the ground. Your breath is ragged, your body heavy and spent, knees scraping against the jagged rocks in the dirt.
For the first time since you opened your eyes to this nightmare, you look up. The sky is cloudy.
But, it was the middle of June, wasn’t it? And you’re sure the weather forecast predicted “clear skies and rainbows” for at least a week. Speaking of which, where in the ever-loving hell were you—
A girl calls out to you. She uses a name you don’t recognize.
You twist your body and try to stand, but your legs protest the effort. Each attempt to move is met with a searing throbbing, and by the time you stop shifting, a pair of bright blue eyes is pinned on your figure.
She calls out to you again, the unfamiliar name falling from her tongue.
“You okay?”
She’s a child, you realize.
Messy pink hair tied up in a high ponytail and a face caked with dust. She wears an oversized tank top and shorts, clothes that had seen better days, and her tiny frame makes you question if she could be older than six. She’s somewhat cute, like all children are.
At your lack of response, she opts to lay down next to you on the ground, her small body sprawling itself on the dirt—as though this were all perfectly normal, as though the filth and rot around meant nothing.
Closer to you now, she repeats herself.
“Hey, you okay?”
Your mouth moves faster than your head, and before you can question her on where in the world you were, or why you were surrounded by tons and tons of trash, words are already tumbling out of your mouth.
“I…I’m not okay. My feet hurt. I think they’re blistered.”
She blinks at you, wholly unimpressed, then turns away.
“Then you’ll be fine. Don’t scare me like that.”
Probably deciding it wasn’t worth her time to console you anymore, she stands up with a sigh and extends a small, bony hand toward you. You stare at it blankly. A part of your brain screams to not trust strangers, even if they appeared to be harmless six-year-old girls, and another part of your brain was telling you that you were stuck in a landfill with nowhere else to go and no one to rely on except for a suspiciously-shaped kid.
You take her hand, your fingers brushing against her calloused palm, letting her lead you into the dilapidated house.
It takes half an hour of staring at the dark paneled walls for your new roommate to look at you with squinted eyes.
It takes you another twenty minutes to conclude that you were absolutely fucked—that this was definitely not your body, mostly because you were most definitely not a scrawny six-year-old, nor did you live with equally scrawny six-year-old girls with pink hair. No, you were a literature student at your university who had just pulled an all-nighter before ending up in this hellhole for god’s sake.
Unfortunately, pink hair and blue eyes make for defining features, and when you force yourself to look over to your roommate, your mind has all but confirmed the worst-case scenario.
“Machi?” Please don’t respond. Please don’t look up in recognition. Please don’t–
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Machi…” you repeat, this time slower. The name is foreign on your tongue. Your stomach twists. Her wide eyes continue to stare at you.
“What?”
You don't respond right away, instead letting your eyes drift around the room. Fuck, your mind was racing. The shack was somehow worse on the inside. The walls are patched with mismatched scraps of wood hastily put together, and fabric covers the remaining gaps of the house.
The ‘floor’ beneath you is the dirt, and in the right corner, there is a bundle of cloth that looks to be a makeshift bed. Truly, a marvel of interior design. And on the floor was your ugly green mixture, trapped in a glass jar. The FDA would cry tears if they laid their eyes upon that.
You take a deep breath. It takes you a long moment before you gather your thoughts and speak again. Your voice lowers when you speak this time.
“Where… where are we?”
Machi frowns, tilting her head as though you’ve asked the most obvious question in the world.
“Home,” she says simply.
“No,” you blurt out.
“I mean—where do we live?” A city of trash printed with black ink on white pages appears in your mind. “Meteor City,” is printed in neat Wildwords font next to it.
Her frown deepens, and she crosses her arms over her chest.
“You’re acting really weird, you know that?”
You press your hands to your temples, trying to steady your breathing again. Your mind is racing. This was a dream, right? You pinch your cheek. The stinging pain that quickly spreads on your face mocks you.
You were you, weren’t you? You couldn’t actually be stuck in the body of a malnourished child who didn’t even appear in the manga. No, you were on your phone mindlessly scrolling. You were supposed to be walking to your literature lecture. You were running. You were starving.
But before you can say anything else, Machi walks over to the table and grabs the jar, holding it out to you.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” she asks, her tone is soft. “Eat something already.”
The stench hits you before the jar even reaches your hands. You recoil, shaking your head violently.
“I’m not eating that.”
Machi narrows her eyes at you, her voice sharp now. “Then why’d you bring it back?”
The words sting more than you expect. You can’t tell if it’s guilt or the growing dread settling in your chest.
“I don’t know,” you whisper, more to yourself than to her. “I don’t know what’s happening.”
She sighs, setting the jar back on the table with a thud. “You really are acting weird,” she mutters. “Maybe you hit your head or something.”
The words barely register. Your mind is too preoccupied with the unraveling threads of logic, the growing certainty that this body—this life—is not your own.
“Machi,” you say again, your voice barely audible. “What’s my name?”
She looks at you like you’ve finally lost it.
“What kind of question is that?”
Still, incredulously, she says your name. It feels like a punch to the gut, because it's not your name.
All at once, you realize three things: this is not your body. This is not your life. This is not you.
You take a seat on the floor and curl up into yourself. Faintly, you think you hear Machi say something to you, but you’re out before your mind can fully understand her words.
Your eyes greet the ceiling when you awake, a patchwork of rotting wood and haphazardly nailed planks. The pungent smell of damp earth and mildew surrounds you, grounding you in this unsettling reality. For a moment, you wonder if you developed a hobby of staring at rotting wood.
Your peace doesn’t last long. Memories crash into you like a tide: you were in Meteor City, right? Just…just to be sure, you should go outside. No—you have to go outside—to confirm with your own eyes that you’re not just making this entire thing up. The rational part of your brain screams: you already know the truth: trash. Junk. Endless heaps of discarded remnants, the lifeblood of this forsaken place, that you would see. You know it’s there, waiting, yet something compels you to see it for yourself once more.
With trembling fingers, you raise a hand to your face. The touch stings as your fingertips graze the delicate skin beneath your eyes, and you wince. Dried salt clings to your cheeks, and the sensation is enough to confirm what you’d already suspected. You’ve been crying. Whether it was a sob or silent tears spilling while your mind retreated into unconsciousness, you don’t know. You only know of the evidence that lingers, the dried stains that mar your face.
Then, you feel it: a weight on your chest, soft and warm. Your head tilts forward, a cascade of pink enters your line of sight. Machi is sprawled across you, her tiny frame rising and falling with steady breaths. One arm clings loosely around your shoulder, as though she had fallen asleep mid-conversation. Her expression, framed by dust-smudged cheeks and stray strands of her tangled hair, is serene in a way that feels wholly out of place.
You… were on a bed. Machi must have carried you to the mattress after you passed out.
She shifts slightly, muttering incoherently in her sleep. Her tiny hand curls into the fabric of your shirt as though seeking stability in her dreams. You don’t want to move. You can’t. But you must. You confirm this cursed city with your own eyes.
With a careful touch, you lift her hand and shift her slight frame off you, laying her back down on the bed. She stirs but doesn’t wake, her small body curling instinctively into the warmth you leave behind. The sight of her like this, fragile and unguarded, leaves a lump in your throat, but you shove the feeling down. You don’t have time for sentimentality, especially for someone who wasn’t even real until a few hours ago.
Pushing yourself upright, you brace against the splintering edge of the bed. The room spins momentarily as your feet hit the ground, a dull, throbbing ache radiating through your legs. Each step sends sharp, stinging reminders of the blisters that coat your soles, raw and unforgiving.
You inhale slowly, drawing air that feels heavy and rancid into your lungs. It doesn’t help. The burn in your chest doesn’t abate, but you force yourself onward.
Your first step is slow, agonizing. The second is no better, but you grit your teeth and press forward, one step after another, ignoring the way your knees threaten to buckle. The world beyond the room is no kinder than the one within it, but you can't let that stop you. You have to keep moving.
The door creaks loudly as you push it open, the sound splitting the quiet and sending a shiver down your spine. For a moment, you glance back at Machi, still sleeping soundly on the makeshift bed. Then, swallowing your doubt, you step out the door.