When he woke up, the first thing he registered was the smell.
Disinfectant. And underlying it, the somewhat cloying air of a foreign land. A scent unlike anything in Japan—a mix of humidity, dust, and something indefinable—filled Takanori’s nasal passages. That smell slowly dragged his consciousness back to reality. As if floating up from the bottom of a deep ocean, his senses returned one by one. First smell, then hearing, and finally sight. The return of those senses gradually gave him the tangible realization that he was alive.
The ceiling was white. A fluorescent light flickered erratically overhead, casting strange shadows across his blurred field of vision. The light had that inorganic quality unique to hospitals, reminding him starkly of reality. An IV tube was connected to his right arm, while his left was wrapped in bandages. His entire body throbbed with pain. His chest in particular gave off a dull, aching thrum every time he took a breath. A few ribs were likely broken. He had not yet realized that, beyond the fractures, severe burn scars covered his whole body. After a long, grueling battle, his body seemed to finally be resting.
Where am I?
Desperate to grasp his situation, he forced his mind to focus. His head remained foggy, however, and his thoughts refused to coalesce. He blinked slowly over and over, trying to bring his surroundings into focus.
Fragments of memory resurfaced. The mall’s ceiling. That vast, open atrium. The searing heat of the flames. The screams of people fleeing in terror. A mother clutching her child. An elderly person in a wheelchair. Everything had been total chaos. That scene had been a living hell. And in the middle of it all, he—
“Akina! Head for the exit first! I’ll definitely come back!”
That was right. He had let Akina escape ahead of him. He had turned back into the blazing inferno to retrieve the bag she had dropped. At first, she had refused to let go of his hand. But he had pushed her outward and plunged back into the fire. Her desperate screams still echoed in the depths of his ears.
He had found the bag. He knew it held her cherished wallet and passport. But immediately after that, something crashed down from above. A heavy steel beam struck him hard across the back. Under the force of that impact, his consciousness had slipped away. The pain of that moment remained crystal clear in his memory.
Takanori slowly turned his head to survey the room. A private hospital room. Outside the window stretched an unfamiliar cityscape—a blend of towering skyscrapers interspersed with older, traditional neighborhood buildings. The characters written on the signboards were not Japanese. Nor were they Latin script. They were rounded characters—Thai, perhaps? As his eyes traced the letters, the reality set in: he was in a land far, far away from home.
“Have you regained consciousness?”
It was English. Standing at the doorway was a Southeast Asian nurse. Looking at him in shock, she immediately turned and ran off, calling out to someone. Her footsteps echoed down the hallway, followed soon by the approach of another set of strides. Her flustered reaction told him everything about how dire his condition must have been.
A few minutes later, a doctor rushed in. A man in a white coat checked Takanori’s pupils, listened to his heartbeat, and jotted notes on a medical chart. But they couldn’t communicate. Anxiety squeezed Takanori’s chest. He tried desperately to squeeze out a voice, but his throat was parched dry, producing nothing intelligible. The doctor attempted to explain something to him, but the words were completely incomprehensible.
“…Is my wife safe?”
He asked in Japanese, his voice raspy and hoarse. The doctor tilted his head in confusion and motioned for the nurse to call an interpreter. The expression on the doctor’s face made it clear he didn’t understand. Takanori bit his lip in frustration at his inability to make himself heard.
Several hours later, the situation was explained to him through an interpreter—a young woman fluent in Japanese. Choosing her words with great care, she relayed the facts to Takanori. Her tone was gentle, yet it carried an undeniable reality.
“You were brought here roughly four months ago after a shopping mall fire. Since you had no identification, you’ve been undergoing treatment in the ICU this whole time. It’s truly a miracle you survived.”
It took Takanori a moment to process the weight of her words. Four months. Had he really been asleep for four whole months? In that time, the seasons had shifted. Back in Japan, late autumn would be turning into winter. His head spun in complete confusion.
“…What about a Japanese woman? Was a Japanese woman caught in the fire safe?”
The interpreter passed the question to the doctor. The doctor flipped through the chart, checking the records as his finger glided across the documents.
“Several Japanese women survived. We don’t have their names… and since your identity was unknown at the time, we don’t have detailed records on them.”
Takanori exhaled deeply. Though the breath brought a sharp stab of pain, his heart felt a fraction lighter. Akina was alive. That single fact alone eased the physical agony throughout his body. Gazing up at the ceiling, he offered a silent prayer of thanks.
Yet immediately after, a new question crept into his mind. If he had been classified as unidentified, it meant no one knew he was alive. Akina might think he was dead. The agonizing possibility made his chest tighten all over again.
Takanori looked out the window. The setting sun of an unfamiliar city poured an orange glow into the room. Within that light, he felt the deep complexity of his predicament. From this moment on, his life was going to change irrevocably. The heavy weight of that foreboding settled deep within his heart.