His thought broke off instantly, and so did the sounds around him.
It was quiet.
Very quiet.
Impossibly quiet!
If he had to give an example, he would say he’d been buried alive, packed in so tightly that he could neither breathe nor open his eyes.
But unlike in the example, he could both breathe and open his eyes.
Plink!
Suddenly the deep silence was broken by the sound of a drop falling into a large pool, a sound sharp and beautiful, one that struck him out of the darkness behind his closed eyes.
The graceful sound rose into an echo.
He firmly resolved to part his eyelids, to bare his eyes and understand what on earth had happened.
When he opened them, he saw what was worse than heaven and hell — nothing.
He saw nothing.
For a moment he thought he had fallen into oblivion, which threw him into shock.
But the shock subsided once he started to feel his body: this was no projection of consciousness, but real physical flesh, which naturally refuted the idea of oblivion.
Immediately he tried to stand, using his right hand for support, and pushed himself up heavily through the pitch dark.
He felt a faint, even sweet pain in his left knee; he must have come down squarely on his left leg when he fell.
Plink!
Again came the graceful sound of a falling drop, only this time from an entirely different direction.
“Stalactites?” The thought came to him in an instant.
In karst caves, stalactites grow, and calcareous water drips from them.
If he ever grew truly thirsty, this water would be the last option on his list.
“But how did I end up in a cave…”
As he thought this, he caught a smell, not sharp but unpleasant, of standing water, which only cemented the theory of a karst cave.
Anyone would have understood his current goal — to escape this place as quickly as possible.
“But first, I need to understand one thing,” he thought, now fully on his feet.
“Did I transmigrate?
But by the feel of it, the body is mine, and my student uniform is on it, even my watch is where it should be, my phone…”
In such darkness, finding his phone was like donning a crown of thorns, groping by touch across the cave’s jagged contours.
“Even if it somehow were here, searching for it would be irrational.”
He neither denied the theory that he had crossed into another world nor endorsed it.
He needed more information.
But for now, he just needed to move and find a way out.
At last he took a step, then another, and so he kept on, treading carefully.
Whenever he put his weight on the left leg, the sweet pain turned into a sharp, pulling one, which brought a certain discomfort.
On his ninth or tenth step, he trod into something wet.
Paying it no mind, he took his next step further to the right.
He couldn’t see where he walked; he didn’t know where he walked.
He could only feel and hear, which at least helped, if only a little.
Somewhere around his fifteenth to nineteenth step, his left foot caught on something large, and he pitched forward.
Trying to rise, he planted his right hand out past his head and ran into a large, sharp object.
“A stalagmite?!”
Had he fallen even a little farther, his head would have become a durability test for the spike.
“Damn…”
He rose with surgical precision and moved slower still.
Now he moved only by touch, keeping his hand to the horribly jagged walls of the cave.
But little by little, nature took its toll; he grew colder and colder.
The base of his left thumb had started to prickle sharply.
He stopped and brought both hands up to his face, but held them so that his left, slightly scratched and dirty, wouldn’t foul his face.
And he let the air out of his mouth.
White vapor passed through the gaps between fingers he had thought tightly folded.
“Rather fitting.”
He walked on.
No thought of stopping pursued him; he’d already gone more than forty steps, yet there was no light, not one sign of a way out.
It didn’t frighten him.
Even if he had to walk hundreds of steps, if in the end he’d make it out, then he would do it.
Cold vapor spilled from his mouth as he emptied his lungs.
The sounds of falling drops grew more numerous, coming from every side, so that he moved more carefully still.
All this while he walked as though down a long tunnel, strange for a cave; an ordinary karst cave would have been utterly chaotic.
Though he couldn’t say for certain.
He was no geologist.
“No light, no eyes…
no door…” he whispered.
“Blind, and the water keeps the time…”
He didn’t know why he was whispering a verse, whether it was the mind defending itself against the surroundings, or the plainest boredom.
There was no answer.
“And ev—” Before he could finish the line, his foot caught a jutting stone.
Barely keeping his balance, he took to feeling the floor with his feet before trusting his weight to a step.
“And every step — a question with no echo…” he continued, even knowing the verse might well be the cause of his stumbling.
“And a breath of white…”
Nor did he know whether he’d invented the verse or heard it somewhere.
“…that shouldn’t still be warm.”
On and on he walked, and walked, until he’d lost all count of his steps.
The sounds of falling drops kept swelling.
There it is!
he cried out, deep inside.
He started toward that sound as it grew louder and louder.
Suddenly he stepped knee-deep into freezing water, and it nearly took him down with it.
But he caught his balance and pressed on steadily toward the sound, the icy water seeping into his shoes, dragging at his legs.
He didn’t know what waited ahead; he wasn’t sure of anything, but he kept going, and even when a wall rose up before him, he felt his way around it, as though it were only a passing obstacle.
“Agh—!”
The next instant his hand slipped from the stone wall, and an unbearable burning tore across his palm; there came a sharp sound of liquid running down, trickling into the water right beneath his feet.
Now he could neither close his left hand nor move it freely.
Even a stir of air against it brought a terrible pain, as if cold water were being poured into the wound.
He clenched his teeth hard and looked to where the wall broke off.
And instantly he threw his hands over his eyes and turned away, but next to the headlights of that train, this was a light of hope.
Narrowing his eyes, he turned back toward it, but what he saw was not what he’d wanted.
“A golden orb?”
And slowly he made his way toward that glowing golden orb.
It wasn’t only his wounded left hand that trembled now; his whole body shook.
The orb was barely five or six steps away, standing dead center between a stalactite and a stalagmite, as though it were a museum exhibit.
And it lit everything around it, out to some two or three meters.
He couldn’t help but be glad of that.
He came right up to that golden promise and took it in his right hand.
The orb looked like a pure, polished nugget of gold in the shape of a sphere, but on each cardinal side was what appeared to be an engraved circle, and through all four circles ran a single line, joining them together, one to the next.
He broke into a wide grin, looking down at his own personal lot.
Now only one problem remained to settle.
“Go back, or go forward…”
It was no mere choice; it was the thing that bound his fate.
And from the weight of that realization, a fierce burning rose in his chest, and a cold sweat broke out and ran down his face.
His breathing came ragged, and for all the loud sound of the falling drops, he could hear only his own heartbeat.
His gaze fell now on the road he’d come from, now on the way ahead.
His left palm screamed louder and louder, as though salt were being poured over it.
His mouth had gone almost completely dry, though more than half his body was soaked.
“Back…
or forward…”
Plink!
What broke into his chaotic deliberation was not a drop of calcareous water, but his own blood, trickling down.
He looked at the scarlet blood dissolving into the water, drew back his left hand, and struck himself hard across the cheek.
On his cheek there bloomed not only a pink flush from the blow, but a wide smear of blood.
Mingled with a jolt of what felt like electric pain through his palm.
It hurt, but it was needed.
He let out a deep breath, and his eyes stopped darting from side to side.
“I can’t afford such lapses.”
“What difference does it make which path I take, either way, both of them might have a way out.”
And so, without delay, he went forward.
Strangely, his steps came faster now, not slower, as though whatever had been binding them had let go.
After calmly walking another ten steps, he heard what sounded like a gunshot.
His body started to tremble, and not only from the cold.
Bits of stone rained down from walls that had seemed solid.
“So there’s no way back, then?” he whispered.
With that, he surged forward, while the roar only kept building.
A wall rose up before him, and he immediately started around it.
The way climbed upward, so that just running was hard.
Right behind him, a huge rock dropped from the cave’s ceiling, which meant he’d best pick up the pace.
Far ahead and above, an orange-yellow light grew clearer.
Caught up in staring at it, his right foot snagged on something, forcing him to catch his balance on his left leg, but the pain in his knee sent his whole body toppling into the water in the same instant.
It was so close now that he rose with resolve and, limping, started toward the light.
Only a couple of steps remained to the possible way out.
His breathing fell in with his steps.
His right hand caught the cave wall from the outside, the golden orb still held in it.
He was out.
Breathless, he dropped to his knees, throwing his right hand out for support.
When at last he’d caught his breath a little, he resolved to look at the world.
The orange-gold rays of the sun did not warm him, but they drowned out the golden light of the orb.
“Damn…
but why?…”
A hot liquid ran down both sides of his face, bringing discomfort even as it warmed the skin a little.
His expression was utterly blank and calm.
What he saw was no longer his world; he had not seen this world, had not heard this world, had not known this world.
He had been right, but could he…
could he live in this world by his own rules?…