The question surfaced before he even opened his eyes.
Not as a fully formed thought, but as a deep disturbance — a sense of displacement so intense that his body reacted before his mind could catch up. The ground was wrong. The air was wrong. The silence was not the silence he knew.
He took a deep breath.
The smell was the first sign that something was profoundly out of place. Old wood, dust, something rancid mixed with a faint metallic tang. It was not the smell of the room where he had gone to sleep. It was not the smell of the life he knew.
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was uneven, made of poorly fitted planks, cracked in places where gray morning light seeped through crooked beams. Some sections were darkened by time or an old fire. There were no lights. No fan. Nothing that made sense at first glance.
He tried to move — and pain exploded.
Instinctively, he raised a hand to his head, his fingers coming away warm and sticky. When he pulled his hand back, he saw dried blood mixed with fresh blood running down the side of his forehead. His vision blurred for a second, his stomach twisting.
"Shit…" he muttered, his own voice sounding strange in his ears.
It took several seconds before he managed to sit up. Every movement felt like a negotiation with his own body. When he finally did, he stayed still, breathing slowly, letting the nausea fade.
That was when his most recent memory returned with disturbing clarity.
He remembered the night before.
He remembered lying down as always. The familiar exhaustion — not physical, but mental. The kind that came from numbers, deadlines, endless spreadsheets. He was an accountant. Not brilliant, not ambitious — just competent enough to never draw much attention.
He remembered leaving a glass of water beside the bed.
It was an old habit. Drinking water as soon as he woke up, before even thinking. A small measure of control within a rigid routine.
Without looking, he reached to the side.
His fingers touched something cold, rough, irregular.
It wasn't glass.
He frowned and looked.
The object in his hand was a cracked coconut-shell gourd, yellowed by time and marked by heavy use. Inside it, only a damp residue at the bottom. No clean water. No clarity. Just dried remnants and a faint smell of stagnation.
He froze.
The glass wasn't there.
The room didn't exist.
His life wasn't there.
The shock came in waves, but not as panic. It was more like a heavy, almost clinical realization. Something had happened between the moment he closed his eyes and the moment he woke up here.
He struggled to his feet.
The hut was small. Too small to be comfortable, too large to be improvised without planning. The walls were made of reused wood, some planks still bearing old nail marks. The floor was packed earth, cold beneath his feet.
Everything there looked used.
Not abandoned — used.
He moved slowly through the space, touching the walls, examining the few scattered objects. A folded cloth that clearly served as a pillow. A corner where old ashes marked an improvised fire pit. Marks on the wall, made with charcoal, forming symbols and scratches he didn't consciously recognize, yet which stirred a strange sense of familiarity.
That was when something inside him shifted.
The memories that followed were not his.
Or rather — not only his.
Fragmented images began to overlap the memories of his life as an accountant. Streets he had never walked. A different sky. The constant smell of the sea. The clear understanding of an island — not as a hypothesis, but as fact.
He had been born there.
That certainty settled in without asking permission.
And yet, he didn't remember being born. He didn't remember childhood in that place. Only the idea that this world had always existed for someone who now shared space inside his mind.
The predecessor.
There was no name. No face. Only echoes.
He took a deep breath, trying to organize his thoughts.
Thirst interrupted him.
It was deep, almost painful. His mouth was dry, his tongue heavy. He looked again at the coconut gourd and felt his stomach churn. There was no clean water there. But there was enough moisture to suggest water had been there recently.
He stepped outside the hut.
The surroundings were just as strange as the interior. Improvised structures were scattered everywhere — wood, metal, fabric. Everything reused. Everything worn. The ground was uneven, marked by old footprints.
Farther ahead, between two crooked houses, he spotted a small improvised reservoir — a kind of gutter collecting water flowing down from higher ground. The water was murky, with visible particles drifting slowly within it.
He knew.
He knew the water would make him sick. That it could cause pain, fever, diarrhea. But he also knew that not drinking would be worse.
He filled the gourd carefully and drank slowly.
The taste was awful. Metallic, rancid, with an earthy undertone. Even so, he swallowed, grimacing as the liquid went down, lightly burning his throat.
"Just for today…" he muttered.
Back in the hut, he began to think like someone who was no longer just an accountant.
He needed security.
Not defense — he didn't have the means for that yet — but a warning. Something simple. Something that would wake him if someone approached while he slept.
Using bits of wire, cloth, and the coconut gourd itself, he improvised a crude sound trap. He tied the wire at the entrance of the hut, suspending the gourd so that if anyone passed through, it would fall to the ground, producing a dry, unmistakable sound.
It wasn't much.
But it was enough to buy a second chance.
When he finished, he sat on the ground with his back against the wall. His body ached. His mind was too full. He thought about the spreadsheet he never finished. The glass of water he never drank. The life that now seemed to belong to someone else.
And he reflected on the world that now surrounded him.
He still didn't know how to survive there. He didn't know who had tried to take him. He didn't know why he had woken up in that body, in that place, with those confused memories.
But one thing was clear.
He was no longer asleep.
And the world would not wait for him to understand everything before demanding its price.
He closed his eyes.
The blood on his forehead was already beginning to dry.
And that was the first day.