Gelatin Evacuation Drill

There are people in this world whose strange posture makes your own semicircular canals feel unreliable just by looking at them.
My uncle was exactly that. He always walked with his back slightly hunched and his neck thrust diagonally forward. It was as if he were constantly chasing after invisible coins rolling a few meters ahead of him.

"You see, humans are creatures that lose the ability to stand straight the moment they lose sight of the horizon."

One rainy afternoon, while flipping through the pages of an old paperback in the living room, my uncle suddenly said that.

"The horizon?"

"Yes. Our eyes unconsciously search for the 'flattest line' in the world and use it as a reference to maintain our sense of balance. However, when it rains like this and the boundary between the sky and the ground becomes blurred, the world's level goes haywire. That's why my body tilts a little, trying to adjust to a world that has gone mad."

The way he tried to blame a simple slouch on a global cataclysm was, as always, a formidable piece of sophistry.
Outside, the relentless rain had been falling since yesterday. Looking out the window, the ridge of the distant hills that should have been visible was completely hidden behind thick rain clouds and water vapor.
Indeed, there wasn't a single 'reliable straight line' in the city today.

"So, how do you fix that crazy sensation?"

When I asked, my uncle took a very colorful little bag out of his pocket. What came out was a cola-flavored gummy that also looked strangely hard.

"You take this, and like this, you put it on the right side of your back teeth—no, maybe the left side is better. Anyway, you shift it to one side and chew it slowly."

My uncle popped the gummy into his mouth and chewed with a dead-serious expression for a while.

"The elasticity of gelatin is interesting. Every time you bite down, the vibrations let you clearly feel where your own skull is distorted. In other words, this is like an evacuation drill to create a 'correct reference point' inside your own body in place of the lost horizon."

Half-amazed, I picked up a translucent brown lump from the bag my uncle offered. When I put it in my mouth, it had a firm resistance that I wouldn't expect from any modern candy. Every time I moved my jaw, the unevenness of my own bite resonated to the core of my head.
Indeed, no matter how much the world might be soggy with rain and losing its contours, this little lump of gelatin stubbornly insisted on its own hardness.

"Now, once the evacuation drill is over, why don't we go take a look at that crazy world outside?"

My uncle said this and picked up the vinyl umbrella that had been leaning against the entrance.

Seeing that umbrella, I almost cried out. Perhaps because some of its ribs were broken, when my uncle opened it, only the vinyl on the right side hung loosely, giving it a pathetic, asymmetrical shape that looked like a dog with drooping ears.

"Uncle. That umbrella is completely distorted. It's not even a question of being level."

"Oh, you're right. But this is also a kind of horizon. A very personal and slightly unreliable horizon of my own."

My uncle tilted the distorted umbrella at an angle and walked out into the rain in that same strange posture, with his neck thrust slightly forward.
Watching his strange silhouette, which wasn't keeping parallel to anything in the world, I bit down hard once more on the hard core of the gummy remaining in my mouth.

I participated in the project!
I only used the three assigned topics.

[Three-Topic Dialogue Story] [Umbrella, Gummy, Horizon]
Project: Haratokei-san