The Mystery of the Life Force Triggered by Extreme Heat

The term "sweltering heat" is too mild.
Any words I use to describe that event I experienced in the summer of 2022 sound cliché.
The heat haze rising from the asphalt distorted my vision, giving me the illusion that the world itself was melting away.
On that ordinary summer afternoon, my life steered in an unimaginable direction in the blink of an eye.
Was it an illusion conjured by the intense heat, or was it a strange and vivid reality triggered by the "life force" sleeping deep within me?
Even now, I do not know the answer.
However, it is an undeniable fact that the events of that summer day changed me to my core.

✅ I was suddenly standing in Shibuya

I opened my eyes with a start.
I instinctively blinked several times against the sunlight that seemed to burn my retinas.
And what met my eyes when I opened them again was a landscape I did not recognize at all.

Just a few seconds ago, I should have been in the small seaside town in Akita where I was born and raised.
It was summer vacation, and I was on my way to the local convenience store to buy ice cream, wearing nothing but a tank top as usual.
The scorching sun, the lukewarm breeze carrying the scent of the tide, the cries of black-tailed gulls in the distance.
That was my entire world.
The memory just before arriving here was the fisherman from next door calling out, "It's hot, isn't it?" with his sun-tanned face.
My consciousness faded from the extreme heat, I felt dizzy, and I closed my eyes tightly.
And then, I opened them.

I was in the middle of a metropolis with towering skyscrapers, a place I had only ever seen on television or in magazines.
The scramble crossing, giant digital signage, and a wave of people surging like a flood.
Languages other than Japanese were flying about, and people of various skin and hair colors were walking past me at a brisk pace.
Shibuya. I understood that intuitively.

For a while, I couldn't move a single step from that spot.
I couldn't grasp what was happening at all.
Was I dreaming?
However, the vivid sensation of sweat running down my cheeks, the roar of the city shaking my eardrums, and the suffocating smell of mixed exhaust fumes and perfume relentlessly forced me to realize that this was reality.
It was the smell of the city itself, nothing like the briny scent of the Akita coast.
I took two or three tentative steps and inhaled deeply as if to verify the air.
Without a doubt, this was not the world I knew.
Someone gently tapped my shoulder as I stood there, stunned.

✅ She knew me and called me here

When I turned around, a woman was standing there.
She was perhaps a little older than me.
Her white dress stood out strangely in the hustle and bustle of the city.
She looked straight at me with eyes filled with relief and conviction, as if she had been searching for me all along.
Before I could say anything, she spoke quietly.

"Excuse me, you came from XX Town in Akita, didn't you..."

Those words hit my confused head like a hammer.
The name of my town.
How did this stranger know it? It couldn't be a mere coincidence.
There was no hesitation in her tone.

"How..." My voice, which I finally managed to squeeze out, was raspier than I expected.
She didn't answer my question, just smiled gently.
That smile gave the impression of someone who knew all the answers.

"It's okay. It's no wonder you're surprised. But you were the person who was supposed to come here."
"The person who was supposed to come? What do you mean? What is this..."
"I called you here."

She said that and gently grabbed my arm.
At that moment, strangely, I felt the confusion and fear that had been dominating me fade away like a receding tide.
Her body heat was transmitted to me, as if it were solid proof that I existed here.
She knows me.
And she probably knows the reason for this insane phenomenon.
I have no idea what is happening or what will happen next.
However, if I follow this person, I might find the answer.
That was the moment my life opened a new chapter in a completely unexpected way.

✅ My life is changing, the future has shifted

Guided by her, I began a new life in the city.
It was a world completely different from the eighteen years I had spent in the seaside town in Akita.
The reason she "called" me was not immediately revealed.
She simply let me have various experiences and introduced me to many people.
A world I had never known, values I had never even tried to understand, flowed into me like a torrent.

At first, I was just bewildered.
However, as the days went by, I began to notice new possibilities sleeping within me.
In Akita, I had vaguely thought I would just take over my parents' business, but now I strongly desired to carve out my own future.
On that sweltering day, I hadn't just physically moved locations.
It might have been a leap of the soul, jumping from a predetermined future to a future where infinite possibilities spread out.

In the end, I still haven't received a clear answer as to who she was or what that phenomenon was.
Sometimes, she would look into the distance with eyes I didn't recognize and mutter, "The future is not singular. The power of a person's desire to 'live' can even warp space-time."

Perhaps the intense heat of that summer day amplified the craving deep in my heart to "go somewhere other than here," becoming the trigger that created a tear in space-time.
And perhaps she was an embodiment of myself from a different future, or of my own potential.

Nothing is certain.
But I am now living hard in this city as a person completely different from who I was that day.
In a sudden moment, I sometimes see the sparkle of the Akita sea from that day beyond the asphalt heat haze.
Is that nostalgia for the past, or an afterimage of another future I didn't choose?
Life is a fork in the road with countless options, and we are always choosing a path to walk.
Then, where does the version of me that should have existed on the path I didn't choose disappear to?
Or perhaps, somewhere, is he still looking up at the sky just like me?

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