It was a Tuesday afternoon—the kind of Tuesday that felt forgettable, the kind that blended into every other day.
At this hour, kids were in school, adults were at work, and those with different schedules were probably taking an afternoon nap.
That wasn't the case for Alex Reyes: twenty-six years old, unemployed, kissless virgin, and still living with his parents.
He sat lazily on a bench, his gaze fixed on the sky above him.
Recently, he had taken up jogging, hoping to avoid sinking completely into a sedentary lifestyle.
Right now, he was at a park on the far side of the city, nowhere near his parents' house—far enough that the odds of running into anyone he knew were basically zero.
As he caught his breath from running longer than expected, something down the path caught his eye.
A crowd had gathered around a tree, murmuring loudly amongst themselves.
From a distance, Alex ignored them. He wasn't the type to stick his nose into things that weren't his business. He prided himself on not being like those old women who seemed to develop superhuman eyesight and hearing just to spread gossip.
Still, his eyes kept drifting back to the crowd.
On one of those glances, he noticed something strange.
A woman walked straight past the entire group without so much as glancing at them, as if they didn't exist.
At first, Alex thought he had found a like-minded soul who hated gossip as much as he did.
"Gross…"
The word slipped from her lips as she passed directly in front of him, her face twisted in disgust.
Alex blinked twice, taken aback.
Sure, he knew he wasn't much to look at, but for her to ignore an entire crowd and single him out felt unnecessarily cruel.
Even stranger, she wasn't the only one. Other passersby ignored the group as well, like it simply wasn't there.
With his breathing steadier now, Alex decided to bite the bullet and see what was going on.
He approached cautiously, hoping it wasn't some family reunion or hobbyist gathering he'd stumbled into. But as he looked closer, the people were far too different to all be related, and that left only a couple possibilities.
Finally reaching the edge of the crowd, he still couldn't see what they were surrounding. Muttering quick apologies, he pushed his way through.
After squeezing past several people, he reached the center.
That's when he saw them.
Four bodies lay sprawled on the grass, blades stained dark red beneath them.
Three women and one man, all in their early twenties.
Their conditions were horrific. Their faces were disfigured beyond recognition, beaten into unrecognizable pulp.
The man's body was riddled with stabs and bruises—clear signs of a struggle.
One woman's face had been smashed into a tree so hard the trunk itself had cracked. The other women's deaths were no less gruesome.
Judging by the state of the bodies, they had been dead for hours.
But Alex froze.
How? He had run down this same path earlier and hadn't seen a single body. Even more unsettling, the crowd had only appeared after he sat down to rest.
And why did everyone else act like none of this existed? Corpses weren't something you could just ignore—not even Alex, who had practically made an art of ignoring people and problems.
A wave of dizziness washed over him. Not from the sight—he wasn't weak-minded. Years of bullying had desensitized him to gore after classmates had forced him to watch violent videos.
No, this was something else. His vision blurred. He blinked—
—and suddenly, everything was gone.
The crowd. The corpses. All of it.
The park was empty, silent, as if nothing had ever happened. Even the tree trunk, once cracked with one corpse having been smashed into it, looked even healthier than ever.
Rubbing his eyes, Alex looked around in disbelief.
Was I hallucinating? From exhaustion?
No. He couldn't accept that. It had been too vivid. Too real. He had bumped shoulders with people in the crowd. They had answered him when he asked to pass. Hallucinations didn't answer back.
Yet here he was. Alone.
"I need to go back…" he muttered, clutching his head against the lingering dizziness.
When he turned, two people were standing there.
"You! Who are you?" a sharp voice called.
Alex blinked at the elegant man addressing him. Mid-to-late twenties, dressed like a celebrity. His face, although definitely enough to be considered extremely good with some soft features that fitted an adult actor who was constantly cast to play young people, was contorted with anger and nervousness.
"Do you know him, Tristan?" asked the young woman clinging to his shoulder.
"Probably some stalker," Tristan scoffed, tilting her chin upward with practiced arrogance. "You're too beautiful for your own good. Men like him can't resist. Maybe he's a sleazy photographer after dirt on me. But don't worry, my dear—I'll protect you and our relationship no matter what."
"Oh, Tristan!" she blushed, looking away shyly.
"Coming here during our secret date… how despicable," he sneered, glaring back at Alex.
But Alex had no interest in whatever performance they were putting on. He turned and walked away.
"Ah, he's running!" Tristan shouted, taking a step forward as though to fight.
The woman clung tighter to his arm. "No, what if he hurts you? If you were injured and couldn't act anymore because of me, I'd never forgive myself!"
Tristan basked in her concern, clearly savoring the press of her chest against his arm more than the thought of fighting.
Alex kept walking until their voices faded away.
He was done. He'd go home, game, and forget this bizarre day.
But as soon as he left the park, things grew even stranger.
The people on the streets wore clothes that could only fit in the fashion sense of people living more than sixty years ago.
Alex swore this could've been the kind of clothes his late grandparents used in their youths.
As he walked down the streets he noticed how the family-run stores looked entirely different.
He distinctly remembered jogging past one with a pretty cool drawing of Goku from Dragon Ball Z on it, stylized and drawn to be cooking burgers with the store's logo next to him.
Now, the store wasn't there at all.
Alex sighed, blaming his bad memory and worse sense of direction.
A shame, really. He had been craving a burger to take home.
Alex eventually gave up after wandering the distant neighborhood for nearly half an hour in search of Burgers Goku—the family-run joint that looked like it sold the greasiest, dirtiest burgers in town.
From Alex's experience, those places always had the best food, not the fancy, picture-perfect restaurants.
With a heavy sigh, he finally turned to leave.
…
…
"Huh…?"
The world went black.
When his vision cleared, he was back at the same bench he'd rested on earlier, staring up at the same stretch of sky.
Panic prickled at his chest.
One moment he'd been blocks away, then—blackout. Now he was back at ground zero, the exact spot where all this weirdness had started.
This time, Alex didn't hesitate. He bolted from the park.
But after running far enough, it happened again. His vision flickered, his mind blanked—then he was back on the bench.
Even the occasional passerby in the park had started giving him wary glances, like he was some lunatic repeating the same routine.
Why do I always come back here?
Doing the excact same thing over and over and expecting a different result would be insane on his part. So, Alex decided to innovate.
Instead of walking, he'd take a bus. Genius. Pure genius.
He scanned the area for a stop and sat down, already reaching for his phone to check schedules—or maybe search the internet for "mysterious blackouts teleporting me back to a park bench."
Not that he had much faith in finding useful results. More likely, he'd discover he had "super eye cancer," "brain cancer," and twelve other oddly specific fatal conditions.
But before he could even unlock his phone, a shiny new-looking bus rolled up.
Perfect timing.
He stepped on, ignoring the driver's odd look. Alex already knew he wasn't exactly easy on the eyes—no need to rub it in.
Fishing out some bills from his pocket, he handed the driver the fare.
"What? Quit messing around!" the driver barked in a raspy tone. "I'm not giving you all my change!"
"Huh? Why not? The bills are fine," Alex muttered. Sure, they were a little scribbled on—change he'd gotten after buying water the other day and forgot to take out of his pockets—but plenty of places accepted them. Hell, the store he got them from had accepted them in the first place!
The driver only frowned harder and jabbed a finger at a paper taped to the side of the fare box.
Alex blinked.
The price listed was unbelievably low. So low, he was already trying to hand over several times the cost without realizing it.
There was no way.
The economy wasn't in such a good state that a bus could be this cheap. If bus fares had actually dropped this low, he would've heard about it—even without keeping up with the news. Something this drastic would've been everywhere.
"I… I don't have that amount," Alex admitted. Who even carried such tiny denominations of cash?
"Then you can't ride." The driver's voice was flat, final.
What could he do? Argue? Throw a fit? Not his style.
So he stepped back off the bus, defeated.
As it pulled away, Alex pulled out his phone to double-check, but… no signal. Not a single bar.
"Haaa… I shouldn't have left home today," he muttered, slumping in resignation.
If he was doomed to black out whenever he strayed too far, then fine. He'd use it.
A free, albeit creepy, teleportation service back to the bench.