Scene 1.
[La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. Wednesday, 10/02/2021, Afternoon.]
It was late afternoon on the tranquil island of La Palma, Canary Islands, specifically on the small beach of Santa Cruz de la Palma.
The fiery vermilion hue painted the skies in red and orange behind the island's summit, a green summit, the green of the commonly referred to as "Isla Bonita."
On the opposite side of that summit, gray waters stretched as far as the eye could see.
For the keen-eyed, when looking out over that expansive sea, specifically to the southwest, and only due to the benevolence of the weather, they could catch glimpses of another island, Tenerife, shrouded in mist from top to bottom.
Beep!
Honk!
Whirr!
Today, traffic was bustling along the Avenida Marítima in Santa Cruz de la Palma, as was typical in the late afternoon when weary workers finally returned home after a long day.
Most non-food businesses were beginning to close, and the lights of the buildings along the coast were gradually being turned on, giving the impression from a distance that thousands of fireflies were fluttering over the small stretch of land.
Night was slowly descending upon La Palma. Darkness became more palpable with each passing minute.
On this beach, walking on its volcanic black sands, caressed by the gentle and intermittent winter breeze, lay a young Asian man of no more than twenty years old, a teenager with sharp eyes, jet-black hair, pale skin, average height, and a relatively slender build, dressed all in black sportswear. His name was Kanazaki Ryuto, and, as he did every day for the past six torturous months, he wandered through his small piece of paradise.
"..."
The young man's eyes silently scanned the beach, now growing darker as night approached. His footsteps left deep, heavy marks in the sand with each step.
Waves softly and rhythmically caressed the shore, and the scent of the sea refreshed the lungs of the few people on the beach, mostly fishermen, pet walkers, and some young lovers.
The expression on the young man's face was unusually melancholic, as if he were lost in his own thoughts.
Ryuto and his father, Kanazaki Aokichi, had come to La Palma because of his father's work, a renowned volcanologist with more than twenty years of experience in the field. At first, they had not planned to stay long, but when the volcano erupted, circumstances changed, and what was supposed to be a three-month trip extended to the present.
Ryuto didn't complain back then, despite the obvious distance between him and his home in Japan, a definite hardship. He simply accepted his father's decision in silence, kept his opinions to himself, and obeyed as any dutiful firstborn should. He was enrolled in the local public school in no time, an institute formerly a church called Alonso Pérez Díaz, which he attended quite regularly except for the occasional stressful language barrier-induced escape.
Today had been one of those escape days.
Ryuto left the hotel where he stayed in the morning, supposedly to go to school, politely said goodbye to his father with a backpack slung over his shoulder, and then, at the last moment, while still on his way to school, changed course toward the coast, where he spent most of the day reading some fantasy books or simply gazing at the sea until well into the afternoon.
Apart from his father, Aokichi, Ryuto had no other living relatives that he knew of. His mother, Ueda Mei, had passed away from cancer eight years ago, leaving him permanently marked by deep depression. As for his grandparents, they had died long before he was born, and he only knew of them through stories, mostly boring tales his father had occasionally recounted during his more talkative moments. When it came to uncles or other close relatives, Ryuto had never met any of them, so he assumed they didn't exist from the start.
Ryuto was alone in the world with his father, and it went without saying that his appreciation for the latter was immense; he was all he had, his home in every sense.
Amidst thoughts and reflections, evening turned into night for the young Japanese man, and as a result, his needs took a slight twist.
"Time to go back."
Ryuto changed direction toward one of the many exits from the beach.
The young man's eyes narrowed for a brief moment to savor the sea breeze one last time on this day.
"Sigh."
An exhalation escaped Ryuto's mouth as he opened his eyes again.
However, unlike a black sand beach as one would expect, Ryuto found himself on a surface of green, fine grass dampened by the rain. Instead of the geography he had grown accustomed to over the past few months, he now witnessed an entirely different expanse of land. Instead of the usual coastline separating the city, Ryuto saw trees and shrubs, vegetation everywhere he looked. Instead of the city, he found enormous buildings with unmistakably strange architecture in the distance, buildings he would never expect to see in such a traditional and ancient place as La Palma.
But that wasn't the most peculiar part of the situation for the young man, not by a long shot.
Ryuto rubbed his eyes, bewildered.
"Huh?"
Doubt was evident on the boy's face.
Doubt, because what Ryuto believed to be a third dimension had abruptly turned into a two-dimensional world in the blink of an eye.
Even for someone as stoic as Ryuto, something as unnatural as this sudden change was too much to process without exclaiming.
"What in the world is happening here?"
Next, the boy's eyes nervously scanned the surroundings once more, this time with greater scrutiny.
Besides the aforementioned panorama, the Japanese teenager only found an extensive sea stretching as far as the eye could see, and mysteriously, the night had turned into day out of nowhere.
"What is this place? How did I get here? Huh? Wasn't it nighttime just a second ago? And why does everything look like this?"
Questions poured out of the boy's mouth one after another without stopping.
"Is this some kind of hallucination?"
Ryuto pinched his left cheek to check if he was dreaming, to no avail.
"No, it's not."
That was the conclusion the young man reached after confirming that his test hadn't yielded the expected result.
"Can't be..."
Nothing had changed; the pinch had hurt him, and therefore, Ryuto's hallucination was indeed real.
In such a situation, an ordinary man, especially a teenager, would have become exceedingly desperate. Many might even go insane facing such an unnatural scenario. However, Ryuto was different from those kinds of people. In fact, Ryuto was a bit of a pessimist. For him, if something wasn't going wrong, it was because something was already wrong somewhere else, and he just hadn't noticed it yet. Consequently, his lack of reaction was somewhat expected, though naturally, this particular circumstance didn't mean that he was completely unfazed; on the contrary, he found it extremely frustrating to seek solutions to such an unreal problem. However, Ryuto was also aware that complaining would get him nowhere. Therefore, he knew he had to think and then act, relying on reason even in such an apparently fictional scenario to ultimately achieve his goals in the face of the adversities life would throw at him in the future.
"Hmm."
The young man's expression took on a slight touch of contemplation.
As a pessimist, Ryuto not only understood that things would often go wrong for him, his current situation being a case in point, but he also knew that patience in dealing with such situations was an essential part of addressing such problems. Thus, he had to set aside his more emotional and human side, such as the concern he felt about his father probably worrying about him by this point, and fully focus on finding the answers he truly needed to progress effectively in his mission to return to La Palma in one piece.
"Ugh. Why is my head hurting so much?"
Ryuto rubbed his head and gritted his teeth as he began to move away from the coast, trying to ignore the pain that continuously assaulted his brain.
The boy was aware that he would need help to accomplish his most pressing objectives. Therefore, he quickly decided to seek information from the people who most likely lived in the large buildings in the distance.
Unfortunately for Ryuto, the headache persisted throughout his journey to that place, to the point where he found it impossible to maintain concentration for long. He hadn't even started screaming yet, purely out of sheer willpower.
Naturally, the young man's persistence was doomed to fail, and after covering only about fifty meters, Ryuto collapsed dramatically onto the ground.
"Thud!"
The last thing the Japanese teenager clearly saw was a small old building with a red roof and two stories on his left hand.
Afterward, Ryuto fell completely unconscious.
His last thoughts before passing out were about family, about his father, about the idea of his father's distressed face upon his sudden disappearance.
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