I had been wandering this endless expanse for two days. Two long, grueling days in this barren world of snow.
And nothing happened.
I waited—desperately, hopelessly—for something, anything. Maybe I'd wake up. Maybe someone would find me, or I'd stumble across some trace of life. Maybe there'd be something magical, or even a logical explanation.
But there was nothing.
No miracles. No discoveries. Just snow. An infinite sea of snow and that mocking, unchanging blue sky.
I tried everything. Shouting until my voice cracked. Walking in endless circles. Digging through the snow as if it might hide some secret. But all I got was more of the same—white and cold and unrelenting emptiness.
"Can someone hear me?" I screamed into the void, my voice swallowed by the silence. "This isn't what I meant when I said I wanted to live somewhere alone and secluded!"
The words stung, a bitter reminder of something I couldn't fully remember. Maybe this was karma—a punishment for sins I couldn't recall. A cruel joke by the universe, leaving me to wander until I became just another part of this endless nothingness.
By the fourth day, the silence had seeped into my bones, fraying the edges of my sanity.
I talked to myself more now—not that I had anyone else to talk to. It was the only way to keep the weight of isolation from crushing me entirely. "Am I ever going to get out of here?" I muttered.
The only answer was the howling wind, indifferent and cold.
What if this was some kind of experiment? Or worse—what if I wasn't even in my own world anymore? My mind spiraled with theories, each more absurd than the last. None of them made sense, but they kept me occupied, kept me from fully succumbing to despair.
By the fifth day, I'd had enough.
I stopped walking. What was the point of trudging through this wasteland forever? Lying down on the snow, I stared at the endless sky and tried to sort through my fractured thoughts.
The first thing that came to mind was how it all began: waking up here, disoriented, with no memory of how or why. No clue how to leave.
Then there was my past—or the lack of it. My memories were fragmented, like a book with half its pages torn out. The faces and names of people I once knew were smudged and blurred. I didn't even know what I looked like, though I was sure I had black hair and pale skin.
I did manage to grasp one thing—a final memory before this void. I had finished writing my first novel. My very first. Maybe it had something to do with all this. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.
And then there was the strangest part: I didn't feel hunger or exhaustion. My body seemed... immortal here. Even my mind, which should've unraveled from the isolation, kept functioning. How was that even possible?
Speculations. That's all I had. No answers.
But I knew one thing for sure—I couldn't stay here forever. I needed to leave. To reclaim my memories. To see my book rise to fame.
The thought calmed me. For the first time in days, I felt a sliver of clarity. "In these lonely moments," I said softly, "I've found something I hadn't in a long time—my real self. The one I've kept buried for so long."
Eventually, I rose and began walking again, resolved to keep searching.
Hours passed—or maybe days. Time was meaningless here. And then, without warning, I froze.
In the middle of this forsaken wasteland, something impossible stood before me.
My chest tightened. My breath caught in my throat.
"WHY IS MY DAMN SCHOOL HERE!?"