It was already night—11:57 PM. There were just three minutes left until my 25th birthday. I sat alone on my sofa in my rented apartment. In front of me, on the table, was my half-kilogram vanilla cake. Beside the cake sat a photo of my parents and me from when I was a little kid. Sadly, my parents died in a car accident when I was young. I still remember my mother's last words vividly: "My sweet little child, you must live well, even if you're all alone with no one to take care of you. We're sorry. We were both orphans ourselves. That's why we wanted to give you a proper family, but we can't. Even so, you have to live. Live well, for our sake."
Remembering this, a wave of sadness washed over me. I muttered to myself, "Don't worry, Mom. No matter how tough life gets, I will live. I will live well and happily." There was still one minute left to my 25th birthday—and the new year. Outside, I could hear the crackling of fireworks as people celebrated. I opened the cake box and placed the knife beside the cake, waiting for midnight like everyone else, for both the new year and my birthday.
To pass the time, I played a video on YouTube on my smart TV. One video caught my eye—it looked interesting, so I clicked on it out of curiosity. The video showed a madman mumbling like a lunatic. I couldn't quite understand what he was saying, but it was disturbing. According to his theory, ever since the year 2000, people who turned 25 had been disappearing all over the world for unknown reasons—exactly ten people every year: five men and five women. Now, in 2025, that meant 250 people had disappeared. As we approached 2026, another ten would supposedly vanish. The man laughed maniacally, spouting nonsense about them being taken for mad scientists' experiments or maybe even abducted by aliens. I grew bored and changed the channel, deciding instead to play one of my favorite Christmas songs, "Carol of the Bells."
With ten seconds left until midnight, I picked up the knife. As the clock struck twelve, I cut the cake and was about to take a bite when suddenly a glowing circle appeared beneath my feet. Panic rose in my chest as I tried to escape, but it was too late. I vanished from my apartment, still holding a piece of cake and the knife. The Christmas song continued to play in the empty room.
Somewhere far away, the so-called madman was now running desperately to the nearest police station. He wanted to prove his point—that what he'd said in the video was no mere myth, but real. Desperate to be believed, he wanted everyone—his family, his friends, the world—to know he was not mad after all.
I was unconscious—knocked out cold—thanks to the bizarre effects of time and space travel. Apparently, my body wasn't built to handle such a cosmic journey, and I blacked out the instant I landed. Who knows how long I was out? I certainly didn't—I didn't have a phone or a watch, and time seemed meaningless in that void. All I know is that when I finally opened my eyes, it was already morning.
Sunlight—yes, actual sunlight—bathed me, and I realized I was lying in the softest, most comfortable grass I'd ever felt. As I sat up, I saw that the area around me was empty. In the distance, maybe two or three kilometers away, there loomed a massive forest with trees so tall they seemed to reach the sky itself. But in that moment, another fact hit me: I was naked. Utterly, gloriously naked. Not a single thread on my body. The chill made me shiver like a rabbit.
After a few minutes of shock, I stood up and shouted at the top of my lungs, "Ahhhhhhh! Motherfuckers! Who did this? At least give me some fucking clothes!" There was no response—just the wind whistling through the grass. With no answer, I sighed in defeat and sat back down. A few minutes later, the tears came—hard and fast, like a dam breaking. I tried to wipe them away, but they only flowed harder. "Damn, I'm scared. Where the fuck am I? What the fuck?"
Eventually, I managed to calm myself, but then the hunger hit. I couldn't ignore it any longer, so I started walking toward the forest—still completely naked, by the way. The soft grass swallowed my feet, making every step exhausting. I was panting like an ox, my energy draining away. But what disturbed me most wasn't the fatigue: it was the silence. There were no mosquitoes, no crickets chirping, no zebras, elephants, or bison—nothing. The absence of life filled me with a primal fear of the unknown.
Despite my fear and exhaustion, hunger drove me forward, step by reluctant step, toward the mysterious forest.
I finally managed to reach the edge of the forest. The inside was dark—no sunlight reached the ground, only a dim, gloomy haze. I hesitated for a moment, uncertain. Should I really try eating grass? The thought made me scratch my head in disbelief. What was I even thinking? Shaking off the absurd idea, I stepped into the forest.
Inside, the trees stretched impossibly high, their thick canopies blocking out almost all the light. As I stumbled deeper in, I spotted some fruits growing on the trees. Could I eat them? What if they were poisonous? I sighed, resigning myself to fate. "Sorry, Mom," I muttered. "It's not like I'm Bear Grylls, able to survive in some unknown forest."
But hunger and exhaustion overpowered my fear. Determined, I picked up a stone and hurled it at one of the fruit-laden branches. I missed, again and again, my arms weak from fatigue. Finally, by some stroke of luck, I knocked down a single fruit.
It looked like an apple, so I assumed it was safe. Muttering a silent prayer, I took a cautious bite. To my surprise, it tasted sweet—delicious, even. As I chewed and swallowed, I had the strange feeling that, with that bite, I had awakened something.
A few minutes later, exhaustion overtook me. I leaned against a tree and started to drift off. I tried to fight it—"No, I need fire first," I mumbled—but sleep won.
Night fell. I woke up in the darkness, still slumped against the tree. Moonlight filtered through the dense canopy, giving me just enough visibility to breathe a sigh of relief. I decided to keep my eyes open and wait for sunrise before moving on to another place. But drowsiness crept in again, and I was on the verge of sleep when I heard it: footsteps.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
A cold dread gripped my heart. I wanted to move, but I was frozen with fear—my heart beating like a frantic drum. The footsteps grew closer, and out of the darkness emerged a figure: a clown.
She stared at me with a deadpan expression. I was so terrified I couldn't move, resigned to whatever fate awaited me. She crouched down to my level, and in the moonlight, I could see her clearly—a woman, probably in her thirties, wearing clown makeup. Up close, she looked oddly beautiful, not creepy at all.
She glanced over my naked body, still expressionless. We stared at each other in silence for what felt like an eternity. I couldn't stand the embarrassment any longer, so I finally asked: