Heavy. That was the first thing that flooded his consciousness. It wasn't just the soreness or muscle cramps he felt after a day's work, but the sensation of being crushed by something incredibly heavy. It felt as though every inch of his bones and muscles was bearing a load of thousands of tons. He even had to clench his teeth and let out a muffled groan just to pump air into his lungs. For a moment, he felt like Sun Wukong, imprisoned beneath the Five-Fingered Mountain by the Buddha.
With a burst of energy that seemed to come from nowhere, the young man forced his eyelids open. The blinding sunlight immediately stung his eyes, forcing him to squint. Slowly, his vision began to clear. A vast expanse of clear blue sky greeted him, accompanied by the melodious sound of the waves crashing rhythmically.
He forced himself to sit down. The warm white sand brushed against the palms of his hands. The sea breeze swept across his face. As far as the eye could see, there was only the blue ocean, seemingly endless. He turned around; a row of tall coconut trees stood, bordering a dense, lush forest, and in the distance, a small mountain could be seen, its peak shrouded in a thin mist.
"W—where am I?" his voice was hoarse, his throat parched.
The young man massaged his temples, trying to piece together his memories. His name was Quentin Seven. Yes, he remembered that. He also remembered the hot asphalt, the deafening sound of car horns, and the screech of a truck's tires as it slammed on the brakes. A small child was crossing the street, and Seven remembered jumping to push him out of the way. After that... a hard impact, then darkness.
Did he survive? Or is this heaven? But why does heaven feel so heavy and painful?
Suddenly, without any warning, his head felt as if it were being pierced by thousands of needles.
It wasn't a memory of the accident that surfaced, but a completely unfamiliar visual flash. He saw a sky ablaze. And amid the chaos, a figure resembling himself floated, fighting a man with long white hair and a pair of horns.
"Arghhh!"
Seven let out a muffled scream. He clutched his head with both hands, rolling around on the white sand. The pain was excruciating, as if his brain were being forcibly split open to accommodate a massive amount of data.
About a minute passed before the agonizing throbbing gradually subsided, leaving Seven gasping for breath, face down on the sand. Cold sweat drenched his temples.
"What on earth was that...?" he muttered softly, trying to catch his breath. "That man... Why does he look so much like me? But that man with white hair... he looks a bit like Otsutsuki from the Ninja World. Did I hit my head too hard in the accident?"
His stomach suddenly growled loudly, interrupting his confusion. The hunger he felt wasn't just a normal rumble, but a sensation of an empty, hollow stomach that made his body go limp. He had no idea how long he'd been lying on this beach.
His survival instinct took over. Seven knew he had to eat and drink if he didn't want to die a senseless death, wherever he was right now. Drawing on memories from the dozens of survival videos he often watched on YouTube when he was bored, he began to move.
Even though his body felt as if it were carrying a load of tons, strangely enough, his legs could still move. He walked toward the trees, looking for a straight, sturdy branch. Luckily, he found a piece of hardwood with a broken, tapered end. With a little sharpening on a rock, a simple wooden spear was created.
Next was water. He climbed a coconut tree whose trunk was slightly slanted. Although his body felt strangely heavy, his grip was extraordinarily strong. It was as if gravity were pulling him down mercilessly, but his muscular strength was able to resist it with ease. He knocked down a few coconuts, cracked them open by smashing them against a sharp rock, then drank their sweet, refreshing water.
Once his thirst was quenched, Seven moved to the shallow waters near the reef. Armed with his wooden spear, he stood motionless like a statue. The moment there was movement, slash! His spear struck with a precision that even surprised himself. In less than an hour, he had gathered a decent-sized lobster, two plump rock crabs, and several medium-sized fish.
At the forest's edge, he found several types of leaves whose scent reminded him of lemongrass and lime. "This should be enough for seasoning," he thought to himself.
Using the dry-wood friction method—which fortunately worked after his hands were all scraped up—he built a small campfire. The aroma of grilled seafood mingled with the scent of the flames in the air, making Seven's stomach growl even louder.
As the sun began to slip downward, transforming the blue sky into a sweep of reddish-orange, Seven was happily munching on his grilled lobster meat. He looked toward the edge of the forest, which was starting to darken.
Seeing the elongated shadows of the trees, a memory from a few hours earlier—when he had been searching for firewood near the forest's edge—suddenly flashed back.
At that moment, an abnormally large brown bear—at least four meters tall when standing on two legs—emerged from the bushes and roared at him. Seven panicked like crazy. He ran for his life. But because he wasn't paying attention to the path, he tripped over a giant tree root. The colossal bear pounced.
In desperation and a pure reflex to protect his face, Seven simply swung the back of his hand toward the bear's snout.
BAM!
He still remembers that thud clearly. The giant bear, weighing hundreds of kilograms, was flung like a rag doll, smashing through three trees in a row before collapsing unconscious in the thicket.
While chewing on his last crab claw, Seven stared at his own palm in disbelief. "An absurdly huge bear… and my strength… I don't know. Bears on the Blue Star couldn't possibly be that big, and a normal human couldn't possibly knock a bear flying."
The reality finally hit him hard. He wasn't on the Blue Star anymore. That truck had truly ended his old life, and now he was stranded in another world.
The sky was growing darker. Seven realized being out in the open at night wasn't a good idea, especially if there were other predators besides that giant bear. He had to find a safe place.
He chose a large tree with widely spreading branches near the shoreline. Using fallen branches and thick foliage, he fashioned an emergency sleeping platform—a simple treehouse about seven meters off the ground. He didn't stop there; around the lower trunk, he drove many sharpened wooden spears pointing upward. He even smeared a slippery sap he'd found from nearby vines onto the main tree trunk, ensuring no carnivorous animals could climb up easily.
Now, night had fully fallen.
Seven sat cross-legged atop his treehouse. He'd managed to bring a few embers up and built a small campfire on a flat stone slab for warmth and light. Down below, the sounds of night insects and the crashing of waves blended into the sounds of nature.
Seven looked up. The night sky in this world was incredibly clear. Clusters of stars shone brightly, forming constellations he had never seen in his life in any astronomy book.
The adrenaline that had kept him on edge all this time slowly faded, replaced by a biting silence. The night wind blew cold, piercing through his clothes, still dirty with sand.
Seven hugged his knees. His vacant gaze pierced the sea of stars above. In his previous life, he was indeed a nobody, but he had a peaceful life. There was a soft mattress, a 24-hour convenience store, and brightly lit city streets.
Now? He was alone on an uninhabited island, bearing an invisible weight that constantly pressed down on his body, and fragmented memories.
He closed his eyes, feeling a speck of warmth in the corners of his weary eyes.
"Can I…" Seven murmured, breaking the silence, his voice barely trembling in the night breeze. "…go home?"