6:30AM. It’s Tuesday. You drag your groggy, bed-headed self out from under your covers and into the light of day, rubbing away sleep from half-lidded eyes as the toaster pops with the slight aroma of burnt multigrain. No time for eggs this morning, so you scrape off the black part of the toast and settle for the premeditatedly lacklustre breakfast. There's never time for eggs, because you can’t be bothered to set your goddamn alarm a few minutes earlier.

    Showered and dressed, and with your mouth rinsed of cool mint toothpaste, you grab your jingling keys from the kitchen table. That’s the routine. That’s the structure of your mornings, the skeleton that makes up the framework of each day. In a moment you will sling your bag over your shoulder and turn to the doorway of your apartment to leave. That’s how your morning will progress. That’s the routine, after all. Until suddenly, it isn’t.

    When you turn around, the door opens before you have even reached it. The fact that it is inexplicably unlocked without you turning the deadbolt never crosses your mind, as you’re too busy registering the sight of a man entering your home, looking around as he surveys his surroundings curiously. His eyes land upon you and you briefly consider screaming, but you don’t.

    “Who are you?” you ask instead, but the surprise on his face matches your own, as if he’s the one that’s been intruded upon. When he doesn’t reply, you pull your cell phone out of your pocket with a shaky hand. “Get out of my house or I’m calling the police.”

    He looks confused for a moment, then slowly steps back out into the corridor. “I’m sorry,” he says, his deep voice slightly quieter than you were expecting it to be, and scratchy as if he hasn’t used it in a long time. You both stare at each other for a moment of time that seems much longer than it actually is, and finally he opens his mouth to speak. He seems to be struggling with what to say next, and you wonder why he’s even still there.

    “How did you get here?” he asks, and you squint your eyes at the absurdity of his question.

    “What do you mean? I live here. The better question is why you just barged into my apartment. Why am I even talking to you, just get out,” you shoot back, having enough sense to go shut the door, and make sure that it’s locked this time. There’s no way you’re walking out to the elevator with this creep hanging around.

    But before you manage to close it, you feel him push back on the other side. “Wait,” he calls out, “You don't understand.”

    You hold your position firmly, eyeing the crack of the door that he has stuck his foot through with an uneasy feeling in your stomach. “Didn’t you hear me the first time? I’m calling the cops,” you announce, quickly dialling the number on your phone.

    “You... You can’t,” he says carefully, but you ignore his mumbling as you wait for the other end of the line to start ringing.

    It doesn’t. You pull the phone away from your ear, wondering why the call isn’t going through. You hang up and try again, but the dial tone is dead. You inhale slowly, the uneasy feeling in your stomach only becoming stronger before you exhale once again.

    “It didn’t work, did it?” you hear his voice from the other side of the door. He hasn’t tried pushing the door any further open.

    “Please go away,” you try as you wonder why this has to be happening to you of all people.

    “I can explain everything, if you’ll just listen to me for a minute,” he replies, and he takes your silence as submission. “This is going sound ridiculous, and I don’t expect you to trust me right away, but none of this is real.”

    You huff out an exasperated breath, “So you're trying to tell me that I’m dreaming?”

    “...No. I'm sorry, but you're not dreaming.”

    “Well then what in the world are you talking about?” you demand, your patience quickly spiralling down the drain of a pulled plug.

    “That’s exactly it; the world. This world. It’s not real,” he insists. “But you’re real, aren’t you?” he continues, more of a statement than a question, “I get a different feeling about you. Maybe you should sit down, this may take a while to explain.”

    You swing the door open in agitation. “Look, I don’t know what the hell you-“

    You freeze. The corridor outside your apartment is no longer the corridor that should be outside your apartment. Instead of the familiar walls and worn carpet, you see the open expanse of a grassy valley.

    “What...”

    You can’t seem to form a coherent sentence, but the man just nods. “I know.”

    He takes another step back and beckons for you to come out. You are unwilling to believe in the mirage before your very eyes, as it can’t possibly be real, but when you walk out into the dazzling sunlight you feel its warmth against your skin as a fresh breeze tousles your hair. “I must be dreaming,” you say decidedly.

    “I already told you, you’re not,” he replies, then takes a deep breath as if he is about to begin a longwinded story. “My name is Yongguk. I can’t tell you what this place is, because I honestly don’t know, but I’ve been here for a long time, alone. What I can tell you is that nothing here is real, and that there are no other humans here. But I can help you.”

    You try rubbing your eyes and pinching yourself, anything to somehow prove that this isn’t really happening.

    “But if you want my help,” he continues, “We should probably get moving. There's no telling when the system will change again.”

    “System? What?” Your words stumble, and you pick up on the urgency in his voice. “What's going on?”

    He sighs. “This world is controlled by some kind of a system; the way things happen is too calculated and deliberate to be due to chance. But for whatever reason, it targets psychological stress. It preys on fear,” he says, glancing out into the distance worriedly, and you notice that the sky is clouding over. “I don't have much time to explain, we need to go.”

    Maybe you are just hallucinating, you think. Maybe if you go back to sleep, you will wake up and everything will be normal again. You figure that has to work, if nothing else. With no other piece of sanity to turn to, you turn back to go inside, to bury yourself under your warm, dark covers and not get up again until the next day if that's what it takes. But when you look, your door is gone.

    Staring at the empty space in front of you, you blink a few times in astonishment. You turn back to Yongguk incredulously but notice that he has already started walking, making his way across the grassy plain without you. “Wait!” you scramble to catch up to him, “I still don’t understand.”

    “I don't expect you to.”

    The sky has gotten dark startlingly fast, and your skin is no longer warmed by rays of sunlight peaking through the clouds. Angry brumes have blocked out the light, and a cool wind blows harshly across the barren grassland.

    “Where are we going?” you ask, having subconsciously decided that going with this guy is your only option. Without ever meaning to, you’ve let him break down your defensive barriers, and despite how stupid you know it is to put your trust into this stranger, you are compelled to anyways. 

    “The storm’s picking up,” he points at the sky, and you see flashes of lightning ripple across the horizon, “Were you planning on staying out on this flat, open field? We need to find cover.”

    You quiet down, realizing the danger of the situation, and settle with trailing behind him without objection until the two of you near the edge of the valley, which is lined by lush forest. “Where are we?” you decide to ask.

    “Where? There is no where,” he shakes his head, “Location is relative. The ground you’re walking on right now could be covered three miles deep in water by this time tomorrow, or bulldozed beneath a seven story building. The system is erratic; places don’t stay the same for very long.”

    “Sounds kind of glitchy,” you comment as you follow him into the shrubbery. You aren’t sure what to expect anymore, and you still haven’t abandoned the idea that you will wake up soon from this strange dream.

    The rain starts off gentle, dusting the leaves, the ground, and your hair with misty droplets. But Yongguk continues to eye the canopy of branches overhead, all the while searching for somewhere to shelter you both from the rain. Just as the rain drops begin to get larger and more abundant, he pulls back some bushes to reveal an abandoned wolf den, and he analyzes it for a moment before deciding that it will have to do.

    “Are you sure there’s nothing living in there?” you ask cautiously, but Yongguk has already crouched down to crawl inside the entrance.

    “If there were any wild animals around here, we would have encountered them by now,” he replies, patting the leaf-padded patch of earth beside him. “You can rest, I’ll keep watch.”

    “...For what, exactly?” you ask, unsure if you really want to know the answer.

    Yongguk shrugs. “Danger.”

    You decide that his answer has done nothing to calm your apprehension, and you slump down cross-legged only a few feet from the mouth of the den, not wanting to go any further into the darkness.

    “And stop being so nervous,” he reprimands as he notices your behaviour, “You’re making yourself an easy target.”

    Target. You don’t like that word. It makes you feel like there’s some kind of an attacker after you, and you’ve already taken the risk of blindly putting your faith in this man you’ve only just met. Not like I had a choice, you think to yourself.

    “Are we in actual danger?” you ask, your worry steadily increasing despite his advice.

    “No,” he quickly shakes his head, sensing your fear, “No, it's not real.”

    “Then why...“

    “It’s the system; it’s going to do whatever it can to uncover your deepest fears. Don’t let it get to you,” he warns, glancing around warily, “This is the stuff nightmares are made of.”

    Again you take note of how often he talks about this ‘system’ and still you haven’t the slightest idea of what he means. Perhaps he's right and some rest is exactly what you need, but your curiosity leaves you antsy and unsettled. You begin mentally going over all the information he has given you so far, hoping you can make some sense out of it.

    "So let me get this straight," you begin, crossing your arms over your chest, “You’re trying to tell me that I’ve woken up to some kind of a virtual reality consisting of only you and I and some controlling entity that changes the world around me based on an underlying, sadistic need to instill fear? This feels like a video game, and one with a poorly thought-out storyline at that.”

    Yongguk mumbles something that you don’t hear over the downpour of rain that is drawing the warmth out of the air as quickly as the optimism is disappearing from your heart. You scoot closer to him to hear better, and maybe to be a little warmer, too.

    “Sorry?”

    “I said that’s an interesting analogy,” he repeats, still looking off into the wooded distance, “But if you want to treat survival as a game, you might not be playing for very long.”

    You frown at the serious tone in his voice. “I don’t think I like this dream anymore,” you decide as you wrap your arms around your knees resignedly, and when Yongguk finally looks at you there is a glint of something that looks suspiciously like pity in his dark eyes.

    “Well, I guess you could say you’ve made it through the first test, anyways,” he shrugs, but you aren’t sure of what he’s talking about.

    “...And what would that be?”

    He looks at you again for a moment, then chuckles ever so slightly. It’s a warm, rumbling baritone, much more comforting than the thunder overhead.

    “You’re not afraid of me.”

____
>neophobia [ˌniːəʊˈfəʊbɪə] the fear of novelty/breaking routine
>astraphobia [ˌæstrəˈfoʊbiə] the fear of thunder and lightning
>androphobia [ˌændrəˈfoʊbiə] the fear of men