Chapter 1
[Sound Cue: Soft, nostalgic piano music plays mixed with the sound of distant crickets]
From a very young age, Oscar was different from other kids. While others found joy in playing on the streets, Oscar found his sanctuary on the open terrace of his house, staring into the vast night sky.
His childhood was far from perfect. Downstairs, the house would often echo with the violent, drunken rages of his father. The breaking of bottles and angry screams were a constant nightmare. But whenever the chaos became unbearable, his mother would gently take his hand, lead him to the terrace, and hold him close.
“Don’t look down at the noise, Oscar. Look up,” she would whisper, pointing at the glittering stars. “Those who leave this earth turn into stars. They are safe up there. No one can hurt them.”
Oscar believed her. The silence of the universe became his healing. Every single night, he would look up at the brightest star in the sky and talk to it. It was a time when the absolute silence of the cosmos healed him far better than the chaotic noise of the earth.
[Sound Cue: Music shifts to a heavy, melancholic tone]
But the universe Oscar loved so dearly shattered during his early twenties. His mother, his only anchor and solace in this world, passed away.
With her gone, the last shield holding back the darkness was destroyed. His father collapsed entirely into alcoholism, and soon, Oscar found himself drowning in the exact same quicksand of failure, isolation, and substance abuse. The boy who once dreamt of the cosmos was now trapped in a dark, suffocating room, surrounded by empty bottles.
He stopped going to the terrace. He started hating the night sky. Whenever he caught a glimpse of the starlight through his window, it no longer felt healing. Instead, he felt as though those stars were looking down from their high thrones, mocking his miserable existence and his utter failure.
One heavy night, overwhelmed by intoxication and deep loneliness, Oscar sat on his old chair. His mind was spinning, drifting away from reality. He closed his eyes and fell into a deep dream, completely unaware that he was stepping into a cold, cosmic paradox...
[Sound Cue: Chilling wind blowing with a low cosmic vibration]
An evening draped in a blanket of drifting snowflakes. Oscar sat entirely alone on an old, weathered chair near a desolate cemetery that stretched for miles without a sign of human life. Even as the biting cold pierced through his bones, he remained deeply immersed in his thoughts.
As Oscar sat lost in contemplation in that bleak graveyard, strange alterations suddenly began to manifest around him. He noticed the deep blue of the night sky gradually fading away.
Simultaneously, he sensed a bizarre, ominous vibration rippling through the entire universe. He felt this cosmic tremor spreading not just through the air and the earth, but deep within his own physical being. It felt as if every single cell in his body was shivering, and his very bones echoed with that vibration.
Terrified, Oscar’s heart rate spiked drastically. Suddenly, a blinding pillar of light cascaded down from the heavens. Through the waves of this intense radiance, something completely unidentifiable began its slow descent toward the earth.
Featuring crystalline, transparent walls, the object possessed a form unlike anything ever seen before. It appeared as though it was dissolved into the air, yet it exuded an extraordinary, monumental power. Radiant beams of light scattered in all directions from this alien anomaly.
Paralyzed on his chair, forgetting even to breathe, Oscar stared in absolute shock, utterly unable to comprehend what was unfolding right before his eyes. Within moments, the transparent object came to a standstill amidst the swirling mist of light.
[Sound Cue: Sound of a futuristic door sliding open without noise]
The side of the formless, translucent structure slid open without a single sound. The sheer intensity of the light emanating from within forced Oscar to shield his eyes with his hands. As the glare slowly subsided, he cautiously lowered his hands with a mixture of dread and curiosity.
By then, the entity had arrived right in front of him! As the aura settled completely, Oscar clearly beheld the figure that emerged from the rings of light.
It was not a monstrous creature or a bizarre alien from outer space. Instead, it was a distinct, undeniable human form! A face weathered by time, bearing the wrinkles of a man around eighty years old.
Looking intently at that face, Oscar trembled with a blend of terror and astonishment. For the figure standing before him was none other than his own reflection—it was his future self!
As Oscar sat frozen in fear, the elderly figure slowly extended his hands toward him. In the freezing air, his voice resonated with weight:
“Are you still going to chain yourself down and sleep through life?”
That question struck his soul like a whip. He had always kept his failures chained tightly around him, binding him so heavily that he could never rise. The old figure looked deep into his eyes and calmly continued:
“Wake up... It is exactly 2:00 AM!”
[Sound Cue: A sharp heartbeat sound that triggers a sudden awakening]
Saying this, the elderly man gently placed his hand upon Oscar’s head. The moment the hand touched him, Oscar sprang up from his chair with a violent jolt. Drenched in sweat, he gasped heavily for air.
“What a bizarre dream!” he muttered to himself.
A deep sorrow washed over him as he contemplated how his own mind was playing tricks on him, a cruel byproduct of substance abuse and profound isolation. “Am I losing control of my own mind?” he questioned himself. The realization that he was completely drifting away from sanity shattered him.
Anxious to calm his restless thoughts, he rose from the chair and paced slowly toward the window. As he walked, his eyes inadvertently caught the wall.
[Sound Cue: Absolute silence, followed by the ‘tick’ of a clock]
In an instant, the blood in his veins froze. The secondhand of the old clock on the wall stood dead straight on twelve.
Indeed...! The time was exactly 2:00 AM!
“How is this even possible?” questions roared like a storm inside his mind.
“How did he know the exact time with such absolute precision? Even when my eyes were closed, how did he perceive the movement of that secondhand which my own brain could not see?”
Though he tried desperately to dismiss it as a mere dream, a voice from the deepest corner of his soul whispered to him once again—it was not a dream.
(To be continued)
