Chapter 1: A Passport Without a Seal, and €23,000 in the Bank
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or entities is purely coincidental.
The universities and institutions depicted in this novel are fictional and not affiliated with any real educational institutions in Portugal or elsewhere.
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January 21, 2026. 10:45 PM. Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport.
I stood in the muted light of the domestic exit-a long blue denim shirt hanging loose over black velvet pajama pants, my phone in my hand, my luggage somewhere behind me.
My passport held a silent, dangerous flaw: no landing seal.
I had walked through the wrong door. The story of how it happened was a cascade of small, exhausted mistakes.
Since my departure from Japan, a chronic illness had dictated my journey. I’d requested a mobility assistant at every airport. In Narita, a quiet man with a wheelchair delivered me to the gate. In Doha, a young Arab woman took my arm with a gentle “Madame, this way.” In Paris, an old man even pulled my bag. But when I landed in Lisbon, tired and feverish, no one came.
I waited fifteen minutes near the arrivals gate. My feet were swollen from fourteen hours in the air. Disoriented and aching, I watched a stream of people glide effortlessly through a door beneath a sign that read “Domestic” and “Exit.”
My fevered brain auto translated: Transit exit. I’m just passing through Lisbon, too. I’ll follow them.
Nobody stopped me. The door slid open, and just past eleven at night, I was outside. Cold Portuguese air bit my cheeks. Taxis sat idling in a long line. The language around me was foreign music. Only then, my mind still detached from my body, did the thought of the entry stamp fail to surface.
I switched on my phone’s data. An email from the university was waiting. The subject line hit me like a physical blow:
URGENT - Admission Revoked.
Dear Ms. Kira, we regret to inform you that your B.Tech(IT) degree from your university in Myanmar does not meet the Portuguese Higher Education standards for direct Master’s entry. Your conditional admission has been revoked.
Cold disbelief washed over me.
Did I just enter legally, or illegally?
The ghost of my Third Aunt’s voice echoed in my head: “Your degree is a useless piece of paper. Not like my son’s associate degree from the US.”
Damn them all. What could I do now, stranded in the wreckage of a plan that had just fallen apart?
I sat on a luggage cart just outside the exit-a lone, rumpled figure against the night. Passersby glanced at me. A phantom in a blue shirt and pajama pants, hair a wild, sleep-deprived halo. I must have looked like a madwoman.
My face, once delicately angular, had softened. The jawline rounded-a lasting signature of my illness. My eyes, single-lidded, now carried the double folds of profound exhaustion.
I opened Google Maps. My destination-a house deep in the vineyards of Bragança-was over five hours away by car. It was past eleven at night. No trains. No buses. How does a person get there?
A taxi driver quoted the price with brutal simplicity: “Bragança? Four hundred euros.”
Four hundred. No, too expensive.
I searched nearby hotels. B&B Hotel appeared: eighty-six euros a night. Two nights there, plus a likely daytime bus to Bragança, would still be cheaper than that single, desperate ride.
I took the same taxi to the hotel. Check-in was smooth and impersonal. The receptionist flipped through my empty passport pages during registration, said nothing, and handed me the room key with a chilled-out Portuguese nonchalance. A small mercy.
Alone in the clean, unassuming room, I collapsed on the bed.
I had sold and given away everything in Japan to make this journey. I had arrived with only a carry-on and a thousand euros in cash, but my real safeguard was the twenty-three thousand euros still secure in my bank account.
Don’t touch that yet.
Tomorrow, I will fix the stamp problem. Everything would be fine.
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The next morning, after a shower, I confronted my reflection. Dark circles. A stubborn fever that had traveled with me from Japan. Skin that hadn’t known makeup in days.
All I had was a small bottle of sunscreen. I dabbed it on-a thin shield against the world.
At ten in the morning, the local police station turned me away with a series of gestures and directions. My problem was too complex for them. I needed the Tourist Police Station near Praça do Comércio.
By 11:00 am, I was back on a train with my carry-on bag a loyal, heavy companion.
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This story contains themes of surveillance, political oppression, and chronic illness. Code-switching between English and Burmese is intentional-it reflects the protagonist’s multilingual consciousness. Translation is betrayal. Keep reading.
