Chương 9: Chapter 8: Time Borrowed

The days after killing the beast settled into something that almost resembled normal life. Almost. The garage still carried the faint metallic scent of blood despite several thorough cleanings, but at least it no longer looked like the aftermath of a slaughterhouse. The meat had surprised me. I had expected something tough, stringy, maybe with the overpowering taste wild game often carried. Instead, it reminded me of beef.

Not exactly beef—richer, perhaps a little sweeter—but close enough that after the first cautious bite, I'd stopped thinking of it as "the beast" and started thinking of it as dinner. Whatever it had been, it tasted good. The crystal, on the other hand, remained a complete mystery. Apart from where it had come from and the faint pale glow it was emitting, there was nothing unusual about it. Beyond that... It was simply a crystal. Or at least, that was all I could honestly say.

Most of my time disappeared into routine. Breakfast. Reading. Checking whether anything around the house had changed. Trying—and usually failing—not to think too much. At one point I'd remembered an anime Bill had spent months insisting I should watch. More out of curiosity than anything else, I'd queued a handful of episodes before leaving the computer to handle the downloads. Twenty hours later, the progress bar on the first episode still wasn't even close to finished.

At this rate, the internet was less entertainment than a very patient promise. It wasn't useless. It just couldn't become my life. That realization crept in slowly. At first, I had treated the house as a solution. It had electricity. Running water. A stocked kitchen. Books. Internet. A comfortable bed. Compared to sleeping in an unfamiliar forest, it was paradise. But paradise had limits. The pantry wasn't infinite. The freezer wouldn't refill itself once the meat was gone.

Eventually I'd finish every book worth reading. Even the internet, slow as it was, couldn't keep me occupied forever. A twenty-four-minute episode taking a day to download wasn't exactly a sustainable hobby. The house hadn't become a prison. Not yet. But I could already see the walls closing in. The forest made sure of that. Right after killing the beast, I had noticed the tree line looked... wrong. Just a little further away from where I remembered it being. I'd dismissed it as exhaustion.

After everything that had happened, I wasn't about to trust my memory over my eyes. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. The following morning, the forest had moved again. Entire clusters of trees seemed to shift overnight. Not far—sometimes only a few meters—but enough that the forest never matched yesterday's memory. By the fourth day, I stopped looking for excuses. I started paying close attention to the forest.

Every the evening before heading inside, I'd pick out landmarks around the barrier. A crooked birch. A pine split by lightning. A young oak growing beside a moss-covered rock. Every the morning, I'd compare. The rocks never moved. The slope of the ground stayed the same. The house never shifted. Only the trees. Not all of them. Not in any pattern I could recognize. But enough. Enough that the view was different every morning when I woke up. I couldn't even trust yesterday's path to exist tomorrow.

That observation bothered me almost more than the beast ever had. A dangerous animal could be killed. But a forest that rearranged itself every night was...... Another matter entirely. It wasn't a problem I knew how to solve. I stood on the back porch that morning, mug warming my hands as my eyes wandered over the unfamiliar arrangement of trunks beyond the invisible barrier. Food had stopped being an immediate concern. So had the beast. But all I'd bought myself was time. Sooner or later, the meat would run out.

Sooner or later, something would break. Sooner or later, I'd need answers the internet couldn't provide. If there were other people in this world, I wouldn't meet them by sitting inside my house. If there weren't... Well, I needed to know that too. Waiting until I was desperate would only make leaving more dangerous. I'd rather explore while I still had supplies than after hunger started making decisions for me. The conclusion wasn't exciting. It was simply the only logical one.

I finished the last sip of coffee before setting the mug in the dishwasher.

"Time to stop pretending this is a solution I suppose." The words sounded strangely loud inside the empty house. If I was leaving, I wasn't doing it unprepared. Walking had one obvious advantage. It didn't need electricity or fuel. Unfortunately, that was where the advantages ended. The terrain surrounding the house was relatively flat, at least as far as I could see from the barrier. My car could cover in minutes what would take hours on foot.

It offered shelter if the weather changed, protection if another creature appeared, and if everything went wrong... I could simply drive back. Assuming the trees didn't decide otherwise. The garage door rolled upward with a familiar rattle. My electric car waited exactly where I'd parked it days ago, spotless except for a thin layer of dust. The battery still showed nearly full. Good. I walked around it once, checking each tire out of habit more than necessity. No visible damage. No nails. Tread looked fine.

The spare sat untouched beneath the trunk floor. Also fine. That reminded me. The winter tires. Still stacked neatly against the garage wall where I'd left them after changing them months ago. Four on the car. One spare in the trunk. Four winter tires in the garage. Nine. Hopefully enough. I wasn't expecting to burn through nine tires. For reasons I couldn't quite explain, the number felt reassuring. That was one variable I didn't need to worry about. I started loading supplies into the trunk.

Several bottles of water. Enough food for a full day, maybe two. A shovel. A pair of sturdy wooden planks. My toolbox. The ratchet strap. A flashlight. A small first-aid kit. And, after a brief hesitation, one full box of ibuprofen. If another creature reacted the same way the first one had... I'd rather have the option than regret leaving it behind. I took one final look around the garage, mentally running through the list again. Water. Food. Tools. Phone. Power bank. Keys. Nothing obvious forgotten. Good enough.

The driver's door clicked shut behind me. The dashboard came to life, bathing the cabin in soft white light. For a moment, I simply sat there with both hands resting on the steering wheel. Everything beyond the windshield was unknown. Everything behind me was familiar. Safe. Comfortable. I shifted into drive. The car rolled forward across the concrete floor, out of the garage, over where the driveway used to be, and toward the invisible barrier. It passed through without the slightest resistance.

I pressed the accelerator.