I was following a man through the city that was climbing with and hanging on a green rope. We climbed up and over several metal roofs when a voice commented: “If only you had that kind of resolve”. We continued to weave through multiple identical hotels before ending up at the train station. After I got on the train, there was an upset girl to the side as well as some chatty grandparents a few seats behind me. We eventually ended up where we started by the tree that the children liked to play around.

We were going to be staying here for a month and I had packed 6 days of clothes. I figured that we would be washing clothes approximately once a week so it all worked, out. My dad told me to get rid of the old clothes that I had packed as they were most likely triggering my allergies.

The baseball field was a maze of chain-link fences and our car was in the middle of it. We had driven another car here to retrieve it after the fences came up overnight. When we finally got to the center, my father went back to his car that was parked outside. As we had an Audi, we had the opportunity to play a lottery game where the loser gets money. The problem was that we had to win in order to open the automatic gate.

I followed my brother to a party that was on the roof of a hotel. We slipped past the entrance when I wanted to ask him about the supernatural. “You’re five months late, sorry” he replied and kept walking. I sat down on a bench facing the pool while he went inside. Someone came up to me and asked why I always sat here alone. Before long it was 12 and everyone was leaving. I stayed in my seat.

I was wondering why we kept going up and down the escalators in the subway but it turned out that some of them passed through more than one floor so there were situations where the fastest way to go up a level was to go down first. I realized that I had forgotten something so we went back up to the vending machine on the surface. There was a dog waiting for me and someone told me that it seemed to be suffering from malnutrition. The robot wanted to be a part of the competition but it was in no way fit for the aerobics contest without training.

I walked up to the top floor of the house where my parents’ bedroom was on one side and a room with a turned off TV was in the other. I held my hand up to the PS4 and noticed that it was extremely hot. Someone had forgotten to turn it off as it was perpetually stuck on the main menu of a romcom DVD. I received a Facebook notification on my phone: it was an invitation to meet at the docks behind campus in 15 minutes or risk “miss[ing] the boat”.

We followed my dad running through the alleys into a hotel. I had a feeling that I had been here a long time ago. As I walked through the glass doors, I actively avoided what seemed to be a prospective student holding a Reed pamphlet. I went to get a drink of water from the dispenser and it wasn’t until someone commented on how thirsty I seemed that I realized I didn’t have anything to drink since noon.

It was getting dark and I wanted to find my way back home. I ran through 9th street of the residential block until I hit the main road, made a left and ran some more. I thought I saw someone familiar on my way. When I turned left once again, I found myself on 2nd street. The houses here had walls around their gardens, the trees were overgrown, and parts of the street were crossed with chains.

We were playing a Civilization-esque board game and since it was my first time, when it came to my turn I asked, “Do I move first?” I hesitantly hovered my hand over my player-piece. “Well you tell me” my father responded. I looked at the player card for guidance and it seemed to be the case that I do move first. The card also mentioned the “Dollar of Shame” for someone who settled on the island in the middle of the big lake in the center of the map. “Central Japan” was a rather unbalanced starting location that no one took if they wanted to be respected by the other players.

I was playing as the Scout on a payload map and I heard the footsteps of a Spy nearby. I looked around frantically and picked up a chipped blade to defend myself.