January 31, 2026

My vision was dark and grainy, as if the whole thing had been painted uniformly black with graphite. There is no color.

It seemed I had been at school before my consciousness noticed anything, and I was on my way home, pedaling a bicycle.

Quite tall thickets spread on and on, and I am riding on an unpaved road made through them. Probably a road made by opening up part of the thicket and then leveling it a few times with tires or something, and it is bumpy, and it curves here and there.

As I ride there is a puddle ahead and I plunge into it. The puddle is deep, reaching to about halfway between my nose and my eyes as I sit on the bicycle.

I keep pedaling through the puddle, and going further along the road I come out of the thicket. I can see a station on my right. A bus is waiting, and I get on the bus, but for some reason I am in the waiting room.

In the waiting room I try to call out to friends gathered around a stove. I can't make out their faces.

It was a wooden waiting room of the kind where the seats extend straight out from the walls, and outside the window it was pitch dark.

Only around the stove did that dim world faintly have color.