Twilight Bridge: Immersion (Volume 1)

Chapter 3: Departure

"  You know, Mado-kun..."
"Huh?"
"...I always thought you were a kiddo! But I was surprised when I saw a grown man..."
"...Really?! That is the first time anyone's ever said that...!"
"...Honestly, I was a little nervous at first..."
He finally tried to take a look at her face, but there was a strange light keeping his eyes from gazing forward. "Ughh, what the..?"
The light then went brighter, and plunged everything around him as whatever he was seeing faded away.

"Huh?!"

He immediately opened his eyes.
He was laying on a bed with his body facing the ceiling, coverd by what it felt to him as cotton sheets. As he tried to get himself up, he noticed that his body was weaker than usual.
"....Where am I....?" he muttered. "What is this place?"
Trying desperately to grasp the situation enough, he started to turn his face around the room he was in. It was rather moderately large room with multiple beds distributed in two rows. Next to each bed, there was a small table with some bandages.
"Seems like an infirmary..." he said unintentionally.

Wait!, he thought.

"What did I just say?!"

His left palm was on his face as he cleaned every nook and corner of his head, but he just couldn't find the memory of how he came to take a nap in this place.

Sleepwalking? Amnesia?

As those dangerous words crossed his mind.

..No way, he quickly denied it.

I am....Jaden Inferno..... wait, no.... my name is Mado Luqman. Twenty three years old and eight months. I live at The Capital, Uttan prefecture with my aunt. Both of my parents are alive and well, and I've got a brother and a sister; both younger than me.
He felt somewhat calm as his related data came out smoothly, then he pulled out more memories.
Currently, I'm a senior medical student. But as I'd meet the graduation requirement in the first semester of next year, I was thinking about living abroad in the Fall. Yes, I had consulted with someone about that. Was it a classmate? Wait! I remembered that I have friends! Four of them are closer than the others. What were their names? Waleed, Safi, Ekram, and Majd.
He tried to remember more names of his other friends and classmates, but he felt uneasy.
Was that it?!, he thought. It's weird! I feel like I'm forgetting someone really important! That girl from the dream, was it her?! Man, it's like when there's an itch you can't reach! Was she a friend? Perhaps a lover, or family!
He searched his memories for answers, but all he could was bringing her name to the tip of his tongue without being able to catch hold of it. While fighting with a sudden strike of loneliness, he stopped retracing his memories.

As he removed his left hand away and saw it, something looked different. "Wait a minute..." he said. "What happened to my hand?! Since when I got a scar on the back of my forearm?" he exclaimed.
"Uhh, the Dungeon!" he muttered.
Yes ......everyone else died before me... but that means...... Jaden the demon hunter, Fortuna, and the Church was all real?! All the time I've spent there wasn't a long dream, he thought. But that's just insane! What's the meaning of this?!
As he listened to the uninterrupted sound of little birds twittering and leaves rubbing against each other on the tree that was near the window in front of him, he recklessly tried to shake off a discomfort feeling which was creeping up from his waist.

He was absentminded for several tens of seconds, then, while being reluctant, he came up with three hypotheses which could sufficiently explain the current situation.
First, it is possible that this place is a virtual world created by an extension of some Full-Dive technology, he thought. The situation and apparent circumstances in which I'm in by now, is a standard fantasy RPG starting scene. However, in that case, no matter what kind of supercomputer I know, none of them had enough capability to generate these ultra-fine detailed 3D objects. It could be said that I have lost part of my memories and the time in reality had already passed by several years, or several tens of years.
Next, the possibility that this place could be somewhere in the real world. It means I am the subject of a crime, an illegal experiment, or a terrible prank, someone dressed me up in these clothes and threw me out in the forest somewhere ...... from this weather it could be Ibb, However, I don't think my country has demon monsters, Dungeons, and weird hunters, and definitely there's no species of metallic green earthworm which could cry 'kyu kyu'.
Then, the last hypothesis, this place could possibly be a real different dimension, a different world, or perhaps an afterlife world. It is a familiar event which occurs in manga, novels, and anime. According to the dramaturgy of those, after this, I would save a girl from monster's attack, listen to village chief's request to become the savior hero, and fight against the devil king. But there is no 'Steel sword' at my waist.
He held his belly as he was attacked by a sudden desire to burst out laughing, after he somehow managed to let it pass, he decided to exclude the third possibility as out of the question as well; even though, it is the most likely. He felt as if he was starting to lose his sanity as well. After all, is this a fake world? Or is it the real world?
If it's the former, no matter how super real the world is, it's not difficult to confirm, he theorized. I just have to climb to the top of a nearby tree and jump down head-first. If I was logged out, or resurrected at a save point in a temple somewhere, then it would be a virtual world. But if this is a real world, the worst result will come out from that experiment.