The first thing Clark Kent noticed was that the universe had apparently decided he needed to be humbled. The second thing he noticed was that the universe had chosen mud as its instrument. He came to consciousness face-down in something that smelled like wet earth, crushed grass, and disappointment—the kind of disappointment you could probably bottle and sell at a discount store in bulk. He tried to inhale and immediately learned a valuable lesson: mud is not oxygen. Clark coughed, sputtered, and pushed himself up—then stopped, because his arm didn’t push the way it was supposed to. Not because it was injured. Not because there was kryptonite. Not because he’d been hit by a planet-sized monster. Because it was… normal. It shook. It strained. It complained like it had been paying rent for years and was tired of Clark’s nonsense. He rolled onto his side, blinking rapidly, trying to orient. Above him was a pale sky—clouded, humid, bright in that sticky way that made everything smell like summer and labor.

  He attempted, purely out of reflex, to float. Nothing happened. He attempted, purely out of denial, to float harder. Still nothing happened. He lay there for a long moment, staring at the sky like it might explain itself. “Okay,” he whispered, and his voice cracked, sounding different—higher, thinner, like someone had adjusted the pitch slider on his soul. He sat up slowly. His knees popped. Clark had been punched by gods, thrown through buildings, had bones fracture and re-knit in seconds under sunlight, and yet nothing—nothing—terrified him quite like the sound of knees popping with no super-healing clause in the fine print.

  He looked down at his hands. They were not his. Smaller, rougher, calloused in a way that told a story Clark did not remember living. The skin was tanned from labor, and dirt lived under the nails like it had a permanent lease. He flexed his fingers and they flexed back—competent, practiced. Not Kryptonian. Not invincible. Human. Very human. His heart began to beat faster. He tried to slow it by force of habit—steady breaths, measured thoughts—but his lungs felt tighter, smaller, like someone had replaced his entire respiratory system with a budget version from a different manufacturer.

  He lifted his head. He was in a field. Not corn. Not Kansas. Rice stalks stretched in neat rows, green and gold, swaying gently like they were having a private conversation about him. Beyond that were low hills, a cluster of houses with dark roofs, utility poles, and a narrow road. The landscape was quiet—too quiet. Clark closed his eyes and listened. He listened for traffic miles away, for birds in the stratosphere, for the subtle rhythm of city life, for a scream that wasn’t his problem until it was. He heard insects. Wind. A crow. And someone shouting in a language he knew, and yet—his eyes snapped open. Japanese. He understood it, but it felt like it came from somewhere adjacent to his brain, like his mind was borrowing a dictionary installed in a different person.

  A voice called again, closer now. “Hey! Are you asleep out there?!” It was sharp, annoyed, and worried. Clark turned and saw a man standing at the edge of the field, older, wearing rubber boots and a towel around his neck like an unofficial uniform. The man waved an arm. “Oi! Tak—” he started, then paused, squinting. “What are you doing sitting like that? You’ll get heatstroke!” Tak. Was that… him? Clark’s mouth opened. His brain scrambled through every identity he had ever worn: Clark Kent, Kal-El, Superman, reporter, son, friend. None of them fit the name on that man’s lips. “Uh,” Clark said brilliantly.

  The older man stared. Clark tried to stand. His body stood, then immediately tried to renegotiate the terms of standing. His legs wobbled. His balance was wrong—center of gravity shifted, muscle mass different, old stiffness in places he didn’t know stiffness could exist. He stumbled sideways. His foot landed in a deeper patch of mud. Clark, who had once caught a falling airplane with a smile, performed the ancient human technique known as falling over again. He went down with all the grace of a collapsing bookshelf. “Are you serious?!” the older man barked, then rushed in, boots thumping. He grabbed Clark by the arm with surprising strength and hauled him upright. “What’s wrong with you? Did you drink last night? In the middle of harvest week?”

  Harvest week. Field. Mud. Japanese. A name that wasn’t his. No powers. Clark’s mind latched onto one anchor: help. “Someone—” he started, then stopped, because he didn’t know if there was someone. There was no distant cry, no siren, nothing. There was only the older man’s hand gripping his forearm, and the sun climbing higher like it was clocking in for work. Clark swallowed. “I… think I hit my head,” he said, which was technically true if you counted the part where he had hit existence itself. The older man narrowed his eyes like he could see right through him, like he’d known him for decades. “Takumi,” he said slower now, lower. “Don’t joke. Not like that.” Takumi. Clark tried the name in his head. It didn’t echo. It didn’t feel like a mask. It felt like a borrowed coat—one that actually belonged to someone else. “Sorry,” Clark said automatically.

  ◆

  The older man sighed, exasperated. “You’re sweating like crazy. Come on. Water. Now.” He steered Clark toward a narrow path between the rice rows. Clark followed, mind racing. If this was an illusion, it was detailed enough to file taxes. If it was a dream, his knees were far too loud. If it was another planet… Clark’s eyes scanned the sky again. No strange moons, no alien colors, just Earth’s blue-white haze. Alternate Earth, then. And if this Earth had a Superman equivalent, Clark would have felt it—a pull, a resonance, a sense of the world holding its breath. Instead the world felt ordinary. Not in a bad way. In a terrifying way.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  They reached the edge of the field. The older man shoved a plastic bottle into Clark’s hands. Clark stared at it. A PET bottle. A cheap label. A brand he didn’t recognize. He twisted the cap. The cap resisted. Clark stared at the cap like it had personally insulted him, tried again, and it opened. He nearly cried from relief. He drank, water spilling down his chin because apparently even swallowing required recalibration. The older man watched with arms crossed, looking like the universe’s designated supervisor. “You’re going to tell me what happened,” the man said. Clark wiped his mouth. “I… I’m not sure.” “That’s not an answer,” the man snapped. Clark, who had negotiated with generals and gods, found himself uniquely unprepared for a stern farmer with a towel around his neck.

  “Where am I?” Clark asked, because his brain needed something solid to stand on. The older man stared harder. “Okay. Not funny. That’s really not funny.” “I’m not—” Clark started, then stopped, because he could be funny by accident, and this was not the time. The man swore under his breath and shoved the bottle back into Clark’s chest. “Fine. If you’re going to act like this, we’ll go see the clinic. Again.” Again? Clark’s stomach tightened. This body had a history, a life, patterns. Clark was not just displaced; he was inhabiting a story that already had chapters.

  The older man began walking and Clark followed automatically because it felt safer than standing still. They crossed a narrow dirt road. Gravel crunched under Clark’s sandals—sandals, not boots—and his toes were exposed to the world like an embarrassing secret. His eyes flicked down. The feet were not his either. He wondered, briefly, if Lois Lane would ever let him live down the fact that he was mentally cataloging footwear in a crisis. His mind reached for her. Lois. Nothing answered. No warmth of connection. No shared city hum. Just the cicadas, loud and indifferent.

  They passed a small canal. The water ran clear, reflecting the sky in broken pieces. A pair of kids in yellow hats walked along the road with school bags bouncing, chatting. One of them waved. “Takumi-nii!” the kid called cheerfully. Clark’s body responded before his mind did. His hand lifted in a wave. His mouth formed the right shape. “Ah. Morning.” The kid grinned and ran on. Clark stared after him. He’d waved like it was normal, like this body had done it a thousand times. Clark felt a strange ache in his chest—not pain exactly, more like displacement. He’d lived his whole life carrying two identities. Now he was carrying a third. And it wasn’t his choice.

  ◆

  They reached a small cluster of homes. The older man stopped at the gate of a modest house, with a little garden out front, a worn mailbox, and wind chimes tinkling softly. Home. Clark’s heart squeezed at the word, because home was supposed to be Kansas, or the Fortress, or Metropolis, or anywhere Lois was. The older man slid the gate open. “Inside. Sit. Your mother will have a heart attack if she sees you like this.” Mother. Clark froze. The older man looked back. “What? Don’t tell me you forgot her too.” Clark’s throat went dry, because there was a silhouette in the doorway now—an older woman, small and thin, wiping her hands on an apron. She looked up, and her eyes sharpened with worry. “Takumi?” she called. “What’s wrong?”

  Clark’s instincts screamed what they always did when someone looked at him like that: protect them. But for once the danger wasn’t a falling building. It was a lie. Because the person she was looking for was not standing in front of her. Clark stepped forward anyway because what else could he do? His feet moved across the threshold. The floor creaked. The woman hurried toward him, reaching out, her hands hovering like she didn’t want to touch him too hard. “Your face—why are you so pale? Did you eat? Did you sleep at all?” she scolded, then softened. “Are you hurt?” Clark’s mouth opened. A dozen answers rose up: I’m not your son. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where I am. I can’t hear the world anymore. What came out was the one thing he could say without causing immediate collapse. “I’m okay,” Clark said, and his voice—this voice—tried to make it true.

  The woman’s eyes glistened with relief and suspicion in equal measure. She turned to the older man. “Koji-san, what happened?” Koji—towel man—threw up his hands. “Ask him. He’s acting weird.” The woman looked back at Clark—Takumi—and her gaze lingered a second too long, like she was searching for something behind his eyes. Clark held his breath. There was a thin, dangerous moment where he thought she might see the truth.

  Then the sound came: a scream. Not far. Sharp. Panicked. From outside.

  Clark’s head snapped toward it. The scream was followed by another voice, an adult male shouting words that cut through the quiet like a blade. “Somebody help! Yui fell in!” Clark was moving before the sentence ended. Koji shouted, “Hey! Where are you going?!” Clark bolted out the door. His sandals slapped the ground. His lungs burned instantly. His heart hammered like it was trying to escape. He ran toward the canal. He ran because he always ran. Because this was the one rule that had never changed across planets and wars and worlds: if someone is screaming for help, you go.

  He reached the canal and saw a little girl—maybe six—thrashing in the water, tiny hands clawing at the slick concrete edge. A man was on his knees reaching, but his fingers kept slipping. The girl’s mouth opened in a wet gasp and her head went under. Clark’s body didn’t have time to be heroic. It had time to be fast. He skidded on gravel, almost fell again, then dropped to his stomach and reached out. His fingers caught her wrist. For a split second he felt her weight pull—and his arm shook. His shoulder screamed. This body could not do what his mind assumed it could do.

  “Hold on,” Clark rasped, hooking his other hand around the man’s forearm. “Pull with me!” The man blinked, startled by the command tone, then obeyed. They pulled together. The girl came up in a spray of water and sobs, coughing violently. Clark rolled onto his back, chest heaving, staring at the sky again. He felt the gritty ache in his elbows, the sting of scraped skin, the deep burn in his lungs. He felt alive. Human alive.

  The little girl coughed, then cried louder, clinging to the man. The man bowed his head repeatedly. “Thank you—thank you—!” Clark tried to speak, and his body chose that moment to remind him it had limits. Everything tilted. The sky spun. The edges of the world went gray. As Clark’s vision dimmed, one thought floated up—quiet, heavy, undeniable: I can still save someone. Even like this. Even as Takumi. Even without powers.

  The last thing he saw before he blacked out was Koji sprinting toward him, face horrified, shouting, “TAKUMI! YOU IDIOT! DON’T FAINT NOW!” Clark, in the briefest sliver of darkness, decided that if he lived through this, he was going to wage war on whoever invented human stamina.