"I'm already on my way back to Portland, my dear little Nick. I know you have a lot of questions. Don't let your imagination run wild. Wait until I get back."
Aunt Mary hung up after leaving him with those words. When Nick tried calling her again, he discovered that her phone had been switched off.
Sighing inwardly, he found some dumplings he had made earlier in the refrigerator. After filling his stomach, he took a shower, then lay in bed counting sheep for ages, but still struggled to fall asleep.
In the end, Nick had to punch himself to activate the skill called "Fake Death Revival." Only then did he successfully drift off to sleep. By the time he opened his eyes again, the sun was already setting outside.
Having exercised regularly since childhood, Nick had almost never fallen ill over the years and had rarely been injured, but he still often used this method to activate "Fake Death Revival."
The skill was extremely useful. Whenever Nick experienced any physical discomfort, even something as minor as a scratch, lying down in bed would bring up a prompt in his mind asking whether he wanted to enter a state of suspended animation. A simple confirmation let him sleep like the dead.
He never spent the night away from home or brought girls back anyway, so he did not have to worry about frightening anyone with a state in which even his heartbeat was almost nonexistent.
And the feeling of being fully restored every time he woke from suspended animation was fantastic. Even his mood would improve a little.
After typing up a report at his computer and sending it to Inspector Raynard, Nick materialized the Magic Movie Ticket in his palm again. He admired its intricate patterns for a moment, then decisively tore it in two.
Golden light flashed from the torn edges of the ticket, gathered into a ball, then burst apart, engulfing Nick in an instant.
The sound of waves washed into his ears, and a wet sensation on his cheek instantly brought Nick to his senses. He opened his eyes to find a large golden retriever panting heavily as it licked his hair.
"Bad dog." Nick pushed the dog's big head away and sat up on the beach. A man and woman's laughter came from nearby. Looking up, he saw the Port of Los Angeles close at hand.
He had never been to Los Angeles, but letters including "LOS" were clearly visible on the port's giant gantry cranes.
He was clearly not the dog's owner, because during the brief moment he sat there in a daze, the golden retriever bounded away without a trace of reluctance toward its owners-the man and woman strolling hand in hand along the shore-and never looked back.
"A meteor let out a shriek of pain at the end of its life..."
Nick picked up the notebook beside him. The rather pretentious English poem on its pages gave him goosebumps. At the same time, a set of false memories devoid of any detail appeared in his mind.
In this world, his name was Levi Kane, a retired sniper from America's Marine Corps. He now had no family or friends and was entirely alone. Suffering from severe PTSD and depression, he had just ended his life on this beach.
That was it?
Nick quickly reviewed the memories in his mind but found little of substance. The original owner's life had been even duller and more boring than his own previous life.
A typical American boy from a decent family, he had grown up on a small ranch in Oregon, was a good shot, and joined the Marines at eighteen. After that, it had been nothing but killing, killing, and more killing.
As a sniper, the man had quite an "illustrious" record, but civilians and children were not uncommon among his more than one hundred confirmed kills.
So, at thirty, unable to endure his inner torment any longer, "Rivi" had voluntarily retired from the military and gone to work for private military contractors instead.
Although his so-called security work still inevitably left blood on his hands, at least he could choose not to fire on civilian targets, unlike in the military, where disobeying orders would get him court-martialed.
But even so, "Rivi's" kill count soon exceeded two hundred.
Of course, that might also have been why the man had worked for more than eleven private military contractors in the mere four years since leaving the military.
All his employers seemed to have mixed opinions of him: outstanding at carrying out assignments and an excellent marksman, but picky about his work and far too "principled" in how he operated.
Yet this "Rivi" had ultimately failed to recover from his PTSD. After psychologists employed by several private military companies assessed him as "unfit for missions," he had received almost no new work for half a year.
Nick reached out, picked up an M1911 from the sand, and slipped it back into its holster. The lingering warmth of the gun indicated that it had been fired not long ago.
This "Rivi" had chosen to end his life a few minutes earlier, after which Nick had traveled into this world and taken his place.
Strangely, however, Nick was certain that this body was still his own. Just as in the previous two movies he had experienced, he had traveled here in the flesh.
Yet there was neither a corpse nor any blood on the beach. Only those memories and the handgun with one round missing from its magazine told him that the original owner had killed himself.
"What an interesting way to travel between worlds."
Nick pulled the original owner's identification out of his pocket and, unsurprisingly, found his own photograph on it. Yet he was certain that the original owner in those memories had had absolutely nothing to do with the word "handsome."
He took out his phone as well and checked the date and time: June 5, 2024. A peculiar sense of displacement in time and space immediately washed over him.
The incident in his previous life had happened in the summer of 2025. When he had been reborn as the six-year-old Nick, fewer than two years had passed since that great red bear in the East had come crashing down and broken apart.
And just a second ago, he had still been in Portland in 2008, yet now he was on the West Coast in 2024. No wonder the Magic Movie Ticket had chosen him as its host. An ordinary person really would have struggled to adapt to such chaotic shifts through time and space.
Fortunately, Nick had even been to outer space in 2122. He quickly adjusted his mindset and began searching for other useful clues.
He was quite certain that this "Rivi" was not the protagonist of any movie he knew, which left only two possibilities: either he was an insignificant minor character, or this world belonged to a movie Nick had never seen.
Based on his previous experiences, the movie ticket should give him a mission after the initial memories were implanted. Nick hoped to glean some clues from its objective.
After all, he had failed to complete his mission even in Alien, whose plot he knew. If he entered a completely unfamiliar movie like the second time, his chances of completing the mission would be slim.
Just then, the phone in his hand suddenly beeped with a text notification. Nick unlocked it with his fingerprint and saw a message from a number that was not in his contacts.
"Report to Camp Pendleton Base at 1 p.m. on June 7. An SUV will pick you up at noon."
The message was signed with a long string of capitalized English initials. Nick could not make sense of them, but that was not much of a problem.
Camp Pendleton Base was the headquarters of the First Marine Expeditionary Force and was located in California. Whoever had sent the message clearly had ties to the military.
Immediately afterward, a message entered Nick's mind: "Mission objective: save the world; secondary mission objective: save the female lead."
Before you continue