Folding the Cover
I still remembered that day.

The wind was unusually cold.

Like always, I had climbed the small mountain behind my neighborhood for exercise,
but that day, I was suddenly attacked.

I still don’t know who the assailant was.

All I can clearly recall is that the faint glimpse of their face was grotesque.

A burning sensation in my abdomen.
The sticky feel of blood on my hands.
My life force rapidly slipping away…

At that moment, I truly realized I was dying.

“Am… I dying?”

Staring blankly at the sky with fading vision, I thought.

I still couldn’t believe it.

Just an ordinary job seeker like me…

Humiliating.

Was I really going to die as an unemployed nobody?

Really?

This must be a lie.

I don’t want to die.
I really, really don’t want to die…

“This is… bad.”

My body no longer moved.
Even the pain grew faint, like my fading consciousness.

And then, in my blurred sight—

Rustle—

[Good grief… always accidents.]

A large, snow-white tiger appeared.

A… a tiger talking?

I doubted my eyes and ears.

A tiger… speaking?

As I stared in shock at the unbelievable, surreal sight,
the tiger asked me a question:

[Do you wish to live?]

I clenched my teeth at that question.

I couldn’t make sense of anything.
How could a tiger speak?
Nothing made sense. And yet—

“I… want to live!”

Desperately.
Squeezing out the last of my strength.

I answered the question.

“Is it… smiling?”

How strange.
I felt like the tiger was smiling.

And with that thought, I lost consciousness.

That was the question that changed my fate.

And no wonder—
because from that single question,
my life was turned upside down.