She sat on my kitchen stool as gently as any well-mannered lady could sit.

The flow of her vivid blue Kimono skirt added more elegance and grace in her littlest movements.

She must have been starving, from all the praying that she has supposedly done for the past few days, but she never showed it.

She ate her scrambled eggs and vegetables like a Swan, slowly picking at each bite as if they were pure five-star restaurant delicacies.

For the first few minutes of breakfast, we ate our meals in utter silence.

I could hear the rumbling of cars as the people of Zanarkand started commuting around the city sphere in the early sunshine.

Although she nibbled on each savoring bite of her breakfast, I could tell she wanted more.

Even a bird would have needed more food after all that starvation.

I got up from my stool to grab some fresh fruit from the fridge.

I washed them with extra care, running the cool tap water slowly between my tanned fingers.

"You must be starving. Help yourself to some more fruit." I told her kindly.

"Oh, thank you very much. I am rather still hungry… those pears look delicious." She said softly.

I just watched her slowly munch on ripe pear fruits like a mother watched her beloved toddler until I realized that she was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable with my still gaze.

"Oh… I'm sorry." I coughed in embarrassment.

"I was just wondering why such a delicate and lady-like girl like you would be lost and away from home…" I trailed off shyly.

"Yes. I am still very numb with all that is happening at the moment. Everything… I just can't put them into words… It all feels… surreal." Yuna looked down, mitigating away from my attention.

"It's ok. I'm sorry I lost my temper at you earlier… I was also too shocked for words… when things go too out of control and unexpected, I just end up losing my Blitz marbles." I added what I consider a sense of cheerful Blitz ball humor to lighten up my apology.

Yuna managed a warm, morning smile.

"I think… I can't explain or ask everything right now… I need more time to re-collect my scattered memories… I think the more precisely I remember, the better I can go back to where I belong. I'm sorry… I am a burden… please bear with me… for the time being…" Yuna's soft and sincere apology drove a playful domination in my heart.

I felt like I wanted to help her more, to protect her, to do whatever it took to get her back to her home.

"You don't need to apologize. I understand. You can stay here as long as you need and you can take your time to tell me what you remember. Hopefully, we can both think up a solution in no time!" I cheered her on with my high-pitched and restless chant.

"Yes!" her eyes lit up slowly like fireworks in the night sky.

"Alrighty! I don't have to work today, so I can help you out with whatever you need today! Be it questions or a tour, Tidus of the Zanarkand Abes at your service!" I fist pumped the air to show my happy-go-lucky salutation towards her.

"I can't be thankful enough, Tidus." She smiled.

"But what do you mean… 'Zanarkand Abes'? Wasn't… wasn't Zanarkand… destroyed by Sin a thousand years ago?" Yuna approached her words carefully, as if each word was a taboo subject in itself.

I didn't know how to respond to this ludicrous idiocy.

At first, I thought she was telling a very dry joke.

Or that she was just being plainly sarcastic out of sheer bland humor.

But the way she carefully decelerated her words at the speed of a turtle, told me that she was serious.

Dead serious.

Second, the synapses in my head responded with the possibility of Yuna actually being a total maniac.

Maybe she was really thick, just as I first presumed her to be.

When she told me she literally transported from a temple from an unknown island, to sleeping soundly in my bed as if it were her own bedroom, I initially eyed her with immense skepticism that she was either lying or that she was totally insane.

Could this girl be one of those beautiful, but mental patients who ran away from a psychiatric hospital institution, who thought of her previous life as a series of fantasies that no one else believed in?

I mean, just look at the way she is dressed.

Who wears traditional, ancient outfits like that nowadays, in this time and era?

But as I focused on her attire, I knew she wasn't the type to be dressed in tacky cosplay outfits as a living joke.

Once I defamiliarized my perception, the fine details of the pink cherry blossoms on the blue fabric of her dress, to the expensive white silk of her upper garment in total communicated subconsciously in my head that she was authentic.

Moreover, the reserved body language that she portrayed ever so feminine, reminded me once more that she wasn't the mentally unstable type.

So what was she saying, if she wasn't either mental or dishonest about Zanarkand being destroyed a thousand years ago?

Was she talking allegorically, figuratively, spiritually or religiously?

She does seem like the hard-core religious type, from what she has told me about 'praying for days'.

But why would she suddenly speak to me in terms of symbols or metaphors of hidden meanings in the midst of breakfast?

It was just absurd.

None of this made any sense.

That could only mean one thing; what she just asked was what she meant literally.

I just stood there foolishly, with my mouth open in aghast like a goldfish.

I probably appeared like a helpless schoolboy who had just lost his mother as I ran the thousands of possible ways of interpreting the real meaning behind Yuna's question.

Zanarkand, my city, my home, all that I had ever known and all that I had ever been in.

My whole existence was defined by Zanarkand; all my childhood memories of going to school that lay in the heart of the city, the cheering and chanting of my name and my team in the Blitz ball arena…

"Abes! Abes! Zanarkand Abes! Abomination and world domination of the Abes!" the chant from the millions of spectators, as we scored a victorious underwater goal, echoed through my head as clearly as I heard the birds chirping in the morning sunrise.

The memories of Zanarkand that I could feel with the senses of physical touch, scent, vision, and sound vividly reformed in my mind.

They were too real not to be true.

The mental, physical, cultural and social connection I had to Zanarkand straight from birth was too real in my mind to be a wasteland of rubble or a destruction of any kind.

But if…

Only if… if what Yuna just said now was true in any way…

Where am I?

Who am I?