Chapter Text
The first thing James noticed wasn't the smell of pine trees or the unfamiliar luxury of the bedroom. It was the rhythm. As a dancer and someone who was passionate about making music, rhythm was everything. But the beat echoing in his ears wasn't a metronome or a hip-hop track—it was his own heart, drumming at a frantic, supernatural speed. Thump-thump-thump-thump.
He swung his legs out of bed, expecting the usual morning ache from yesterday's dance practice and hectic schedule. Nothing. His body felt impossibly light, yet solid as stone. When he stood up, he moved so fast the air rushed past his ears, and he found himself instantly standing across the room in front of a full-length mirror.
James gasped, staring at the reflection. It was his face—the same sharp jaw and ethereal features the internet always hyped up—but everything was amplified. His skin glowed with a faint, healthy warmth, and his eyes were a deep, captivating bronze.
He looked the same and different at the same time; he felt different, too. He was still staring intently at his reflection when he heard the sound of someone coming. He could hear someone coming? How was he able to hear that?
In the middle of his confusion, the door opened. A very pale girl with dark brown, pixie-cut hair entered his room. She was smiling so brilliantly and affectionately, as if he were incredibly dear to her.
"Hey James, I heard you wake up. Are you excited for your last game?" the girl asked, walking closer until she was standing right beside him. This girl was very short, barely reaching past his shoulder, James observed.
"James...?"
James was startled from his musing. "I'm sorry... what?"
The girl stared intently at him through the reflection of the mirror. She grabbed James by the shoulders and turned him around to face her. Her stare was a bit worrying as she sighed. "Are you okay?"
"What?" James heard her, but it was as if he couldn't understand what she was talking about. He was still processing all of this. First of all, where exactly was he? This was not his room in the dormitory. His room didn't have a massive window, let alone a view of a green forest; his room looked out onto a dense, gray city landscape. Second of all, who was this girl? Why was she barging into someone else's room like she owned the place?
"Excuse me, who are you?" he thought out loud.
The girl's eyes popped wide open, as if she had just heard something horrible.
"James, it's not funny!" She looked at him as if he were hurting her, but James was being serious. He really didn't know who she was. James took two steps back and sat down on the bed. Feeling a bit distressed, he started to worry that he had been kidnapped. By whom? This girl?
James frantically looked around for anything familiar in the room—anything at all. Finally, he spotted a phone. It was a very old model, like the ones in those trendy Y2K videos on the internet. He opened the phone tentatively; it felt oddly familiar. Flipping through it, he found a photo of himself with this girl and a guy who looked a little older than him.
While James was doing all of this, the girl quietly observed him, watching as he finally sat dejectedly on the edge of the bed.
Suddenly, another person walked into the room—it was the guy from the photo. He stepped up beside the girl and wrapped an arm around her.
"I think James isn't joking, Alice," James heard the guy say. "I can feel his emotions shifting from confusion to distress, and back to confusion again."
James perked up at the sentence "feel his emotions," as if he had heard or read it many times before. But on the other hand, a sentence like that didn't make any sense in real life.
"James, I think you should just get ready for school," the boy said to him. As he and the girl began walking out of the room, he looked back at James. "You have a soccer game today. Bring your uniform and soccer gear."
He gave James a soothing look and added, "We'll wait for you in the dining room."
When they were gone and the door was closed again, James started to check the date on the phone. It was June 23rd, 2006.
What? James couldn't believe what he was seeing. He opened the browser to double-check, but the internet was agonizingly slow. Finally, after what felt like a million hours, the page loaded. The date was indeed June 23rd, 2006.
Well, I'll be damned, James thought.
He also checked the location. It pulled up a town called Forks, Washington, USA. Yes, the United States.
Perhaps being in America wasn't even the craziest part, considering the massive time-travel debacle. He took a deep breath to calm down and process everything. The word transmigration popped into his mind—a word he usually only saw in short video advertisements on his phone. It was completely crazy and hard to believe, but what other explanation was there for waking up in a completely different time period and on a completely different continent?
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It took James a while to get ready, but he managed. He left the room—assuming it was his room—to head to the dining room. Surprisingly, he knew the way, as if he had walked it a million times before.
In the dining room, seven people were gathered, two of them being the girl and boy from earlier. James walked over and sat in the only empty chair. Everyone was staring intently at him, making the atmosphere incredibly awkward.
"I think we need to talk, James," a man who looked to be in his early twenties said. He was just as pale as the others. "What is the last thing you remember?"
"Sleeping in my room in the dormitory," James answered automatically.
The man who had just asked the question nodded and turned his head. "Edward?"
Edward nodded in response. "He is telling the truth."
James just watched the exchange passively.
"Where exactly is this dormitory room?" the man asked again.
"Yongsan District, Seoul. Korea," James answered automatically.
The man turned his head toward the boy named Edward again, and Edward nodded once more.
"Korea... as in South Korea, in Asia?" the boy from earlier asked after a long pause.
"Yes," James answered, his voice rising as if it were a question.
The boy from earlier didn't look surprised, but rather accepting. He gave the girl a comforting pat on the shoulder. James just looked at them flatly, waiting for the next question.
"So, do you know who we are?" the man asked, gesturing to the seven of them.
James looked at each of them, trying to recognize every single one of the seven people. They were oddly familiar, but he wasn't entirely sure why. The boy had called the girl from earlier... let's see, Alice? Yes, Alice. And the other boy was Edward, right?
Wait. Edward and Alice... why are those names so familiar? They were pretty generic names, weren't they? But why did seeing them together ring such a massive bell?
"Well, I think that girl's name is Alice, and that boy's name is Edward," James said at last. "But I don't think I know the rest of you."
James saw the girl, Alice, looking at him sadly, and for some reason, an unexplainable urge rose within him to reassure her and chase that sadness away.
"My name is Carlisle Cullen, and this is my wife, Esme," the older man said, gently introducing the rest of the people in the room. "You are right, this is Edward, and the girl in front of you is indeed Alice. The boy beside her is Jasper. The boy and girl near you are Rosalie and Emmett. And you are James. We are a family."
James felt a strange prickle of familiarity at their names, especially Jasper and Alice. Where on earth had he heard those two names together? Jasper and Alice... Jasper and Alice...
James kept repeating the names like a chant in his mind, his eyes darting continuously back and forth between Alice and Jasper as he tried to bridge the gap in his memory.
From the back of his mind, a specific video flashed—a fan edit on TikTok. He replayed the video in his head, and suddenly, he had an epiphany. They were indeed Alice and Jasper. The only reason their names were familiar was because of that viral TikTok edit about himself, which claimed he looked like the child of a fictional couple from the movie Twilight.
The edit had gone viral after a picture of him performing at a stadium in a soccer uniform blew up on the internet. People online hadn't known who James or his group were at the time; they just thought he was an incredibly attractive soccer player. A wave of fan edits had emerged from that trend, including the exact one he was remembering now.
So... I'm in an alternate universe with these two people from the Twilight world? James's thoughts raced. Wait, aren't they supposed to be vampires? What? But if I'm their child... does that mean I'm a vampire too?
James kept spiraling in his own thoughts. Meanwhile, Edward kept staring at him intently, as if desperately trying to decipher the chaotic storm brewing inside James's mind.
"Edward?" Alice asked desperately.
James's thoughts abruptly stopped. He looked at Alice, who seemed to be on the brink of tears. But can vampires even cry? James didn't know.
"He is thinking about you and Jasper... about some video," Edward said, his voice clipped and precise, like a machine. "It doesn't really make sense. The way his thoughts work... it's completely unfamiliar. As if he isn't James."
Edward paused, the weight of his own words sinking into the silent room. "He is James, but... not our James. I didn't think it was possible. I think your son has either completely lost his memory, or, in the worst-case scenario... his soul has been switched." Edward finished in a quiet, hushed voice.
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