That day, when I lost everything (part 3)

   When I woke up, everything felt distant.

   I didn’t know where I was. Didn’t care. The walls were white. The air was too clean. My head ached, but it didn’t matter. None of it did.

   They called the place a resort—like slapping a happy label on a locked box made it any less of a prison. The halls were long, sterile, windowless. No clocks. No exits. Just silence. I wasn’t alone—there were others, all about my age—but no one talked. They gave us gray uniforms and took away our names. In return, we got numbers.

   Mine was 16.

   They walked me down one of those endless white halls and stopped in front of a door. The man beside me punched something into the keypad. The door slid open with a low hiss.

   Inside was a bare cell. Metal bunk beds. A sink. Empty walls. Just enough space to stand and lie down—nothing more.

   There was someone already in there.

   He was lying flat on the top bunk, hands folded behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. As I stepped inside, he turned his head, red eyes catching mine for a split second. His silver hair was a messy tangle, and the number 15 was stitched across his shirt.

   Then he tilted his head down, looking over the edge of the bed.

   “Hey, guess we’re roommates,” he said, still lounging like this was some summer camp.

   I didn’t respond. I walked over to the bottom bunk and sat down.

   He shifted above me, rolling onto his stomach, arms dangling slightly over the side as he peered down at me through that mop of silver hair.

   “So, what’s your name?” he asked, cheerful and nosy.

   “So, what’s your name?” he asked again, still trying, voice light and casual like we were in some dorm room and not a concrete box pretending to be paradise.

   I glanced down at him for half a second. That smile of his—wide, eager, way too full of energy—it made something inside me click.

   Talking to this guy would be a pain in the ass.

   So I ignored him.

   He stayed up there a second longer, then sighed and dropped back down to his bunk. I thought that was the end of it...

   Sadly, It wasn’t.

   “Why are you ignoring me?” he whined from below, like a kid who didn’t get picked for a game at recess. “That’s rude, you know.”

   I didn’t reply. Didn’t even move.

   I only closed my eyes, let my body sink into the thin mattress, and fell asleep without another word.