Dilemma..

Shin Sekai Guild has kept me confined here for a week in this hospital. I found out that they did this to reduce media attention. This restriction wasn’t framed as restriction. 
No one said that word outright.

They called it 'observation', and 'procedure'.

But the effect was still the same. 

I wasn’t allowed to leave the ward. 

My requests were redirected, delayed, or quietly denied. 

Even the windows were kept partially covered most of the time, as if limiting what I could see would somehow limit what others could see of me.

The nurses kept a closer eye on me than before. It wasn’t even subtle.

One of them was always nearby, pretending to check equipment or review notes while tracking my movements through occasional glances, when I'm not looking.

Any time I stood for too long, paced too much, or stretched with anything resembling intent to walk somewhere, someone stepped in.

“Please rest.”

“Don’t push yourself.”

“You’re still recovering.”

At first, I complied with their advice.

Arguing would only invite more scrutiny, and it's their job to see my health recover, after all. 

I shouldn't be a burden to them.. That's what I thought but i slowly started to notice the truth.
I had to beat them at their own game and eventually it began to work against them.

Each time they intervened, I showed them how quickly my body recovered.

A bruise on my forearm faded within hours. 

Soreness that should have lingered overnight vanished by the time they returned for the next round.

Of course, I didn’t dramatize it. I didn’t exaggerate my healing, that would backfire to me.
 The last thing i want is for them to lock me up as a lab rat to study.

I just let the doctors see. Let them check again. Let them compare notes they couldn’t reconcile.

The first few times, they looked for explanations.

'Measurement errors..' 

'Placebo effect..'

'Due to the Adrenaline doses..'

After that, they stopped intervening with me altogether. Not because they were convinced, but because they ran out of reasons that could hold up against me.

As the circumstances favored me, I began training my body quietly. If I'm going to use the clock pendant, I need to have a strong and reliable body.

I didn’t have equipment to train here, it's not like they had a gym in hospital. Even if they do have one here, i certainly didn’t have any clearance from the staff to go outside the confines of my ward.

I had a hospital room, a narrow corridor, and most of all, time. 
So I worked within these limits.

I did pushups wherever i could and Jogged down the corridors when it was free. 

People eyed me the whole time, thinking, I'm a weirdo.

But i don't care. 

I kept the repetition and careful pacing between a few simple exercises everyday.

I wasn’t just training to get strong, I'm also reacquainting myself with my own body again.

It didn't go smooth for me. At first, i was clumsy and the exercises frustrated me.

My body never responded the way that i expected it to.

Movements that should have felt natural came out awkward, and badly timed.

The balance in my foot felt off, not enough to make me stumble, but enough that, I had to consciously correct myself every time.

Some days I exhausted myself far too quickly. My muscles would burn early, breath shortening long before it should have. I’d stop, confused, wondering if I’d misjudged my pace.

Other days, the fatigue arrived late.

I would feel fine, steady, and capable—right up until I wasn’t.

The crash always came all at once, without warning, leaving me suddenly weak.
Limbs heavy, vision narrowing at the edges, it felt like my body was skipping steps, ignoring signals until it decided to deliver them all at once when i notice them missing.

I failed repeatedly. Over thousands of time. It's not like i had anything to do here in this ward, so training my body was the only thing that kept me occupied.

Misjudging my own body limits had become routine. I stopped too early, convinced something was wrong, only to realize later I could have continued without consequence.

Or I pushed a little too far, trusting a sense of stability that vanished abruptly, leaving me braced against a wall, breathing through a failure I hadn’t expected to come.

The inconsistency gnawed at me more than the effort itself. I can't learn from feedback that never arrives on-time..

Then, without a clear moment of transition, the resistance and delay in my body had disappeared.

There was no breakthrough.
No surge.
No sense of accomplishment.
I didn’t feel stronger.
I didn’t feel any different until i only noticed it.

One morning, I woke earlier than usual and decided to go for a run. I always come back in time, and I had gained the trust of some staffs. They know that I'm not going to run away from them.
So, they had let me go on walks for sometime now.

The hospital grounds were quiet, the perimeter mostly empty at this hour.

I kept my pace conservative, focusing on rhythm rather than speed, letting my body settle into motion. My breathing stayed even. My running felt effortless, almost detached.

Like my legs just moved on its own, rather than I actively controlling it to move. When my smartwatch vibrated, I slowed automatically, glancing down more out of habit .

15 kilometers.

I stopped walking.

I hadn’t felt strained. Not even tired.

If not for the distance alert, I would have kept going. Unaware that I’d already gone far past what I had set out as target.

There was no delayed fatigue waiting for me either—no crash, no burn creeping in afterward.

The changes in my body weren’t just stamina.

If I wasn’t careful, things that i touched broke too easily.
A glass cup had been broken between my fingers before I realized I’d tightened my grip.
A door handle bent slightly when I twisted it absent minded.
The most jarring moment came when I was fidgeting with a coin—rolling it across my knuckles like I used to—and saw it bent sharply between my fingers.

I froze, staring at it, then slowly released my grip. The coin fell to the floor with a soft clink, warped beyond use. I stood there longer than necessary, waiting for something—pain, backlash, anything—to tell me I’d made a mistake. Nothing came.

My reflection began to look unfamiliar as well.

My jet-black hair had grown longer, uneven and unkempt, brushing against my neck no matter how often I tried to tidy it.

No matter how I parted it, it refused to sit the way I remembered.

My shoulders looked different too—broader, maybe. The posture staring back at me wasn’t wrong, exactly. Its just, this is not who i used to be. The body in the mirror felt subtly misaligned with the image I remembered.

I stood there, studying details that shouldn’t have mattered. The angle of my jaw. The way my eyes tracked movement. The stillness that settled over me when I wasn’t consciously doing anything.

Something had been bothering me ever since I regressed.

It wasn’t the strength. Or the healing. Or even the pendant itself..

It was quieter than that. Easier to ignore if i didn't go looking for it...

The sensation had lingered at the edge of my awareness, undefined, slipping away every time I tried to focus on it directly.

I’d dismissed it as stress before. 

But standing there, staring at my reflection, the answer surfaced slowly—like something drifting up from deep water.

My memory felt… thin.

Not entirely gone, per se.
but, It was unreliable...

When I tried to recall certain moments, there was a delay, as if my mind had to search longer than it should have. Some details surfaced incomplete. Others came back flat, stripped of any resemblance or relation to me.

Familiar names hovered in my mind, just out of reach before snapping into place seconds later.

Some moments slipped when I tried to hold them in correct chronological order which it had happened to me. Not the important ones but small things so far.

I knew some events had happened, but it felt blurred, or abruptly cut off when they're not supposed to be that way.

I tried to remember things quietly, without panic.

Replaying important conversations that I've had in my head today.. Tracing my daily routine.. Recalling lessons from the academy that I should have known instinctively..

They were there. but it came slower than i anticipated.

The realization settled heavily in my chest, colder than any of the physical changes. Strength could be measured. Stamina could be tested. Even instability could be managed.

But this was different..

I turned away from the mirror, unsettled by the thought that while my body was moving forward on its own, parts of me, inside my head is failing to keep up.

Whatever balance I was in now, it wasn’t one I understood.