Chapter 2

I tried to move.

That was the first mistake.

My body didn’t respond the way a body should. It wasn’t pain. It wasn’t numbness. It was more like I had been downgraded from “person” to “idea of a person.”

I told my hand to move.

It didn’t even pretend to consider it.

I told my eyes to open.

They flickered like a broken screen and decided working was optional.

So I stayed there, suspended in that weird half-state where thoughts exist but consequences do not, and wondered if this was what being a thought bubble felt like.

Then I heard voices.

They weren’t loud. They weren’t close. They were… layered. Like someone had stacked conversations on top of each other and hit play at half speed. Words overlapped, meanings blurred, and everything sounded like it had been recorded in a different universe and played back through mine.

“…You don’t have to…”

“…This is better…”

The words flew past each other. I tried to focus on one voice, any voice, and my vision finally started cooperating, reality rendering itself reluctantly.

Two figures stood in front of me.

One of them was me.

Not metaphorically. Literally me, standing there like a saved file from a time before everything went wrong. Same hair that never stayed down. Same posture that tried to look casual but felt permanently doomed for disappointment. Same expression I used when I was about to pretend I was fine.

He was facing a girl.

Her back was to me, but I already knew who she was.

That silhouette had been burned into my head for years.

Her voice came again, calm, soft, almost kind.

“…You’ll be fine.”

The other me stepped forward. His words came out in broken pieces.

“…Don’t… just decide…”

She turned slightly, enough for me to see her profile.

She was smiling.

Not cruelly. Not coldly.

Gently.

Which somehow made it worse.

“…That was before.”

Before.

The word hit harder than anything else.

She took a step back.

Then another.

“…Wait.”

The other me’s voice cracked. Mine always did when I tried not to sound desperate.

Her footsteps didn’t slow.

“…You’re strong.”

She sounded sincere.

“…You don’t need me.”

The world felt too quiet after that.

The other me laughed, but it was the kind of laugh you make when your brain refuses to process reality.

“…You don’t get to…”

She stopped.

Turned.

Looked at him like how you would look at something you’re about to leave behind.

“…I already did.”

She walked away.

She didn’t just leave. She faded. Each step erased a little more of her, like someone was dragging an eraser across the scene with deliberate cruelty. Her outline thinned, colors drained, until she was just an afterimage in a world that already felt like one.

The other me didn’t follow.

He didn’t move at all.

He just stood there, hands hanging uselessly at his sides, staring at the empty space where she had been.

“This is…” he whispered.

I knew how that sentence ended.

This is where I stopped talking to people.
This is where I decided attachment was a software bug.

The world trembled, like the memory didn’t appreciate being remembered or maybe... I'm the one trembling.

And then something touched me.

Fabric slid over my shoulders.

I flinched, heart jolting, and suddenly the cold of that scene peeled away. A long blue trench coat wrapped around me, heavy and impossibly warm, settling like it had been tailored for someone who wasn’t supposed to exist here yet.

Heat poured through my chest, down my arms, into my fingers. Not just physical warmth. Something deeper. Like someone had reached into the memory and manually changed its temperature setting.

The girl from the memory was gone.

Someone else stood behind me.

Her outline was different. Sharper. More solid. Not fading, not glitching, not dissolving into nostalgia. She felt… real in a place that wasn’t.

She didn’t say anything at first.

She just stood there, close enough that the coat felt less like fabric and more like her presence.

Then she leaned in.

“Enough,” she said quietly.

Her voice wasn’t pitying.

It was certain.

Her hand brushed my shoulder through the coat, grounding me in a way the memory never could.

“You’ve carried that long enough.”

She leaned down, close to my ear, like she was talking to someone asleep.

“Wake up.”

My eyes suddenly opened, vision blurry, and panic hit immediately.

Which was unfair, because I didn’t even know what I was panicking about yet.

My body felt wrong. Not “I slept on my arm weird” wrong. More like “this is not my bedroom and I have been moved without my consent” wrong. My chest felt tight, my limbs heavy, and my brain started firing warning notifications like it had just realized it existed.

I tried to sit up.

Which was a bad idea.

My head spun like someone had flicked a gravity switch for fun, and the ceiling above me smeared into a white watercolor painting that aggressively refused to make sense. My muscles protested, my lungs forgot their job description, and my heart decided this was a good time to speedrun existence.

Okay. Calm down.
You’re fine. Probably.
You’re… somewhere.

Somewhere that smelled like disinfectant and regret.

I heard something.

At least, I think I did.

It was rhythmic. Soft. Persistent. Like someone tapping a table in another room to remind the universe they were bored. There were other sounds too, but they stacked on top of each other until they became noise instead of information.

I turned my head toward the sound.

Or rather I tried to.

The world tilted in response, like it disapproved of my curiosity.

Before I could process anything, something warm crashed into me.

Not literally crashed, but close enough.

Something wrapped around my upper body, sudden and firm, pressing me back into whatever I was lying on. My brain short-circuited, cycling through several possible explanations in rapid succession:

I am being kidnapped.

I am hallucinating.

This is a new kind of therapy that nobody told me about.

But then I registered the warmth.

This wasn’t some imagined comfort. This was someone warm and breathing, arms wrapped around me with a grip that felt careful in the way people get when they’re afraid to let go.

And it felt… nice.

Which was suspicious.

My panic didn’t disappear, but it got quieter, like someone turned down the volume slider. My body stopped trying to eject itself from reality and instead decided to accept the unsolicited comfort package.

I stayed still.

Partly because moving felt like a terrible idea, and partly because being held felt like something I hadn’t unlocked in years and didn’t want to uninstall immediately.

My vision slowly, reluctantly, started to cooperate.

White ceiling.
White walls.
Tube-like things attached to my arm.
A bed that was definitely not mine.

And blonde hair.

Right in front of my face.

My brain, ever the responsible manager, started a list.

Okay. Blonde people I know.

Let’s see.

One…
Two…
Nope, she dyed it back to black.
One again.
Oh. There’s only one.

“…Charlotte?”

The arms around me stiffened.

Then slowly, reluctantly, they loosened.

She pulled back just enough for me to see her.

Charlotte sat there, still leaning over me, hands gripping the front of my hospital gown like she needed proof I was real. Her eyes were red, cheeks flushed, expression somewhere between relief, panic, and the kind of crying people do when they don’t want anyone to notice.

She was wearing our school uniform.

Which raised several questions that my brain politely decided to postpone.

She stared at me like I had just respawned in front of her.

“…Thank god you're still here,” she whispered.

Her voice shook.

And for a second, I forgot how to breathe again.

Just before I could figure out what to say, there was a knock.

It wasn’t polite. It wasn’t hesitant. It was more like someone knocked and immediately decided doors were optional.

The door swung open, and a small missile entered the room.

“Big sis!”

A blonde blur bolted in, carrying a stuffed rabbit that looked like it had survived multiple wars and at least one washing machine incident. She ran straight past the nurse-shaped reality and launched herself at Charlotte.

Charlotte caught her easily, like this was a daily occurrence.

“There you are,” Charlotte said, voice softening into something that sounded almost domestic. “How was school?”

The girl beamed, clinging to Charlotte’s uniform like it was a climbing wall. “We had art today! I drew a dog but it looked like a potato!”

“That’s still impressive,” Charlotte laughed quietly and patted her head. “Potatoes are difficult.”

I watched them, unsure why the scene felt so… complete.

Charlotte kept patting her head, gentle and rhythmic, like she was manually installing calm into the child’s system.

Then the girl noticed me.

She froze mid-potato-story.

Her eyes widened, and she immediately ducked behind Charlotte, peeking out like a cautious NPC triggered by a player entering the room. She gripped Charlotte’s sleeve, the rabbit dangling from her other hand.

Charlotte noticed and turned, following her gaze.

“Oh,” she said, smiling. “He’s awake.”

The girl peeked again.

Then again.

Then fully stared, like I was a pop-up notification she wasn’t sure she should click.

Charlotte gently nudged her forward. “Go on.”

She shuffled toward me, each step cautious, like I was a side quest with a warning label. When she reached the side of my bed, she bowed so fast I thought she might clip through the floor.

“I-I’m sorry!” she blurted out.

I blinked. “For what?”

She squeezed the rabbit like it was a stress ball issued by destiny. “Big sis said you got hurt because of me. You saved me. I didn’t see the car and—”

Her sentence collapsed into crying.

Not dramatic crying. Not anime crying. Just quiet, messy crying, like the emotion hit her all at once and her system crashed. She tried wiping her eyes with the rabbit. The rabbit was emotionally unprepared for this responsibility.

Charlotte knelt beside her immediately. “Lilia, it wasn’t your fault.”

She patted her head again, the same calm, steady motion as before.

Lilia cried harder.

I stared at her, brain buffering.

This was not in the tutorial.

So I copied Charlotte.

Clumsily.

My hand hovered for a second like it was asking the universe for permission, then landed on Lilia’s head. I patted it, awkwardly, like I was trying to defuse a bomb using gentle gestures.

“…It’s not your fault,” I said.

My voice sounded smaller than I expected.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. Adults are supposed to look both ways. Kids are supposed to… draw potato dogs.”

She sniffed. I considered that progress.

I kept patting her head, hoping this was how emotional healing worked and not how you accidentally unlocked a lifelong attachment questline.

“You’re okay,” I added. “That’s what matters.”

She nodded, still teary, still gripping the rabbit like it was her last save file.

Then—

THUD.

The sound was sharp. Loud. Heavy.

Like someone had just lost an argument with gravity.

I flinched.

Lilia flinched.

Charlotte stood up.

“Oh,” she said, a little too quickly. “I hit the chair. Sorry.”

The chair was several steps away.

But sure.

Chairs are known to sneak up on people.

She straightened her uniform and walked toward the window, her expression calm again, like nothing unusual had happened and furniture-related incidents were just part of her daily routine.

I looked at Lilia.

She looked at Charlotte.

Then she took a tiny step closer to my bed.

And somehow, that felt like a bigger responsibility than waking up.