The blood on my hands blurred with something older—something colder than even this moment. A memory I hadn't asked for, one that surfaced whether I wanted it to or not.
I was just a kid.
Small. Obedient. Afraid.
The room was always freezing. The lights buzzed overhead like they were judging me, like they knew something I didn't. They'd sit me down, make me face the wall, and then they'd play the same reel over and over again.
Her face.
Sae.
I didn't know her then—not really. Just the image of her. Sometimes she was smiling, like she didn't have a care in the world. Other times, she looked like someone who'd already seen too much. They never told me her name. Not at first. Just showed her to me.
"Remember her. You'll need to."
I used to stare at those pictures for hours, trying to understand why she mattered. What she meant to them. What she was supposed to mean to me.
Then came the tests. The drills. They made me choose. Gave me impossible choices. Put lives in front of me and said
"Hesitate, and she dies."
Even if she wasn't there, it was always about her. She was the constant. The reminder. The reason I wasn't allowed to be human.
They'd whisper things like that into my ear: "You care too much, you'll fail. You hesitate, she dies."
I started to believe them.
They'd turn the lights off sometimes, leave me in the dark with her picture still glowing on the wall. Like they wanted her burned into my mind. Like they wanted her to haunt me.
And she did.
She never left.
Even when I begged my brain to forget her face—to blur the edges and erase the smile—I couldn't. Even before I knew her, I knew her.
And now… now she's in my arms. Bleeding. Dying.
Like they always said she would if I wasn't perfect. Like they said she would if I hesitated.
And yet -
I hesitated