"Some places test your body. Others test your mind. The ones that rewrite you start with silence.
People talk about scars like they mean something.
Strength. Survival. Pain overcome.
Most of mine don't mean shit.
They're just there—stamped into skin the way rain etches stone: slow, quiet, and without asking.
Some days I forget how I got them.
Other days, I remember in too much detail.
The belt.
The silence.
The careful footsteps.
The way the air used to shift when the door creaked open—how even the walls seemed to flinch.
Those things don't leave you. They settle in.
They dig a foundation in your bones and start decorating.
I used to flinch at every voice above a whisper. Used to think if I stayed still
enough, small enough, maybe he'd forget I existed.
He didn't.
When he finally stopped, it wasn't because he grew out of it.
It was because he bled out.
I should've felt free.
I didn't.
I've learned not to hope. Hope's a soft lie—warm hands reaching out in a blizzard. Looks good until you realize it's just fog and frostbite.
Good days fade like breath on glass.
And what's left behind is colder than before.
I don't expect warmth anymore.
You stop expecting it when silence stops being quiet and starts being surgical.
But life doesn't care about the systems you build to stay untouched.
And one day—without asking—it rips them away."
——
The apartment above the laundromat always smells like detergent and warm metal. I don't mind it. It's clean the way machines are clean—function over feeling.
Better than places that smell like people.
The wall clock's been stuck at 5:12 for months.
I still check it.
"Still broken," I mutter, like it might answer.
Breakfast is coffee and a smoke while the heater pretends it's going to work.
It flickers like it's thinking about catching fire, then gives up again.
"You're consistent, at least."
The shelf by the door's got paint cans labeled in my handwriting:
Living Room, Unit 4C. Back Hall, Redwood Flats.
Not memories. Just layers I buried over someone else's past.
I swipe a finger through the dust on one.
Still here.
Eleven minutes to walk to work. Eight if I don't stop at the mural I painted—blue swirling upward like it wanted to be more than wall paint.
It's peeling near the bottom now.
"Should've sealed it."
I don't fix it.
Just walk past the cracked eye in the center. Spiderweb fracture right through the iris.
I don't remember painting that part.
——
The shop smells like pigment and age.
Fan decks. Sample walls. Machines that cough themselves awake.
This place is the only one I know that still has color.
I flip the lights. Tie the apron.
Someone left the sample book open again.
I close it. Again.
"Every time."
Pigment dust clings to the counter like regret. I brush it off with the side of my hand.
Customers drift in like ghosts pretending they're not.
A woman holds up two swatches. "Is this one warmer?"
I glance. "Depends on your taste."
She doesn't thank me.
Guy slides a paint chip across the counter. "Flat okay?"
"For showing every fingerprint you've ever made? Sure."
He doesn't laugh. I don't care.
Lunch is a cigarette out back with my spine against the wall. No one joins.
I don't ask.
The day ticks forward until closing. I'm the last one here, as usual.
The quiet that follows isn't strange.
It's the only part of the day that feels honest.
"Wish it was this quiet during business hours," I say aloud.
And then I freeze.
Not because of the silence—but because of what isn't inside it.
Stillness.
Like the air forgot how to breathe.
I don't move. Don't even blink.
Something flickers in my peripheral—not the lights. Something else.
I turn.
She's already there.
Barefoot.
Center of the store.
I didn't hear the door. Didn't hear footsteps.
She's just… there.
Black dress draped like it grew out of her skin. Arms loose. Hands empty. Face blank.
Except for the smile.
It stretches too far. Too still.
Like someone drew it on with a knife.
"Are you Averic?" she asks.
Her voice is soft.
But not gentle.
I can't swallow.
"…Do I know you?"
She tilts her head like she's adjusting to gravity.
I blink—
She's inches from me.
Close enough to see the dried blood under her nails.
And then it happens.
Her hand slides into my chest.
Not metaphorically. Not emotionally.
Physically.
No weapon. No wind-up. Just her fingers—puncturing skin, splitting ribs like I'm made of wet paper.
"Guehuek—!"
I claw at her wrist, trying to rip her out of me as blood streams down my chin, but she's unmoving.
Solid like stone. Cold like it matters.
Her breath smells like static. Burning ozone and rot.
"Oh Averic," she whispers, voice skipping like a broken tape. "That's not something you need to know right now."
She leans closer.
"Just go to sleep for now… my dear hero."
I wanted to curse.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to fight.
But the world folds inward like a closing wound—
and I fall through.