He woke up laughing.
Not joy. Not madness.
Defiance.
It rattled in his throat like dust in a jar, bitter and breathless.
The desk was there again. So was the paper.
So were the walls. So was the room.
Of course they were.
He stood up without thinking and flipped the desk.
It crashed to the floor with a dull, unimpressed thud.
He waited. Nothing happened.
He smiled.
Good.
He walked to the wall where the seam used to be and began pounding with his fists.
No give.
He dug his nails in.Scraped the white.Tried to peel it back like wallpaper.
Nothing.
He screamed.
Not a word. Not a sentence.
Just raw, useless sound.
Then he stopped.
And laughed again.
"Okay," he whispered. "Let's see how far this goes."
He left the room.
Or forced himself to believe he did.
The hallway was longer this time. The walls crooked. The light overhead pulsed like a dying bulb. Good.
He kicked in a door.
The girl was inside.
But not the girl.
A version. A shadow. Her dress wasn't burned. Her face was wrong.
She turned toward him, blinking.
"You're not supposed to—"
He grabbed the chair next to her and shattered it against the bookshelf.
"Where is it?" he snarled.
"Where is what?"
He didn't answer.
He pulled books off the shelves.
Tore pages out by the dozen.
Some were blank. Others bled ink like wounds.
He dropped them on the floor and set them alight.
Except—nothing caught fire.
The flame formed, flickered, and then folded in on itself like a story being erased mid-sentence.
He stared at the ashless pages, panting.
"This place doesn't burn," he growled.
"No," the girl whispered, voice low.
"It just forgets."
He turned to her slowly.
"You remember me?"
She hesitated. "Sometimes."
He didn't speak after that.
He left. Or didn't.
The door had vanished.
So he punched the wall.
Over and over. Until the blood on his knuckles was either real or imagined.
It didn't matter.
He wanted the pain to stick.
He wanted anything to stick.
But already, he could feel the edges blurring.
The cracks smoothing over.
The room reassembling.
The story healing itself.
He dropped to his knees.
"Let me out," he whispered.
No response.
He lowered his head.
Tried to scream again.
But forgot how.