The thought of lying to them makes me feel sick. The alternative, trying to explain that I'm a dead stranger wearing their daughter's face, seems infinitely worse.
Gabriel shifts in his seat, clearly unsure what to do. "The physician said you might be disoriented. After a fainting spell like that..." He trails off, watching me carefully. "Is there anything I can get you? More water? Something to eat?"
The normalcy of the question almost makes me laugh.
"No, I'm okay. Thank you." I wipe at my face, trying to pull myself together. "I think everyone is right, I just need to rest."
He nods slowly, but doesn't move to leave. "I've never seen Father so worried."
Father. "He seems... he seems like a good man."
Gabriel's expression softens. "He is. He'd do anything for you. For any of us." A pause. "You really scared him tonight, Cassia."
I'd tried to ignore it while I was having my mental breakdown, but I couldn't anymore.
Brother.
The word feels alien on my tongue. I've never had a brother. I look at him again, really look at him—the familiar shape of his jaw, the obvious resemblance to the man who called me his daughter. Even our hair was the same shade.
It's too much.
The guilt hits unexpectedly sharp. Whoever Cassia is—was—these people love her. And here I am, an imposter sitting in her dress, wearing her face, crying over a father she probably took for granted.
"I didn't mean to," I whisper.
"I know." Gabriel reaches out, hesitates, then gently squeezes my hand. "Just relax. I'm sure you'll feel better in the morning."
I want to believe him. God, I want to believe that sleep will fix this, that I'll wake up and everything will be clear.
But I don't think it works that way.
Not anymore.
The sound of distant music filters through the door again—soft strings turning mournful.
I look down. The ballgown gleams in the lamplight, impossibly real. The red scrapes on my palms from falling on the curb, still throb faintly.
Dreams don't carry over injuries.
Comas don't give you someone else's memories.
And I realized that I felt it—that moment on the couch when everything shifted. When the light changed and I knew, somewhere deep and certain, that I wasn't waking up.
But I can't say that. Not out loud. Not to Gabriel, who's looking at me like I might shatter if he breathes wrong.
So I just sit there, trying to quietly make sense of the impossible.
Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought when I stumbled on the curb. Maybe I'm in a hospital right now, unconscious, and this is some elaborate dream my oxygen-starved brain is spinning to keep me occupied. Who knows how my mind would react to whatever drugs I need to be kept alive.
That would make sense. That would be logical.
Except it doesn't feel like a dream. Dreams have gaps, inconsistencies. They don't have this much detail—the weight of the fabric against my skin, the ache in my scraped palms, the specific way the light catches the gold leaf on the ceiling.
And they definitely don't have memories that aren't mine. I know things about this place, about these people, even though I've never been here before. Like there's another life layered underneath my own, bleeding through at the edges.
"Cassia?" Gabriel's voice pulls me back. "Should I stay? Or would you prefer to be alone?"
I force myself to focus on him. On his worried eyes and the careful way he's holding himself, like he's afraid of making things worse.
He's real. Or at least, he feels real.
"Stay," I hear myself say. "Please."
Because whatever this is... hallucination, coma dream, something else I don't have words for yet, I don't want to be alone in it.
Not yet.
Gabriel nods and settles into the chair beside me, close but not crowding.
The silence stretches between us, full of questions neither of us knows how to ask.
A flicker catches in the air beside him—blue light bending like a haze.
❖ SYSTEM MESSAGE ❖
Transfer Complete… Rebooting.
The music slows. The walls shimmer like heat rising off pavement.
Gabriel's voice distorts, stretching into an echo. "Cassia!"
I try to speak, but light floods the room—white, soundless, absolute.
Everything disappears.
"I'll take her to her room," a woman's voice murmurs from somewhere far above me. Calm. Certain.
Unfamiliar hands lift me in one smooth motion. Effortless. They feel so strong.
And for the first time in what feels like years, I stop fighting.
I let the exhaustion pull me under, let the tears dry on my cheeks, let the impossible truth settle into my bones.
I'm dead. Or dying.
My father is alive.
And I have no idea what that means.
When I open my eyes again, I'm blissfully alone.
The light outside has shifted—subdued, light blue instead of black. Hours must have passed. Maybe a whole day. I have no way of knowing. This body didn't come with a watch. But I could tell the sun was just over the horizon, moments away from bathing the world in a warm morning glow.
I'm wearing different clothes. A nightgown, soft as water, nothing like the ballgown. Someone must have changed me while I was out. The thought should bother me more than it does, but honestly? After everything else, modesty feels like a luxury I can't afford.
The bed I'm in is about the size of my entire bedroom back home. My whole apartment could probably fit inside this room, actually. Talk about extravagance.
What the hell am I doing here?
I'm not sure how long I lie there, staring at the canopy above me, trying to make sense of it all. I've taken to pressing my thumb into the cuts on my palm just to stay tethered to reality—both of them.
Because I'm living in two now.
On one hand, I'm Cassie. Regular office drone with a backstabbing friend coworker problem and a boss who thinks "team player" is a job description. I live alone in a one-bedroom apartment with a water-stained ceiling and barely enough in my bank account to justify having one. Oh, and I definitely died. Or am in the process, I guess. That parts still uncertain.
On the other hand, I'm apparently Cassia. Sister to someone named Gabriel, owner of a wardrobe that could rival a Disney princess, and daughter to a man who looks exactly like my dead father but isn't. Also, I go to balls now.
My brain stutters over that last bit.
If there's anything in this world, or any world, that would make me question reality, it's being told I have a father. A living one who cares whether I'm okay.
The fact that my death is less jarring to my psyche than seeing my (also) dead father's doppelgänger is not lost on me.
It's been a long time since I felt like anyone's child. I'd forgotten how much I missed it…
"So this is how they get you!" I yell into the cavernous room, my voice echoing off gilded walls.
Silence answers. No one comes running. I might be experiencing an insane, exhaustion-induced fever dream in the moments before my brain finally shuts down, but one thing I know for sure: I am an otomeisekai trope expert. And all that knowledge seems to be intact.
Every reincarnation story, every reverse-harem fantasy, every transmigrated-villainess tale out there—I've read them all. Stayed up until 3 a.m. on work nights hate-reading the ones where the protagonist forgives her garbage love interests. Bookmarked the good ones to comfort read over and over again. Abandoned the ones that didn't respect my time.
But I never understood why every female lead just accepts her new world in record time. It always felt like the least believable part—dragons included.
They never stop to think about what they left behind. Never grieve. The story just slaps a tragic backstory on them so the audience won't ask uncomfortable questions about the psychological horror of losing your entire existence. Not going to touch that one myself just yet…
Now that I'm here though, silk sheets gliding across my skin, breathing in whatever essential oils someone rubbed into my body while I was unconscious, remembering the quiet care Gabriel showed me earlier. I'm starting to get it.
I think back to my last day. My last real day, before the couch and the cat dream and the light that wouldn't let me wake up.
Ryan taking credit for my work. Todd volunteering me for weekend shifts because I "don't have anyone waiting at home." The fluorescent lights humming their same indifferent tune while I accepted that my phone was ruined.
When I really think about it, sure, reading those stories as an escape. But in my real life, I still had hope.
Hope that things would get better. Hope that my hard work would finally mean something. Hope that my father would somehow recover, that Ryan would feel guilty, that Todd would recognize my value.
Even when life carved it down to a sliver, hope was what kept me going.
But here's what I'm realizing, lying in this obscenely comfortable bed in a room that definitely costs more than my yearly salary:
Hope wasn't keeping me going. It was keeping me hostage.
Hope was the thing that made me show up every day to a job that didn't value me. Hope was what made me too exhausted to leave, too committed to quit, too afraid to try something new because what if the next place is worse?
Hope was why I died alone on a couch instead of anywhere, or with anyone, that mattered.
And yeah, maybe I'm being dramatic. Maybe this is what dying feels like—your brain spinning elaborate fantasies to avoid the reality of shutting down.
But even if that's true, even if this all ends up being the last flickers of my oxygen-starved consciousness, I get it now.
Why those characters are so quick to accept their new fate.
Because sometimes the fantasy really is better than the reality you left behind.
When I finally surface from my cynical spiral, my pillow is damp with tears I don't remember crying. My eyes feel dry now, scraped raw, like I've been awake for days instead of hours.
I promise myself, right then, this was the last time I'd grieve my old life.
I might need time to believe this one is real— however long I have here, but at least I can figure that out without the pressure of trying to find a way home.
Because honestly? I'm not sure I want to go back.
And this is how—with absolutely zero useful information and a concerning amount of emotional compartmentalization—I convince myself to accept this new reality.
I mean, aside from the obvious, how much different from my old life could it possibly be?
DING!
❖ SYSTEM MESSAGE ❖
ACHIEVEMENT:
Personal Matrix Unlocked!
REWARDS GRANTED:
- Menu Access
- Quest Access
- Romance Access
- Status Access
- Inventory Access
- System Settings Access
DESCRIPTION:
You have completed the on-boarding objectives: Develop new reality axiom. You now have access to The System: Level 1 – Personal Matrix.
Oh for the love of—