Kael didn't sit up.
He couldn't.
His body was too light, like it hadn't learned the weight of adulthood yet. The mattress beneath him was softer than memory and cheaper than anything he'd ever allowed himself to own once he started making real money. The blanket had pilled corners. The pillowcase smelled faintly of sun and detergent.
And downstairs—downstairs was impossible.
Oil sizzling.
A pot lid clinking.
Someone humming off-key like they didn't care who heard.
The air itself carried warmth, thick with the kind of scent that didn't belong in penthouses: garlic and toasted grain, something sweet underneath—caramelizing onions, maybe. Comfort.
Kael's throat tightened so fast it hurt. His chest, the one that had been locked like a vault on the rooftop, expanded in one stunned inhale.
He could breathe.
The realization was so sharp it almost made him laugh.
He rolled onto his side, eyes scanning the room with the frantic precision of a man expecting hidden cameras or hallucinations.
It was his room.
Not the sterile, minimalist apartment he'd lived in for a decade, but the small bedroom with the cracked corner of the desk and the poster he'd once pretended he didn't like because it was "for kids." A cheap bookshelf leaned slightly to the left like it had always been one shove away from collapsing. The window curtains were a faded blue with tiny star patterns, sun-bleached at the edges.
On the chair was a school uniform jacket.
Meridian High.
Kael's gaze dropped to his hands. No faint scars from stress habits. No expensive watch imprint on his wrist. His fingers looked… younger. Smoother. Like they hadn't signed a thousand contracts.
He pressed his palm against his chest. The heartbeat was fast, startled. Not the steady metronome of a man who'd trained himself to never panic.
Kael's mind tried to organize reality into something it could invoice.
This is a dream.
I'm dead.
I'm insane.
I'm—
"Kael!" The voice came again, closer now, sharper. "If you pretend you can't hear me, I'll come up there and drag you by your ear. I swear it."
His mother.
Mira Veyrin.
The name hit him like a shove.
A laugh escaped him, choked off into something that sounded ugly and wet. He slapped a hand over his mouth as if he could stop the sound from existing.
Footsteps on the stairs. Familiar rhythm. Not rushed, not slow—efficient, like Mira had been her whole life. The steps paused outside his door.
Kael froze.
The doorknob turned.
He didn't know what expression to wear. He didn't know what face belonged to a boy whose mother was alive.
The door swung open.
Mira stood there with a dish towel draped over one shoulder like a badge of office. Her hair was pulled into a loose bun, a few strands escaping around her face. She wore an old home shirt with flour smudged near the hem and a pair of pants that didn't match it at all.
She was holding a wooden spoon.
It wasn't a weapon. It just looked like one in her hands.
"Finally," she said, eyes narrowing. "You know, you have a gift."
Kael blinked. "A… gift?"
"Yes," Mira said. "The gift of selective hearing."
Her mouth twitched, like she was trying not to smile. Kael's throat tightened again. Even her irritation felt like a miracle.
He stared at her so hard it bordered on rude.
Mira raised an eyebrow. "Are you sick?"
"I…" His voice cracked on the first syllable. He cleared his throat like he could fix everything with a simple adjustment. "No. I mean—maybe? I don't know."
"Helpful." Mira stepped into the room and walked to the window, yanking the curtains open. Morning light flooded in with zero respect for Kael's emotional breakdown.
He squinted. The sunlight wasn't the harsh glass-and-steel reflection of Haloport's financial district.
This was the clean, ordinary light of a neighborhood that still had laundry lines and kids yelling in the distance.
Mira sniffed the air dramatically, as if diagnosing him by scent. "You didn't stay up all night again, did you?"
Kael's mind flickered.
Past life: nights that weren't nights, just work dressed up as insomnia. Present: what had he used to do at sixteen? Homework. Games. Staring at the ceiling thinking his life was over because he got a B on a quiz.
A normal catastrophe.
"I—no," Kael said, and it came out automatic. Lies were muscle memory.
Mira's eyes narrowed further, then softened. "Kael."
That tone.
Not angry. Not teasing. Just… there. A mother's voice when she was about to switch from scolding to worrying.
Kael hated it. It made him want to collapse right there.
"I'm fine," he said too quickly, then heard himself and almost laughed. Fine. He'd said that to everyone for years until the word meant nothing.
Mira stepped closer and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. Warm skin. Real. Not memory.
"No fever." She leaned in, studying his face like she was reading a chart only she could see. "Then why are you looking at me like I'm a ghost?"
Kael's stomach flipped.
Because you were.
Because I buried you.
Because I wasn't there.
His sarcasm tried to come to the rescue, a reflexive shield. "Maybe I'm just appreciating your… threatening aura. Very inspirational. Ten out of ten."
Mira stared for half a beat, then huffed a laugh. "There he is."
There he is.
The words slid under Kael's ribs and lodged somewhere painful.
Mira turned toward the door. "Get dressed. Breakfast is getting cold."
Kael sat up slowly, as if any sudden movement would shatter the scene. The blanket fell away, and he realized he was wearing an old shirt—one he remembered. A cheap cotton thing with a tiny stitched logo near the collar.
Mira paused at the door, glancing back. "And Kael?"
"Yeah?"
"If you're going to start a new habit of staring at your mother in the morning, please warn me. I'll at least comb my hair."
Kael's laugh this time sounded more like an actual laugh.
"Noted," he said, voice still rough. "I'll schedule it."
Mira rolled her eyes and left, footsteps receding down the hall and stairs. The smell of cooking surged again as if the kitchen was calling him by name.
Kael exhaled slowly.
He looked at the uniform jacket on the chair like it was a disguise.
Meridian High.
If this was regression—if the universe had done something impossible and cruel and kind—then he was sixteen again.
He moved off the bed and almost stumbled. His legs felt longer than he remembered but lighter, too. He caught himself on the desk, fingers brushing over scratches carved into the wood: old marks from restless nights, from pencils pressed too hard.
He opened the drawer.
Inside was a mess of school papers, a cheap pen, and a small notebook with a cover that had a simple hand-drawn knife and pan on it.
His chest tightened.
Kael picked it up carefully, like it might bite.
He flipped it open.
Recipes.
Not many. Just a handful. Some scribbled measurements. Some notes like "too salty, don't trust Senn's 'help'." A doodle of a dog next to the word Brim with a heart.
Kael's fingers trembled.
He'd loved cooking back then.
He'd loved it before he learned he wasn't allowed to love anything that didn't pay the bills.
A sharp bark cut through the quiet.
Kael's head snapped toward the door.
Another bark—closer, louder, offended.
Then the door slammed open so hard it bounced.
A dog barreled in like an accusation.
Brim was medium-sized, brindle-coated, with ears that never quite agreed on which direction to point. His tail wagged so violently it threatened furniture. He skidded on the floor, regained traction, and launched himself at Kael with full-body enthusiasm.
Kael barely had time to react before warm weight hit his legs and two paws landed on his thighs.
Brim's tongue went for his face.
Kael jerked back. "Hey—no—personal space—"
Brim ignored him, as dogs did. He licked Kael's cheek with the dedication of someone trying to erase years.
Kael's hands rose automatically, then hesitated.
In the future, Brim had been gone. Old age. A quiet loss Kael had handled the way he handled everything: a payment, a brief pause, then back to work.
He'd never let himself sit with it.
Now Brim was here, alive, warm, smelling like sunlight and grass and the faintest hint of stolen kitchen scraps.
Kael grabbed the dog's face gently, thumbs pressing into the fur near his jaw.
Brim stopped licking just long enough to stare at him with bright, judging eyes.
Kael swallowed hard. "You're real."
Brim sneezed directly into his face, then immediately tried to lick again.
Kael choked out a laugh that turned into something dangerously close to a sob. He pressed his forehead against Brim's head, breathing in the dog smell like it was oxygen.
"Okay," Kael whispered, voice breaking. "Okay. I get it."
Brim's tail thumped against the desk leg like applause.
From downstairs, Mira called, "Kael! Food!"
Another voice—higher, younger—yelled over her.
"Hyung! If you're late again, I'm not saving you a seat!"
Kael went still.
Senn.
In Kael's last life, that voice had become a courtroom echo.
Now it was just a kid being loud in the morning.
Kael released Brim and stood up, legs unsteady in a way that had nothing to do with puberty and everything to do with the fact that his heart didn't know how to handle miracles.
He pulled on his uniform with hands that felt like they belonged to someone else.
Jacket. Tie. Shoes that weren't polished with obsessive care, just worn enough to be human.
He paused before leaving the room, glancing once more at the recipe notebook.
Then he tucked it into his bag with a kind of reverence that felt ridiculous.
As he stepped into the hallway, the house noises wrapped around him: clinking dishes, running water, Mira muttering about boys who acted like they lived in hotels, Brim's nails clicking as he followed like a shadow.
Kael walked down the stairs slowly.
The kitchen was small. Too small for the kind of loneliness he'd built later.
Mira stood at the stove. Senn sat at the table in his uniform, hair sticking up in the back, scarfing down food with the urgency of a growing kid. He looked up when Kael entered, eyes lighting up immediately.
There was no resentment there.
Only bright, uncomplicated admiration.
"Hyung!" Senn said around a mouthful, then swallowed too late. He coughed. Mira smacked the back of his head lightly with the towel.
"Chew," she said.
Senn grinned, unbothered, then pointed his chopsticks at Kael like they were a microphone. "You're finally awake. I thought you died."
Kael's mouth twitched.
If only you knew.
"I considered it," Kael said dryly. "But I decided your singing on the bus would be a worse fate."
Senn gasped like he'd been stabbed. "I don't sing!"
"You do," Mira said without looking up. "Loudly. And badly."
Senn looked betrayed. "Mom!"
Mira turned, setting a plate on the table in front of Kael.
Steam rose from the food, carrying a scent so familiar Kael's vision blurred for a second. Simple breakfast—fried eggs, toasted grain slices, and a small bowl of something like savory porridge with chopped herbs.
Not gourmet.
Not expensive.
Perfect.
Kael sat down carefully, like he was afraid the chair would vanish.
Mira poured him a cup of tea and placed it beside the plate. Her movements were casual, practiced, loving in the way that didn't ask to be thanked.
Kael stared at the food for a moment too long.
Senn leaned over the table. "Hyung, are you okay? You're acting weird."
Kael's sarcasm rose on instinct. "I'm always weird. You're just finally old enough to notice."
Senn frowned, then nodded like this was wisdom. "True."
Mira gave Kael a look, the kind that said she saw more than she was saying.
Kael picked up his chopsticks.
His hands were steady.
His throat wasn't.
He took a bite.
Warmth hit his tongue. Salty, savory, the slight sweetness of onions cooked patiently. The kind of flavor that required time more than money.
The kind of flavor someone made when they expected you to come home.
Kael lowered his gaze to the plate before his emotions could escape and ruin the morning.
But Mira's voice softened, gentle and firm.
"Eat," she said. "You'll need energy. It's a long day."
Kael nodded once, because if he spoke, his voice would betray him.
He ate.
And for the first time in years—no, in a lifetime—Kael Veyrin sat at a small kitchen table while his mother fussed at the stove, his brother complained dramatically, and his dog begged shamelessly at his feet.
One of richest man in the world had died on a rooftop.
A sixteen-year-old boy had come back to life in a kitchen that smelled like something real.
Kael lifted his tea, the cup warming his hands, and stared at the steam rising like a promise.
This time, he thought, I'm going home.
Not later.
Not when I'm done.
Now.