Breathing came first.
It didn't feel like his breathing. It was too shallow, too fast, as if the lungs were smaller than they should've been. The air smelled wrong, chemical, sour, damp cloth. He tried to draw in more and found resistance, like the chest didn't have the strength to expand.
He opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him was close and cracked, plaster flaking around a light fixture that hung too low. The bulb was weak and yellow, turning everything into something tired.
He didn't recognise the room. Hospital? Clinic? Somewhere that wanted to be clean but couldn't afford it.
He tried to move.
Nothing happened.
A slow panic rose, controlled, reflexive, adult, but it hit a barrier inside him. Not calm. Not peace. Something else: an older, deeper fatigue that made panic feel pointless.
Voices argued near the foot of the bed.
"…can't keep" a woman said, then broke into a cough that sounded wet and wrong. A man replied in a bored tone, the way people speak when they've said the same thing too many times.
He tried to lift his hand.
It rose, small, thin, the wrist wrapped in something rough. His fingers were short. His nails bitten.
He stared at it.
His mind did the only logical thing it could:
Dream.
He wasn't stupid. He wasn't impressionable. He had responsibilities. He'd watched anime in his youth, sure. He'd read light novels late at night when he needed something that wasn't bills and rejection emails. But that was entertainment. Make-belief. A pressure valve.
This….this was the brain misfiring from stress and exhaustion. That's what this was.
His eyes drifted, scanning the room like he was in a meeting and needed to understand the situation quickly.
Thin curtain. Metal tray. A chair with peeling vinyl. A half-closed door. The smell of antiseptic covering something rotten.
Dream, he told himself again, more firmly. I fell asleep at the desk. I'll wake up. Any minute.
The woman coughed again. A long, violent rattle that ended in a gasp. The sound dug under his skin because it was too real, too specific.
He looked toward her.
She lay on the bed beside him, smaller than she should've been, cheeks hollow, skin sallow. Her hair was thin and damp with sweat. Her eyes found his, and the smile she gave him looked like it cost her something.
She reached out, fingers shaking.
"Mar…" she whispered, and swallowed. "Marcus."
Not his name.
But close enough that something inside him responded anyway, like a muscle memory he didn't own.
He tried to speak and only managed a soft sound. His throat was dry. His tongue felt thick.
The man at the foot of the bed, doctor, orderly, someone with authority, watched with the detached patience of someone waiting for this scene to end.
"She's done," he said. Not cruel. Just factual. "You understand?"
The woman's fingers touched his cheek.
Warm. Real. Trembling.
His mind, Marcus's mind, whoever he was right now, reached for logic again.
Stress dream. Grief dream. My brain playing out some story.
But the sensation of her palm against his skin didn't behave like a dream. It didn't smear. It didn't shift. It stayed consistent.
And the most unsettling thing of all was the body's response.
Not disbelief.
Familiarity.
As if this child had lived here long enough to accept the room, the smell, the pain.
He felt a tear form and slide down his cheek.
It wasn't his emotion, he told himself.
Just the body.