Vane is in bed, lying there with his white shirt left unbuttoned, the bedsheet covering his legs. Sunlight poured through the window without mercy, filling the room with a brightness that made sleep impossible to hold onto.
His eyes began to squint.
For a few seconds, he remained still.
Then the memories returned.
The room.
The map.
The measured lines.
The voice.
Our history.
Vane's body shifted uneasily beneath the sheets. His hand moved toward his head, fingers pressing against his temple as fragments of the previous night surfaced and disappeared again.
The darkness.
The crows.
The pencil.
The words.
He breathed out slowly.
Then his eyes opened.
He sat upright immediately.
For a moment, he didn't move.
He simply looked around.
The familiar walls.
The wooden desk.
The chair beside the window.
The books stacked unevenly where he had left them.
The morning light falling across the floor.
Everything was exactly where it should have been.
Vane's gaze moved from one corner of the room to another.
His breathing gradually settled.
"I am back…"
His voice was barely audible.
He looked down at his hands.
They were his.
His clothes were his.
His room was his.
Vane slowly lowered his head back onto the bed. He turned onto his side, then onto his back, placing both hands behind his head. His eyes moved toward his table. He looked around the room for a while until something caught his attention.
A pencil was lying on the table.
Vane stared at it for a few seconds before getting out of bed.
He buttoned his shirt first, then walked toward the table and picked up the pencil. He turned it around in his fingers, examining its shape and the small marks along its body.
He remembered the pencil from the room.
The one the figure had placed before him.
Vane looked at it again.
"This can't be the same pencil from my dream."
He placed it against the table and looked at it from another angle.
It was an ordinary pencil. There was nothing unusual about it.
Vane thought about everything that had happened since the earthquake. The people who had taken him, the room, the map, the strange figure and the conversation they had shared.
It all seemed too strange to have happened in reality.
He had lost consciousness after the earthquake. He had been exhausted, confused and probably overwhelmed by everything happening around him. His mind could have easily turned the events around him into something that felt real.
That was enough reason for him to believe it had been a dream.
Vane put the pencil back on the table.
For now, that explanation made sense.
Vane put the pencil back on the table and left his room.
He had intended to ask his mother about the earthquake. There were several things he wanted to know, especially what had happened after he left the club and whether anyone in the house had been hurt.
As he walked through the corridor, he looked at the walls. There were a few thin cracks near the corners, but nothing serious. A chair had been moved slightly from where it usually stood, and one of the small tables had been turned at an angle.
He stopped when he noticed the empty space beside the window.
The flower vase was gone.
He remembered seeing it there yesterday.
"It must have fallen."
He didn't bother looking for the pieces. His mother had probably already cleaned them.
Vane continued toward the hall and glanced at the clock.
8:00 AM.
He still had plenty of time.
The door across the hall opened.
Vane looked up.
That was one person he hadn't particularly wanted to meet this early in the morning.
"Good morning, Vane. Your eyes are pretty worn out."
"Morning, Lisa. I had a pretty devastating dream last night."
Lisa looked at him for a moment.
"I'm guessing you want to have it again even in the day?"
Vane frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing."
She turned toward the entrance.
"Can you grab the paper outside?"
"Sure."
Vane walked toward the door, still wondering what she had meant. He opened it and looked outside.
There was no newspaper.
Instead, his mother was standing near the plants with a watering can in her hand.
"Good morning, Mother. I see you're already busy watering the plants."
His mother turned.
Her expression changed immediately.
"VANE! Where are your manners?!"
Vane blinked.
"Is wishing you a good morning a bad thing?"
She stared at him.
Then, without saying anything, she threw some water at him.
Vane stepped back.
"What is wrong?"
His mother calmly pointed downward.
"Please wear pants when you step outside."
Vane looked down.
He froze.
He was still wearing only his shirt.
There was a long silence.
"Huh?"
He looked down again.
"Huh?"
"Lisa!"
Vane shouted her name in fury.
From inside the hall came a burst of laughter.
"Hahaha!"
Lisa had collapsed back into her chair, laughing so hard that she had to hold her stomach.
Vane stood at the doorway, still looking down at himself in disbelief.
"You're laughing?"
Lisa tried to answer, but another laugh escaped before she could speak.
"You—" Vane pointed at her. "You knew!"
She wiped the corner of her eye, still struggling to stop laughing.
"Of course I knew."
"And you still sent me outside?"
"That was the whole point."
Vane stared at her.
Lisa looked at him for a moment before breaking into laughter again.
"Unbelievable," Vane muttered.
He stepped back inside and shut the door behind him.
From the chair, Lisa was still laughing.
"You certainly took your time dressing up today." Vane remarked curiously as he made his way toward his room. "Is there something special happening?"
Lisa turned toward him, her expression immediately changing to one of disbelief.
"You've forgotten?!"
Vane, who had been standing while putting on his trousers, paused midway. He lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, searching his memory.
"Forgot?"
"Today is my first day of college!"
Vane looked at her for a moment.
"That is today?"
Lisa stared at him in utter disbelief.
"What kind of administrator are you if you keep forgetting things?"
"That," Vane said, with a faintly troubled expression, "is something I'm beginning to wonder myself."
He glanced down at himself.
"Can't believe my pants weren't even there."
Having finished dressing, Vane rose from the bed and reached for his brown coat hanging from the nail beside him. He slipped it on without giving the mirror so much as a glance.
"Besides that," he said, "did something else happen last night?"
"Of course. There was an earthquake."
Vane's movements slowed.
"When did I come home last night?"
"You didn't return for a while after the earthquake. I went to sleep since nothing much happened afterward."
Vane remained silent.
Lisa doesn't know when or how I came home.
His gaze lowered for a moment.
Mother must know something.
He did not ask any further questions.
"Speaking of which," Vane said, shifting the subject, "when do I need to attend the party today?"
"I'll come by your office and let you know once I find out."
A party on the first day of college...
Vane found the idea difficult to understand.
I don't see the point of having a party on the first day of college. The world is certainly becoming stranger.
He had never been fond of parties or gatherings. To him, they rarely served any meaningful purpose. They brought people together merely to fill the air with unnecessary conversation, and he had never possessed much patience for that sort of thing.
Vane opened the drawer and retrieved his key, placing it carefully inside his breast pocket.
Then, just as he turned away, something felt wrong.
A strange sensation passed through his body without warning.
His balance wavered.
For a brief moment, it felt as though the strength had been drawn from his legs. His head became heavy, his vision seemed to lose its steadiness, and an unpleasant pain spread through his skull.
He instinctively raised a hand to his head.
What is this...
His body felt strangely unfamiliar, as though it were no longer responding to him in quite the same way.
The sensation of falling grew stronger.
He was fainting.
Before it could worsen, Vane pinched himself without hesitation, forcing his mind to remain clear and his body to stay upright.
The pain brought him back to his senses.
He stood there for a moment, breathing quietly.
The disease isn't showing any mercy.
Perhaps the recent events had aggravated it.
Perhaps there was another reason.
But if last night's events had truly been nothing more than a dream, then there should have been no reason for his condition to react like this.
At least... I believe they were only a dream.