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Drowning in the sea of regrets.

  The heat came first.

  Thick, cloying. It clung to his skin like wet fabric. Kun tossed weakly beneath the blanket, limbs heavy, soaked with sweat. His thoughts slurred into static.

  He thought he’d heard his mother’s voice. But it felt like a dream.

  Wasn’t she standing in the room? Didn’t she… say something?

  But now, the light was gone. The window was dark. The air unmoving.

  Only Sai’s hand remained—a cool, patient weight resting against his forehead.

  “You’re burning up,” Sai whispered.

  Kun’s eyes fluttered open, and for a moment, he saw only ceiling. A strange shadow stretched across it, spindly like fingers. He blinked again.

  Sai sat beside the bed, head tilted, watching him.

  “Did you have a bad dream?” Sai asked. His voice was soft. Too soft.

  “I… don’t know,” Kun mumbled. His throat was dry. His hip throbbed. The cold sweat across his body did nothing to soothe the internal fire spreading through him.

  Sai leaned closer. “Your mom isn’t coming.”

  Kun turned his head. “She… she was here.”

  Sai’s smile was calm. “She was. But she left again. She’s always leaving you, isn’t she?”

  “That’s not… that’s not true.”

  “But it is.” Sai’s voice darkened. “She left this morning. Even when you were in pain. She said she 'd be quick but how long did you wait?”

  “She works,” Kun whispered.

  “She forgets you,” Sai replied.

  Something crawled up the walls behind him. Long shadows slithered like vines, tendrils twisting along the corners of the ceiling.

  “You’re easy to forget, aren’t you?”

  Kun flinched.

  “That’s why the other kids hated you. That’s why no one came to see you today. No one but me.”

  The room pulsed. The air bent. Kun felt his fingers twitch weakly at his sides.

  “I didn’t forget,” Sai whispered. “I never will.”

  Kun’s head throbbed. His vision blurred.

  “I brought you something, remember?” Sai lifted the grape drink can again and held it to Kun’s lips. “Just a little more.”

  Kun turned his face away, eyes filled with fear. “No… there were worms…”

  Sai’s expression didn’t change. But his eyes darkened.

  “There weren’t. You’re imagining things again. Like the face in the wall. Like your fever.”

  He leaned closer.

  “You need me, Kun. You were crying earlier. Don’t you remember? I heard it. I’m the only one who listens.”

  Sai reached out, stroking Kun’s sweat-damp hair with icy fingers.

  “I’ll stay. Forever, if you want me to.”

  Kun wanted to scream. But his voice wouldn’t come.

  The shadows on the wall thickened—mouths opening without sound, eyes blinking slowly from the wallpaper.

  And in the distance, just beyond the door, he thought he heard his mother screaming.

  But the door stayed shut.

  And Sai kept smiling.

  The room tilted.

  Or maybe it sank. The bed beneath him melted into a shapeless dark, and the walls stretched too tall, like a cathedral in a nightmare.

  Kun blinked once—and suddenly, everything was wrong.

  His ceiling was no longer the ceiling. It was sky—gray, cloudless, infinite. His bed was floating on something wet, the sheets now soaked through like a raft. Dripping. Everything was dripping.

  He sat up, but his body no longer hurt.

  In fact, it didn’t feel like his at all.

  “Hello again,” a voice cooed.

  Sai was standing in the middle of the endless gray water, not soaked, not cold. He looked the same… at first. But Kun’s eyes adjusted—his limbs were too long, his face too symmetrical, like a painting with the eyes painted on the inside.

  Sai tilted his head, smiling.

  “This place is familiar to you,” he said.

  Kun’s mouth was dry. “Where are we?”

  “We’re home,” Sai whispered.

  Kun tried to stand, but the water was too deep, too thick. It pulled at him—not with gravity, but memory. Every step made his chest ache.

  “I don’t want to be here,” Kun said.

  “You always come back here,” Sai replied gently. “You’ve dreamed this place before. You used to cry here. Do you remember?”

  Kun shook his head. But something inside him did.

  A childhood hallway. Gray walls. The smell of antiseptic. Whispering voices behind a closed door.

  And someone saying:

  


  “It’s just attention-seeking. He’ll stop once he gets bored.”

  Kun’s knees buckled.

  He clutched his chest.

  “Stop it—stop showing me this—!”

  “I’m not showing you anything,” Sai said, taking a step closer. “You’re remembering.”

  The water rippled around Sai’s feet, black now—inky, reflecting nothing.

  “You don’t want to be alone anymore, do you?”

  “I’m not alone,” Kun snapped, tears slipping from his eyes. “I have my mom. I have—”

  Sai's smile sharpened. “She’s not coming. Not really. You know that.”

  “No!”

  “You begged her to believe you,” Sai whispered, drawing near. “She said it was just a dream. She said you were just sensitive.”

  Kun backed away—but there was nowhere to run. The sky above him cracked slightly. The color bled out of it like torn film.

  “I was there, Kun,” Sai murmured, crouching beside him in the water. “I remember. You screamed for someone. Anyone. But no one came. Except me.”

  He reached out a hand—too long, too pale, fingers like porcelain needles.

  “And I came because I heard you.”

  Kun stared at the hand.

  Everything in him screamed not to take it.

  But the cold… the cold was so deep now. And Sai's voice was the only thing steady in the storm.

  “I just want you to be warm,” Sai whispered.

  The water rose to Kun’s shoulders.

  The ceiling of the real world felt impossibly far away.

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