The beep of the monitor was faint, barely a whisper above the low hum of fluorescent lights. The nurse stood frozen for a second, eyes locked on the screen that now confirmed it—a faint heartbeat. She bolted from the room.
"Doctor! Doctor—he's stabilizing!" she cried out, breath catching in her throat.
Footsteps thundered down the hallway. The doctor arrived, scanning the vitals quickly. "Still no eye response. Reflexes are dulled… but the brainwave pattern is active." He paused, swallowing. "He's in a coma."
Outside the room, the boy's mother stood like a statue wrapped in grief. When she heard the words, her knees buckled—not from despair this time, but from fragile, flickering hope. Her son was still alive. Alive. But unreachable.
She whispered, trembling, "How long… how long until he wakes up?"
The doctor didn't respond immediately. No one ever truly knows.
---
Somewhere else—everywhere else—the world bent sideways.
The boy was on the ground. The crack in the hallway behind the library had vanished, but something had ruptured inside him. Pain, not physical but far more profound, surged like waves through every vein in his body. Memories he hadn't known he'd lost came crashing back in all at once—like a dam breaking and drowning a town that had grown used to drought.
Laughter. Screams. Blood. Rope. A cold hospital bed. His mother's voice. Pills. The coldness of metal.
He screamed, then clutched his stomach. He vomited beside the ancient carpet of the corridor. Tears streamed down his face as he gasped for air, choking on memory and fear.
"H-Help... someone…" he whispered.
And someone came.
From behind him, a pair of footsteps—light, hesitant—approached. A hand touched his shoulder, firm but not invasive. Then an arm wrapped awkwardly around him, pulling him gently to his feet.
It was the boy from the dorm. His roommate. The one who never spoke. The one who always seemed to vanish behind books and windows and silences.
Without a word, the boy helped him stagger back to their room. No questions. No pressure. Just quiet presence.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. The boy didn't move from the bed. He barely even blinked. He simply lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of how real everything had just become. He remembered. All of it.
When the sky outside turned dark, sleep came—not soft, not gentle, but sudden. A black plunge.
---
In the hospital, his heart monitor flatlined.
A nurse screamed. A crash cart was rolled in.
Moments passed like lifetimes.
Then—
Beep.
He gasped.
---
He sat up sharply in bed, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead. For a moment, he didn't know where—or when—he was.
Then he whispered, as if reminding himself, "I am at Orevore. My boarding school… and that person… he's my roommate. Uhh, what was his name again? I only remember his nickname... the Silent One."
The door creaked.
The blonde boy peeked in, eyebrows raised slightly in concern, a small tray with water and a biscuit in his hands. He walked in without a word, placing the tray on the table.
"You okay?" he asked, voice soft like dust settling.
Our protagonist hesitated. There were so many things he wanted to say—but they all knotted together. So he did the only thing he could.
"Thank you… for helping me earlier," he said.
The other boy blinked in surprise. Then scratched the back of his head.
"Heh… it's nothing. I just found you there and… I didn't really know what to say. I guess I never do."
A pause.
"I'm… I'm known as the Silent One around here, haha," he added, laughing awkwardly. "Because I don't really talk much. I kind of just… daydream, you know? Drift off. People say I'm boring."
His voice trailed off, eyes flicking down like he'd said too much.
The boy looked at him closely for the first time—his blonde hair was a little messy, strands falling over calm, almost serene beige eyes. He looked like he lived in the space between thoughts. Somewhere far away, even when he was right here.
"But you still helped me," the boy said. "Even when no one else would've."
The Silent One gave a small shrug. "Sometimes… people like us don't need words to know when something's wrong."
The two boys sat in silence after that. But it wasn't uncomfortable. It was the kind of quiet that didn't need to be filled.