The ceiling tiles are too white.
Ami blinks against the brightness. The sheets under her are stiff with starch and smell of bleach and something faintly metallic. Everything feels weightless, and wrong.
The last thing she remembers is pain. It wasn't the clean ache of a scraped knee, but the slow, suffocating kind, a body shutting down piece by piece. Her lungs burned for air that never came. Her heartbeat stuttered.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Then nothing.
She died. She's sure of it.
A breeze drifts through the half-open window, carrying sparrows and the murmur of voices from the courtyard below. The curtain by her bed shifts, and a thin line of sunlight slides across her blanket. It's warm. Actual, ordinary warmth.
Her eyes find the calendar hanging crookedly on the opposite wall.
*June 1,20__*
Her breath catches.
That can't be right.
She leans forward, ignoring the ache in muscles that feel both foreign and familiar. The numbers don't change. Below them, in small print, is the year. It's ten years ago.
Her fingers go to her face. The skin is smooth and unmarked. She turns her hands over in her lap. No calluses, no thin, clumsy fingers, no trace of the life she lived.
"I'm eighteen again," she whispers.
The words don't feel real in her mouth.
Then she hears something.
Soft, and unfamiliar, and yet she knows it. A guitar, played low and carefully, from somewhere just beyond the curtain.
Her body goes still.
A voice follows. It's gentle, barely above a whisper, and it cuts through her like a wire.
🎵 *I don't know when I started to fall...*
*Your laugh, your light, I remember it all...* 🎵
Her throat closes.
No. No, no, no.
She knows that voice.
She turns her head slowly toward the curtain dividing the room. Behind the thin fabric is the silhouette of a boy hunched over a guitar, unaware of her.
Tousled light-brown hair. Bangs falling into his eyes.
*Dio.*
Her ribs tighten around her lungs.
🎵 *But maybe love just isn't enough to save...*
*...someone already digging their grave.* 🎵
"Dio?!"
It's out before she can stop it.
The music breaks off in a screech of strings. Silence.
Footsteps. The curtain rustles, and a face appears.
Warm golden-brown eyes. A hesitant half-smile. He's young, so painfully young.
"Uh... yeah? That's me." His brow furrows. "But how do you know my name?"
Her pulse thunders in her ears.
*Idiot. He doesn't know you. Not yet.*
She forces a laugh, too quick and too sharp. "The nurse said it. I think."
He blinks, then grins, crooked and easy, and scratches the back of his neck. "Ah. Right." He pauses. "Don't tell anyone, okay? Me singing like that? Kind of embarrassing."
"I won't," she says quietly. "I promise."
He nods, and the curtain falls back into place.
The quiet returns, heavier than before.
Ami stares at the calendar. Ten years. A second chance. And already she can feel how easily it could slip.
Some things haven't changed. He's still too kind, and still too soft for the world waiting for him.
Her fingers twist in the blanket.
*This time, I'll keep my distance.*
Even if it tears her apart.