The ceiling tiles are too white.
Ami blinks against the sterile brightness, her lashes fluttering like moth wings against glass. The sheets beneath her are stiff with hospital starch, smelling sharply of bleach and something faintly metallic,blood or antiseptic, she can't tell. Everything feels... weightless. Wrong.
The last thing she remembers is pain.
Not the clean ache of a scraped knee or broken bone, but the slow, suffocating agony of a body shutting down. The way her lungs burned for air that wouldn't come. The way her heartbeat stuttered-
Beep... beep... beep...
Then silence.
She died. She's sure of it.
But now...
A breeze drifts through the half-open window, carrying the distant chirp of sparrows and the murmur of voices from the courtyard below. Real. Alive. The curtain at her bedside flutters, revealing a sliver of sunlight that paints a trembling line across her blanket.
Her gaze catches on the calendar hanging crookedly on the opposite wall.
[June 01, 20XX]
Her breath hitches.
[That... can't be right.]
She leans forward, ignoring the dull protest of muscles that feel both foreign and familiar. The numbers don't change.
[Ten years ago.]
Her fingers rise to her face-soft, unscarred. Her hands turn over in her lap, smooth palms upturned like an offering. No calluses. No traces of the life she lived.
["I'm... eighteen again." ]
The words taste like ash.
Then...
A sound.
Soft. Unfamiliar and yet known, like a melody half-remembered from a dream.
A guitar.
Her body locks.
Then the voice follows-gentle, barely above a whisper, but it cracks through her like lightning.
🎵
"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.
Her head turns, slow and stiff, toward the curtain dividing the room. The music comes from just behind it,a boy's silhouette visible through the thin fabric, hunched over his guitar, unaware of her.
Messy ash-brown hair. A faded school uniform sleeve rolled up to his elbow.
[Dio]
Her ribs contract, a vise around her lungs.
🎵
"But maybe love just isn't enough to save..."
"...someone already digging their grave."
🎵
The lyrics are a knife to her chest.
"Dio?!", she blurted without thinking.
The music cuts off with a screech of strings.
Silence.
Then,footsteps. The curtain rustles, and a face peeks through.
Dark eyes. A hesitant smile. Young. So painfully young.
"Uh... yeah? That's me. But..." His brow furrows. "How do you know my name?"
Her pulse thunders in her ears.
[Idiot.He doesn't know her. Not yet. Not in this time.]
She forces a laugh, too sharp, too quick. "The nurse said it. I think."
He blinks. Then,a grin, crooked and warm, as he scratches the back of his neck. "Ah... right." A pause. "Don't tell anyone, girl... Me singing like that? Kinda embarrassing."
[Girl.]
The casual nickname sends a tremor through her.
"I won't," she whispers. "I promise."
Dio nods, and the curtain falls back into place.
The silence returns, heavier now.
Ami stares at the calendar.
Ten years. A second chance.
But some things haven't changed.
[He's still too kind.]
[Still too soft for the world waiting for him.]
Her fingers twist in the blanket.
[This time... I'll ignore him.]
Even if it tears her apart.