He sat on the hospital bed, black hair falling into his eyes.
The IV drip beside him dripped steadily, a rhythm he had grown used to.
The ceiling above was plain, white, nothing to look at, so he turned to his phone.
'If I can just finish this level, I can trade for that rare skin,' he thought, tapping the screen with careful fingers.
The game world was small but alive, characters moving on their own schedules, and he liked that.
His arms ached from the needle in his wrist, but he ignored it. The nurse came in, checking the monitors, and he nodded without looking up.
She asked about his pain, and he said, 'It's fine,' though it wasn't really.
He didn't want to explain.
'I wonder if anyone will notice if I level up tonight,' he muttered to himself, scrolling through the chat channels.
People in the game were always online, always talking, even if he didn't really say much. Typing fast, emojis and shorthand keeping the conversation moving.
He liked it better than talking to anyone face-to-face.
He leaned back, legs tucked under the blanket, and opened the e-book he had been reading.
Fantasy, mostly. Stories of other worlds, where he could walk freely, fight monsters, meet strangers who weren't just usernames.
But he didn't read long, his attention always drifted back to the game.
'Just one more match, then I'll read,' he told himself, though he knew the match would stretch into the night.
He tapped at the screen, watching the characters he controlled dodge, attack, survive.
For a moment, he forgot the beeping machines, the sterile smell, the boredom of the room.
The room stayed quiet, except for the faint hum of the hospital.
He had been sick for as long as he could remember.
Since birth, his life had been measured by hospital rooms, monitors, and schedules.
Sixteen years passed like that.
He knew the ceiling patterns better than streets.
He learned early how to stay still, how to endure pain without reacting, how to listen to doctors talk as if he wasn't there.
He was always close to death.
Sometimes closer, sometimes farther, but never far enough to forget it.
The nurses changed, the machines were replaced, but he stayed. He understood, even as a child, that his body was weak.
'I was born like this,' he thought often.
'Born to die.'
At first, he felt guilty. His parents sat beside his bed year after year, tired eyes pretending to be hopeful.
They paid, waited, prayed. He couldn't give them anything back. No future, no normal memories, no proof that their effort meant something.
'I'm just making them suffer longer,' he used to think.
He never tried to end his life. It didn't feel like it belonged to him.
His life existed because others kept it going, so he waited instead. Waiting became normal.
Over time, the guilt faded into something dull. He got used to the pain, the boredom, the closeness of death.
He stopped asking when he could leave. He stopped imagining adulthood.
Games and books filled the empty space. Online games especially. That was where he talked the most.
'Did you see that update?'
'I almost cleared the dungeon.'
'My ping is bad today.'
That was how he spoke to people. Short messages, shared goals, quiet fun. No one asked about his body. No one looked at him with pity.
Now, he waited without fear. He thought less about guilt and more about release.
'If it ends, they won't have to keep watching me,' he thought.
He lay on the hospital bed, phone in hand, playing another match, reading another chapter, letting time pass.
He didn't rush death, but he didn't avoid it either.
He was used to it.
After a while, he closed his game and let the screen go dark. He sighed softly and set the phone beside him on the bed.
He didn't believe in gods. If they existed, they had watched him suffer for sixteen years and done nothing.
Prayers had filled the room countless times, whispered by others, never by him. He stopped expecting answers a long time ago.
Still, the thought came to him sometimes.
'If there is a god,' he thought, 'then there should be another life.'
A life where his body worked. Where breathing didn't hurt. Where he could walk outside without permission, without wires attached to him.
He didn't ask for salvation. He didn't ask for miracles.
'Just one life would be enough,' he thought.
The room stayed quiet. He lay back against the pillow, eyes half-closed, waiting, the thought lingering without hope or faith, only a simple wish that somewhere, somehow, life could be different.
He put the phone down properly this time, sliding it closer to the pillow. The screen stayed dark.
His body felt heavy, heavier than usual. Every breath came slow, like it had weight. He stared at the ceiling for a moment, then his eyes drifted shut.
'Another day,' he thought, without caring whether it came or not.
Sleep took him quietly. The sounds of the hospital faded, the machines blurred into a distant hum. His thoughts scattered, then stopped.
He blacked out.
...
Noise came first.
It wasn't the steady beeping he was used to. This was uneven—voices overlapping, footsteps scraping against stone, metal clinking somewhere nearby.
It all pressed in at once, too loud, too close.
His head hung forward. His neck hurt in a dull, unfamiliar way.
His arms felt heavy and sore, like they had been used for something repetitive and exhausting.
He tried to move them and failed. His body didn't respond. That part was familiar.
'I can't move,' he thought.
That should have calmed him, but it didn't. This wasn't a hospital bed.
There was no mattress beneath him, no sheets, no soft resistance. Whatever supported his weight was hard and narrow. Something rough pressed against his wrists.
His breathing was shallow.
The air smelled wrong... dust, sweat, something metallic. Not disinfectant. Not clean.
Panic came slowly, not sharp but thick.
'Where am I?'
He tried to lift his head. Pain ran through his shoulders, and he stopped. His arms trembled, then went still again.
He realized they were pulled behind him, held in place. Rope, maybe. Or something similar.
People were around him. He couldn't see them clearly with his head lowered, but he heard them.
Low voices. Short sentences. None of them sounded familiar. The language was strange, the rhythm wrong, like hearing speech underwater.
His heart started beating faster.
'This isn't a dream!,' he thought. The weight in his body was too real. The ache in his joints didn't fade like it usually did when he slept.
He focused on what he could feel. Cold beneath his knees. Pressure around his wrists. The slow burn in his arms. His legs were cramped, muscles tight, like he had been kept in this position for a long time.
'I should be dead,' he thought, suddenly.
The hospital room didn't come back. No ceiling. No machines. No phone beside his pillow. Just noise and unfamiliar air and a body that felt unfamiliar.
Someone stepped closer. He felt movement near his side, a shadow passing over him. He held his breath without meaning to.
'What is this...?,' he thought.
'I didn't do anything wrong... Did I?'
His thoughts tangled. Was this after death? Was this another life? The idea felt unreal, but the pain in his arms was steady, undeniable.
He swallowed. His throat was dry. Even that felt strange.
'I can't move,' he thought again, clinging to the one thing that made sense.
He stayed still, head lowered, listening, waiting, anxious and baffled, trying to understand where his life had gone while his body remained trapped in a place that was not his hospital room.
At the same time, the voices felt unfamiliar and familiar. He couldn't explain how.
The words didn't belong to any language he knew, yet they didn't sound completely foreign either.
The accents reminded him of something East Asian, back in his world. Not exact, just close enough to feel wrong.
He focused on the sounds, letting them pass through him. He barely felt capable of responding, but understanding came easily, without effort.
'Why can I understand this?' he thought.
He searched his memory for answers and found nothing.
The knowledge was simply there, settled in his mind as if it had always been.
That scared him more than the restraints.
He tried to remember anything else—names, places, faces—but his thoughts kept circling back to the same sixteen years.
There were no new memories attached to this body. No childhood. No family. No past. Just awareness, pain, and the voices around him.
'I'm fucked,' he thought.
Someone spoke closer to him, their tone sharp, directed at him this time.
He understood the meaning, but the words felt hollow, like they hadn't been learned, only placed there.
'Atleast I'm alive,' he thought, but the thought didn't bring comfort.
Understanding without memory felt wrong. Like reading a language you never studied.
He stayed silent, listening, realizing that whatever this place was, it had already given him something he never earned, while taking everything else away.
For a moment, his thoughts drifted back.
His old body. Thin. Weak and always tired.
Then his parents. His father's quiet presence. His mother's face stood out more than anything else.
He remembered her crying at his bedside, trying to hide it, failing every time. Her hand gripping his, warm and shaking.
"Live well."
She had said it so many times. Sometimes smiling, sometimes through tears.
He felt his chest tighten.
'I'm sorry,' he thought. Not out loud.
He didn't know if apologies meant anything after death, but he said it anyway.
'I'm sorry I couldn't do anything. I'm sorry I only waited.'
The memory faded quickly, like it didn't belong here. The noise returned, the restraints, the ache in his arms.
"Live well."
The words stayed.
'That's it then,' he thought.
'That's what I have to do.'
But the thought broke apart as soon as it formed. His wrists were bound. His body wasn't his to move. He couldn't even sit up on his own.
'How am I supposed to live well like this?'
He lowered his head again, the conviction still there, quiet but firm, even as reality pressed against it.
He didn't know where he was, who this body belonged to, or what would happen next.
All he knew was that he was alive again... and tied up.