Haru stepped out of the hospital slowly. He wasn't ill... but he wasn't whole either. The world felt far too real—sharp and vivid. He decided to walk. No goal. No thought. Just... walking.
He reached a garden. Green trees, laughing children, and a light breeze—the simple things he had always yearned for. Then, he saw him. Joceka. Standing there, just as he always did. He wasn't a physical body, nor a shadow, but a vivid phantom; it was as if the world had agreed that only Haru should see him.
Haru smiled for the first time in a long while.
"I know you aren't real," Haru said.
Joceka did not respond.
"Thank you," Haru continued, taking a step forward. "If you hadn't existed... I would have been finished".
Joceka looked at him, his tone uncharacteristically calm.
"My role ends here".
Haru's eyes widened. "What do you mean?".
But Joceka began to fade away... slowly. In the moment Haru tried to reach for him, there was the screech of brakes. A violent impact. His body was hurled through the air... then he fell. People screamed. Somewhere nearby, his mother felt a strange sensation—her heart tightened for no reason, and she had gone out to watch over him from afar. But she arrived too late.
The world turned black. And here... everything began.