Iris woke to white.
Not the blinding kind. The soft, expensive kind. Curtains filtered the light into something gentle, something meant not to offend.
Her head throbbed.
She lay still, counting breaths, waiting for the world to stop tilting.
The ceiling above her was unfamiliar. Molded panels. A faint crack shaped like a branch. This was not the infirmary. Not the campus clinic.
Home.
The realization landed slowly, like a careful hand on her chest.
Voices drifted in from beyond the door.
Low. Controlled. Male.
Her brothers.
"…collapsed in the courtyard," one of them said. The voice was tight. Protective in a way that always came too late. "They said she couldn't breathe."
Another replied, sharper. "Why wasn't she brought to the hospital immediately?"
"She regained consciousness on the way," a third voice cut in. Calm. Dangerous. "The doctor confirmed no fever. Blood pressure spiked. Acute stress response."
A pause.
"She was humiliated," someone said quietly.
Iris closed her eyes.
The courtyard flashed behind her lids. Raised phones. Cropped words. The way the crowd had leaned in without touching her.
Manipulative.
Obsessed.
Unstable.
Her fingers curled into the sheets.
The door opened.
Footsteps approached, measured and cautious, like they were afraid she might shatter if they moved too fast.
"Iris," Alexander, her eldest brother, said "You're awake."
She opened her eyes.
Three of them stood at the foot of the bed. Different faces, same blood. Concern sat uneasily on them, like a coat they did not wear often.
"I'm fine," she said.
The lie came easily. Too easily.
Benjamin, her second brother, frowned "You fainted."
"I know."
Silence stretched.
They were waiting. For tears. For hysteria. For her to explain herself badly so they could decide what to do with it.
She swallowed.
"I had a fever," she said.
All three stilled.
"When?" the eldest asked.
"A while ago," Iris said carefully. "When I was sick. I thought it was nothing. Just… dreams. Confusion."
She pushed herself upright. The room swayed, but she held steady.
"But something happened today," she continued. "Something from that fever. From the dream. It played out exactly the same way."
Their expressions shifted. Concern sharpened into scrutiny.
"You're saying you predicted what happened?" one asked.
"No," Iris said. "I'm saying I remembered it."
That did it.
Caleb, her third brother, stepped forward."Iris. You're under a lot of stress. The doctor said…"
"I know what the doctor said," she interrupted. Her voice shook, but she did not stop. "I know how this sounds. I know you won't believe me."
She took a breath.
"But something is coming."
They exchanged glances.
"The apocalypse," she said.
The word fell into the room like a dropped glass.
No one laughed.
That was worse.
"I don't have proof," Iris went on. "Not yet. I know dates. Sequences. Patterns. I know who survives longer than they should. I know who dies early."
Her hands trembled. She pressed them into the mattress.
"I thought it was all just in my head," she said. "Until today. Until the scene at school happened exactly the way I remembered reading it."
Her pulse spiked so violently she thought she might vomit.
The air felt wrong. Too thin.
Words were surfacing before she could stop them.
Reading.
That word echoed.
Her eldest brother's jaw tightened. "Reading what?"
Iris hesitated.
A memory surged forward without warning.
Not the courtyard.
The book.
Pages flipping. Her own hands holding them. The frustration. The anger she had felt for a girl she thought was fictional.
Extra Iris.
The realization slammed into her with no mercy.
This was not déjà vu.
This was recognition.
Her breath hitched.
Faces flashed in her mind. The composed girl watching from the edge of the crowd. The man beside her, distant and untouchable.
Names surfaced like knives breaking water.
The female lead.
The male lead.
Her vision tunneled.
"Iris?" someone said urgently.
The room tilted again, harder this time.
She barely felt the mattress beneath her as the truth finished assembling itself in her head.
She had not imagined the story.
She had lived long enough to read it.
And now she was inside it.
She was not the heroine.
Not even the rival.
Just the disposable one. an extra
She was the girl on the margins. The one whose humiliation was convenient. The one who survived the early days only to be blamed later for hoarding, for selfishness, for not dying quietly enough. She remembered it now. Extra Iris lasted longer than expected. Long enough to be useful. Long enough to be resented. Long enough to die alone when the narrative no longer needed her.
Her breath came shallow, but her mind went eerily still.
This was the warning the other Iris never got. The moment before the story closed around her throat.
She would not get another.
Her brothers' voices blurred.
But she stayed conscious long enough to understand one thing.
She would not die the way the book said she would.