Alex woke up gasping.
Air rushed into his lungs too fast, scraping his throat on the way in—cold, sharp, nothing like the damp chill he'd been wrapped in moments before. For a few seconds, he didn't know where he was. Only that his chest hurt, that his heart was racing, pounding hard enough that he could hear it, feel it, as if it were trying to break out.
His hands were clenched in the sheets, fingers twisted tight around the fabric. The bed was damp with sweat. The sheet clung to his legs as he shifted, heavy and uncomfortable, as if it didn't want to let go.
The familiar press of the space settled around him; the too-close walls, the warmth that never quite left, the stale air that told him he hadn't opened the windows in days.
Alex stayed still, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for his body to catch up with the fact that he was awake. His breathing came in short pulls at first, then slowly evened out. His heart refused to slow down, but eventually the shaking in his hands faded, leaving behind a dull ache in his fingers.
The smell lingered.
It wasn't the smell of his room—not detergent, not dust, not the faint trace of old coffee. This was something else. Wet leaves. Cold earth. Rot pressed thin enough to breathe in. It sat at the back of his throat, sharp and heavy at the same time.
He swallowed and tried to ignore it.
The ceiling fan above him was still. A thin crack ran along the paint near the corner, something he had noticed months ago and then forgotten. He traced it with his eyes, following its crooked path, grounding himself in the small, ordinary details.
"Sixty-nine," he said quietly.
The word felt strange in his mouth, like it didn't belong to the morning. He didn't say it loudly enough for it to echo. It settled into the room and disappeared.
Morning light slipped through the curtains in thin, pale lines, stopping short of his face. The sunlight looked tired, washed out, as if it had already been used up elsewhere. Somewhere outside, an old car passed by, its engine coughing and sputtering before fading into the distance.
The world sounded normal.
Alex let out a slow breath and closed his eyes for a moment longer than he should have.
His phone buzzed against his chest.
The sudden vibration made him flinch. His eyes snapped open as the screen lit up, the crack across the glass slicing straight through the smiling face of Hatsune Miku, his wallpaper. For a second, the light felt too bright.
November 28, 2017. 7:12 a.m.
The date sat there, plain and unremarkable. The kind of date that belonged to lectures, deadlines, and half-forgotten plans.
A message waited.
Alex stared at the notification longer than necessary. His thumb hovered over the screen. Part of him expected—he wasn't sure what. Another message? A warning? Something that didn't belong.
Nothing happened.
He tapped the screen.
Mark: Alex, the Adviser didn't sign our research paper. He said it has around twenty grammatical errors. Nothing serious. I'll fix them. You can leave it to me.
Alex read the message once.
Then again.
The words didn't change. They stayed exactly where they were, calm and irritating in their normality. Research paper. Grammatical errors. Revisions.
His shoulders loosened without him realizing they had been tense.
He breathed out slowly, the air leaving his lungs in a shaky sigh. Of course. It was just Mark. Just school. Just another problem that could be solved by staying up late and fixing commas.
He typed a short reply, keeping it simple.
Sure. Thanks. Let me see the corrections later.
He pressed send.
The phone went quiet.
Alex set it down on his chest and stared at the ceiling again. The screen dimmed and faded to black. No new vibrations followed. No strange sounds. The fan kept humming. The light stayed the same.
The room didn't change.
After a while, exhaustion pulled at him again—not the deep kind of sleep that claimed him outright, but a heavy, dragging tiredness that pressed down on his eyelids. He turned his head to the side and let his eyes close.
When it took him again, it didn't feel like sleep so much as surrender.
Dreams came in fragments. Shadows between trees. The sound of leaves shifting. The sense of moving without knowing where he was going. He woke more than once, tangled in the sheets, heart jumping at nothing, before finally slipping into a shallow, uneasy rest.
When he woke again, the light in the room had changed. The thin lines of sunlight had crept farther across the wall. His phone was dark and silent.
His body felt wrong.
His chest ached, a dull soreness spreading across his ribs as if something heavy had pressed there for too long. His legs felt tight and heavy, muscles sore as if he had been running uphill. He flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders, trying to shake it off.
"Just a dream," he muttered, though the words didn't settle anything.
He pushed himself out of bed. The floor tiles were cold against his feet, enough to make him hiss softly. The shock helped. He stood there for a moment, letting the chill climb up his legs, reminding himself where he was.
Alex swallowed.
He moved through the morning on habit before thought could interfere.
The bathroom light buzzed as he turned it on. Cold water slapped against his face, sharp enough to cut through the fog in his head. He showered quickly, scrubbing until his skin tingled, as if he could wash the dream—and the smell down the drain. Steam fogged the mirror, blurring his reflection into something indistinct.
In the kitchen, he stood barefoot on the tile and stared into the refrigerator longer than necessary. Rice from the night before. A single egg. He cracked it into a pan, ate standing up, barely tasting it, scrolling through his phone with his free hand. No new messages. Nothing out of place.
He packed his bag with the care of someone afraid to forget something important: textbooks, notebook, charger—checking each item twice before zipping it shut. The familiar weight settled against his shoulder when he lifted it, grounding in its own small way.
By the time he stepped out of the apartment, clean and fed, the smell had faded enough that he could almost convince himself it had never been there at all.