"Tuesday."
The word tasted strange leaving his mouth—foreign and sweet, like biting into fruit you'd been told was poisonous only to discover it was fucking delicious. The delicious that made you lick the juice off your fingers and wonder why you'd ever believed the warnings.
Phei stood before the full-length mirror in his bathroom, steam still curling from the shower behind him like lazy ghosts, and let that single word settle into his bones.
Tuesday.
He'd survived the week.
The week that was supposed to end him. The week that, in another timeline, had seen him step off a rooftop and ready to splatter across concrete like a bug on a windshield—splat, charity case deleted, Paradise moves on without missing a beat.
The week that had contained seven—seven—different ways for the universe to delete his existence.
And here he was. Standing. Breathing. Looking at his reflection like he was meeting a stranger who'd somehow stolen his face and made it better.
What a fucking ride.
