"Your face... it seems clear to me now," he whispered.
His hand felt like ice against my skin—cold, pale, and trembling. I looked at him, my mind spinning. I couldn't grasp the meaning behind his words, but the weight of them hung heavy in the air.
Before I could ask, the world fractured.
A violent tremor shook the ground beneath us, but it wasn't a normal earthquake. It felt as if the very fabric of reality was being torn apart by invisible hands. Panic flashed across his features—a look of raw terror that I had never seen before.
"Go!" he shouted.
He pushed me. It wasn't a blow meant to hurt, but the force was immense, launching me backward as if I were being discarded by gravity itself. I felt myself falling, tumbling through a hollow, mazy void where time and space felt like water.
When I finally opened my eyes, the cold air of the void was gone, replaced by the stale, suffocating scent of a room I knew too well.
I was back. I was in my past body, trapped in the same "prison" I thought I had escaped.
My body—this past version of me—was sobbing uncontrollably. I watched as a silent observer from within, unable to stop the tears. I didn't recognize this specific memory at first. I just felt the bone-deep exhaustion of a child who had cried themselves to sleep.
An hour passed in a blur of muffled sobs until the sound of voices drifted in from outside.
It was Jennie and her sisters. Their laughter pierced through the door, sharp and careless.
Memory hit me like a physical blow.
[ I remembered this time now. This was the period when I had stopped speaking to everyone. I still couldn't recall the exact catalyst, but the phantom ache in my chest told me enough: I was hurting.]
My past self continued to weep while they laughed nearby. I realized then that I hadn't changed much. Back then, I ran away because the world was too loud and too sharp to face. I didn't stay silent because I hated them; I stayed silent because they wouldn't understand the depth of the wounds they had caused. It's not there fault. I think I'm just like this.
[Running was simply easier than trying to explain a pain that no one wanted to hear.]