At first, I didn't think about anything.

Then, I thought about how the wallpaper was light green.

Green is a funny color, I thought. We associate it with nature, but also with poison and pollution. Those are contradictory concepts. Humans are so dumb.

I thought about the details of the wallpaper. Like most types you saw, it was imitating a fresco. The green, laced with black stripes, framed an image of animals congregating around a moss-colored pool. There was a hippo, two horses, three wolves, and some turtles. Lilies were in bloom all around the area.

It's kinda tacky. Like something from a kids room.

Though now that I was thinking about it, the whole image seemed a little weird. Why would they draw them drinking from such dirty looking water? And why were the animals colored so strangely? The wolves were bright yellow, the horses almost purple. The hippo had a greenish color, as well. Was it just meant to be cartoonish and quaint?

Or... no, that wasn't green after all.

It was blue. The hippo was blue. The pool was blue. The wall was blue on white.

Wasn't it...?

Wait.

Why am I looking at this wallpaper? Where am I...?

Something felt off, but I couldn't get enough of a grip on that 'something' to say what it was. I felt my mind reach for something, but it was slipping and failing over and over again. Like a machine missing an important latch, that could only whir around in circles. Or the sense of trying to recall a dream, except instead of a dream it was just, well-- Everything.

Yeah, that was a better way to put it. It wasn't something. It was everything. Everything was off.

My mouth felt strange, like my tongue was swollen. But when I tried to move it, I experienced something incredibly peculiar.

We humans don't generally realize it because it becomes a practically unconscious act by the time we're old enough to chew our own meat, but the act of commanding our bodies to do things has a certain texture to it, a feel to how the act is performed based on how the impulse is fired through our brains and nerves. Sometimes you read about people who have suffered brain damage or been in lengthy comas having to re-learn how to walk or use their hands as adults, and just how specific a task it can really be. Having to find their way back to their own limbs, like the mind itself is a dark forest they're lost in.

I imagined what happened when I tried to move my tongue was something similar. I sent the mental command I normally did, but nothing happened. I tried repeatedly, trying to force it, but still to no avail.

But then, from the strange fog that seemed to envelop my entire self, another 'idea' of how to move my tongue appeared, one that felt incredibly alien. Like it should have moved one of my toes instead.

...except it worked. My tongue moved. And then I felt something click into place, and my mind discard the old 'idea' instantly.

This was so strange. How did I get here? What was going on? I tried to think, but even the act of thinking was the same way. The landscape of my consciousness felt lumpy and confusing. Contradictory concepts flashed in my mind, garbled and hard to understand, like they were in a different language.

Who... Even was I?

Oh, wait!

With that question, I suddenly remembered something coherent. I'd been... With Samium, hadn't I? Just a moment ago... We'd been talking about something. Who is Samium, again? No, that wasn't important right now-- I remember. He'd been putting a needle in my arm. Why? Right, right. He needed to make me unconscious for the plan we were doing.

Did something go wrong? Why haven't I gone to sleep?

The argument I'd been having with myself suddenly fizzled back, albeit muddy and out-of-context. I felt both disappointed and relieved at the same time. Oh, good. Now I'll have a chance to back out.

No, not good! Another part of me retorted. When you woke up, you were supposed to be Utsushikome! It was supposed to be over!

Wait, what? A third part cut in. What do you mean, become Utsushikome? That's literally your name. Weren't you about to have a blood test?

Huh? What the hell are you talking about? The previous voice asked.

...

Wait.

My eyes (which seemed to be the only parts of me that were mostly working, though my vision was a little blurrier than before) jerked slightly to the side. Lying next to my head, on the white pillow upon which I was apparently now lying, were tufts of long black hair.

That's your hair.

...No, it isn't. That's...

I blinked, and crossed my eyes. My nose was a different shape, too.

My mind, finally starting to actually wake up a little, ran an assessment of my body. For a moment, it was like I couldn't feel anything at all - like I was just a floating head - but then, I felt a sudden landslide of those clicking moments all at once. It felt like my brain was taking itself apart and reassembling itself.

Everything was different. Not just superficial things, like the shape of my body, how light my limbs felt, or the depth of the breaths I was taking. It was like I'd been transported to another dimension. The air tasted violently of grapefruit and felt like grainy ice being raked against my skin, which in turn felt like it was made of parchment-- Soft, but completely disconnected from my body, taut and suffocating. My ears felt like they were submerged in insect-filled water, each tiny sound I heard producing a chittering warbling that burrowed deep into my skull with disturbing tactility. The mattress beneath me felt scalding hot, and also like it was made of smoke, and I was in the process of plummeting through it violently. My bones felt like they were hollowed and filled with liquid. I smelled blue light.

But at the same time, it all felt incredibly... Normal. And that sense of normalcy swelled until nothing else remained. It wasn't as though the sensations changed, but rather that it just felt more and more like this was how it was supposed to be. Nothing was painful or abnormal.

I glanced further down at my body. Underneath an aquamarine wool cloak, I was wearing a black school uniform with a dark red chest sash. I recognized it as being from Shiko's school.

Oh.

It's over. It already happened.

Hah. Hahaha.

See? I told you it'd be fine.

I heard another warbling sound. I looked up. There, standing a few feet away from the small bed I was lying in, was a fuzzy silhouette that I was pretty sure was Samium.

"Είσαι ξύπνιος?" he asked.

What did he just say? I asked myself, confused.

You know what he said, my brain 'reminded' me. That's Inotian. It's one of your two native languages.

Click. Once again, I felt that sensation.

"Are you awake?" he asked again.

I opened my mouth to reply, but then suddenly felt a sense of apprehension. I closed it for a moment, then spoke back, also in Inotian. "...yeah."

It was different hearing it from this perspective, but there was no mistaking it. That was Utsushikome's voice. Even her accent came out.

Samium nodded. He lifted his hand, and held up every finger but his pinkie and thumb. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Three," I replied.

"Very good." He nodded. "And what is your name?"

Utsushikome of Fusai, my mind provided implicitly, to my disbelief. ...but before that, it also provided something else, which I suspected was the response that Samium was actually looking for.

Yet I didn't want to say it. If these really were her lips, I didn't want it to pass through them.

Samium seemed to pick up on this, sighing slightly. "Where are you from?"

"Itan," I answered. No, that's not right. I was born here, in Oreskios.

He nodded. "And who is the current First Administrator of the Grand Alliance of the Mourning Realms?"

"Tar-Isgansar of Sem," I told him. "Unless the Meritists have finally managed to oust him."

I didn't know where that even came from. Why this of all moments felt like the appropriate one to make low-hanging fruit political commentary to a man I knew was probably the most veteran politician I'd ever meet in my entire life.

"Again, very good," Samium told me. "And can you tell me your last memory, before waking up just now?"

Again, I tried to think about what he wanted me to say. "Uhh. I was lying on that metal table, and you were injecting something in my arm..." I frowned, the question becoming harder to answer as other, contradictory images flowed into my mind again. I'd been on my way home from school, and stopped in at the clinic for an appointment. Then they'd told me a reserve nurse would be seeing me instead of one of the usual ones, and then... And then...

It felt like my mind was operating on two different, conflicting levels at the same time. Again, almost like I was dreaming. It was all indescribably surreal.

"That's good enough for now," Samium said, holding up a hand. His tone made him come across as a little relieved. "How are you feeling?"

My eyes were starting to focus a little better, and I looked properly at Samium's face for the first time. Somewhat to my surprise, his expression was completely different to one he'd been regarding me with a 'moment' ago. Instead, he'd returned to being the man I'd seen across the dining table as a child. Warm, slightly self-conscious, and above all else, ordinary and mild-mannered.

All that remained from his earlier temperament was the fatigue, with heavy bags under his eyes. He was looking at me with slight concern.

"I... I dunno," I said, blinking a few times. I looked around the room a little, trying to get what bearings I could without sitting up. Like I'd assumed a little earlier, this seemed to be a room intended for children, except it was a specifically medical setting - a pediatrician's office, maybe? There was a desk, a cabinet filled with bottles and medical knick-knacks like stethoscopes, and a sink under a poster discussing how important it was to eat a diet of primarily unprocessed fruit and vegetables.

Oh, and the bed I was on, which was slightly too small for me. My feet... My feet dangled over the edge by the heels, feeling a little uncomfortable.

"You don't know?" Samium inquired further.

"I feel weird. Like my brain is... numb, I guess." I reached up and scratched the side of my head. Again, I felt a little surprised when I touched my hair, jumping slightly. "Have you-- Have you done it?" I asked nervously. "Is it over?"

Samium blinked, seeming not to understand my question at first - probably because he would have assumed it obvious. But then he frowned slightly, looking slightly sad. "Yes," he said. "It's over. I've merged your two pneumas together successfully."

"Oh... okay." I smiled in disbelief, letting out a small, nervous laugh. It was Utsushikome's laughter. "Do you need to brief me on anything else? Now that it's, uh, over?"

"Not now," Samium said, shaking his head. "We'll need to speak a little more about your grandfather later and arrange a time to meet him, but that can wait a week or so for you to fully recover and settle into a routine."

I looked downwards, my eyes widening a bit as my mind processed what it had just heard. "My grandfather...?"

"Er, yes," Samium replied, hesitating and clearing his throat. "It'll be best if you get used to thinking in those terms, now."

I nodded distantly, staring at nothing.

My grandfather...

"But enough about that," Samium said, quickly digressing. "You said that your mind is feeling numb. Can you be more specific?"

I raised a hand to rub my eyes, struggling to think, and then almost prodded an eyeball when my forefinger slipped off where the bridge of my nose would normally be. "Uh, I don't know," I said. "It's sort of like... I feel like there are all these thoughts welling up in the back of my head, but I can't quite focus on them. And they only trickle out a little bit at a time. Like there's a dam, or something... And everything is slow and weird. As if my head is filled with soup."

Shiko isn't here, I thought. She should be here.

Ugh, I don't even like the name 'Shiko', a quieter part of my mind said, contradicting itself while somehow not realizing it was happening. I wish people would stop calling me it. I just picked it because I was a kid and wanted a cutesy name that would fit in, but it doesn't even fit me... And since it's just two random syllables pulled from the middle, nobody even realizes it's supposed to be me when they have my full name. I wish I could shake it off.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought. I hadn't realized. Would Utsu be better? Or Utsushi?

Huh? Another voice replied with confusion. Who am I even talking to? What was I doing, again?

"I see," Samium muttered. "To be clear, how does your memory feel, right now? Are you able to recall your experiences as Utsushikome?"

"Uh." I blinked a few times. "Kind of. Little snippets keep popping in connected to what I'm thinking about."

"That's to be expected," he said soothingly. "I've injected you with a small dose of pregabalin, a gabapentinoid-type depressant. It's a neurotransmittive inhibitor historically used to treat anxiety attacks, but it has the secondary effect in the modern age of forcing the brain to rely more on the pneumaic nexus in certain respects than the archimedean cerebrum. So information stored there recently will come more easily to you for a few hours." He hesitated. "I thought it would help stabilize your mental state until you can get home."

"Makes sense, I guess..." I said, only half understanding the explanation. My mind got stuck on the last word. Home. Until I get home.

"Speaking of which, we ought to get a move on. It's precarious for me to be here." He looked me up and down. "Do you think you can stand?"

"Um." I genuinely wasn't sure. "I'm not sure. I-- I think so."

"Take my hand." He held it out.

I gripped it, and he put his arm around my back, lifting me to my feet. I felt disoriented for a moment by the difference in height and weight, but things quickly clicked into place yet again. My face paled, but I managed not to throw up all over his brown dress robe.

Samium smiled slightly in what seemed like an attempt to be encouraging, but then instantly banished the look from his face, looking ashamed again. He turned from my eyes. "Good, good. Now, I've arranged for an automatic carriage to take you back-- It should still be waiting outside. Once you're home, you should get some sleep right away. That will give your mind the means to sort itself out properly."

"Uh, right," I replied mutedly.

"If you haven't recalled, we're in a small clinic in the upper districts of Oreskios, so it should only be about a ten-to-fifteen minute journey. Oh, and it's been about a month, so we're in the new year now. 1396, last Friday of January."

My eyes boggled a bit at that information. It'd been a month? It felt like I'd just been walking down the dark hallway to meet with Samium a few minutes ago. The thought of that much time just disappearing was hard to accept.

What must have happened by now? I'd have missed my appointment with my minor care officer, which had been just over a week in the future. They would have tried to contact me and failed. Knowing Itan, they'd probably send someone for an in-person checkup after about another week. They'd probably have tried on a few separate days before having the police break in, which would lead to a missing persons report. Though of course it would be years before they'd declare me dead.

Would they have cleared out all my stuff? The apartment was state property and those were always in demand, so maybe. Would they have put it in storage, or just thrown it out? What would have happened to all my novels?

Who cares? That stuff doesn't matter now. You can get new novels, a soothing voice said. Just forget it. Forget it all.

A gentle, tired smile crept on to my face.

"Your family is also away right now-- Your brother is on a camping trip, and your parents are away until Sunday as well."

My father is taking my mother to the world's largest garden show in Palaat, I remembered. They'll be back in the morning.

"Okay," I said.

"Are you ready to depart, then?" Samium asked.

"Uhh." I stared into the middle distance for a moment. "Yeah."

"Good," he said, with a sigh of audible relief. He pulled out a peculiar shield-shaped broach from the fabric under his collar, pushing aside his beard in the process. "I'm going to use this artifice to disguise my appearance on our way out, just so you're not alarmed. I'll lead you to a man who will escort you out of the clinic. He shouldn't ask you any questions, just tell him that you're fine and that you can't discuss it because it's a personal matter."

I nodded, accepting this development without commentary. Samium pushed his hand to the broach and muttered something, and the air around his face blurred. It was replaced with that of a different elderly Ysaran man, with thicker eyebrows and a shorter, darker beard. I tried not to stare despite never having seen anything like this before.

Still supporting me, Samium led me out of the room into the hallway of what seemed like a normal, if upmarket clinic, built of Inotian architecture, with walls of marble and intermittently carpeted floors. We turned a corner, and Samium approached an anxious-looking Saoic man wearing a white medical himation, thin and with a bald head.

Oh, I registered silently. That's the guy who I was with before I woke up. Who was taking me to see the reserve nurse.

...ah. Now I felt like I understood what had happened.

"Now, take her to the carriage waiting outside," Samium instructed him, his voice quiet. "And that will be all."

The man looked at me, presumably seeing the disoriented state I was in, and furrowed his brow with obvious concern. "What did you--"

"That's not your concern," he said, his tone suddenly back to being cold. "Just follow my instructions."

The man shifted uncomfortably, but nodded. He leaned over to take my arm from Samium, then began leading me down the next hallway.

"Oh, hold on," Samium said, stopping him. He stepped towards us again, reaching into his cloak. "I almost forgot." He withdrew the metal box I'd given him, then stretched out his hand.

I stared at it strangely for a moment, a dissonant feeling buzzing somewhere in the back of my head. Then, after a moment, I reached out to grasp it in turn. "Thanks," I spoke softly, and then added - because I'm insane - "Uh, sorry. For all this trouble."

Gods. 'Sorry for this trouble'. What a fucking thing to say, given the circumstances.

Samium looked at me for a moment. Maybe it was just the glamor, but his expression, though he tried to keep it neutral, seemed almost pained with regret. Then he cleared his throat, nodded, and walked away.

The medical worker - nurse, presumably - led me down the next hallway. Soon, we arrived in what seemed like the lobby of the building, with two front desks in perpendicular angles and a modest seating area, where various bored looking families and individuals sat around reading books and magazines.

As we approached the exit - a set of wooden double doors encircled by dark brown carpet - he looked to me with a hesitant expression. "Are you... alright, miss?"

I turned to him. "Y-Yeah," I murmured. "I'm fine."

"If you're sure." He smiled.

Everyone is being so kind to me, I thought, and then stared as I stepped through the doors.

I mentioned before that Oreskios is a city built on a hillside, and that Shiko... Uh, I guess at this point I should go back to saying 'I', even if it's sort of disgusting... Live towards the top of the city, where the Inotians originally built the settlement. This was even higher still, past my tertiary school, where you actually started seeing the big alpine trees that had originally dominated the area before humans had moved in.

It was a crisp, clear day, and I could see the entire city. Past the residential district we were in now and all the way to downtown around the river, the wooden and metal skyscrapers, the industrial district and the docks, even the distant city walls and the spattering of suburbs beyond.

And it had been snowing. Everything was covered in a quilt of white, as far as the eye could see.

It almost never snowed in Itan The only types of weather had been sun, rain, and freezing rain-- Snow was what you saw in dramas and news shows. And Itan, in every sense was small. The island wasn't particularly big, but even most of that was empty fields and sand dunes. The actual population was only a bit over 500,000 people. Whereas Oreskios... Even just the city was home to 9,000,000. A number so big it begins to stretch one's ability to conceptualize it.

I told you before, didn't I? When you grow up poor in some backwater, you think of the places you see in media as realms of fantasy, no different from ones of sorcery and dragons (although I guess since they engineered actual artificial dragons in Palaat to serve as a tourist attraction that metaphor doesn't really work, but that's beside the point). So when you actually go there, it turns the world inside out.

I think if I'd come to Oreskios as my old self... The sight might have felt painful. Like I'd never belong in such a spectacular place. Like it would suffocate me.

But it only felt like I was seeing it for the first time for the briefest of moments. Then I remembered that I'd been here less than an hour ago. And that it had been snowing on and off for a month. That this was ordinary.

I felt, overwhelmingly, the mixed sense of relief and anxious self-disgust that you get when you successfully cheat at something.

"Ah, your veil," the man said, gesturing to my face.

"Oh," I said. "Sorry."

I pulled it up from where it was resting around my neck.

The carriage was just a few steps away, at the side of the building. It was square and wooden-- The city-owned ones in Oreskios have a more old-fashioned look than those in Old Yru, on top of having shaded side windows instead of overhead ones. The man opened the door for me, bid me to take care, and then the automated system set us off as soon as I'd settled in and shut the door.

The journey washed over me. On the warm, cushioned seating of the carriage interior, I fell back into a daze, and spent the whole time staring out the window, overwhelmed by the sputtering bursts of recognition as I saw places I remembered, mostly from my school route. At one point I got confused and thought I was back in Itan, and didn't understand why all the buildings looked so peculiar. I might have literally fallen asleep for a couple minutes.

The only thing I remember doing was trying to write something on the window after I noticed it was covered in condensation. I traced out the words 'hello' and 'window'. But the result didn't come out in my handwriting, but Shiko's. I tried again, this time consciously trying to use it. But it didn't work. The result was just a weirder version of Shiko's handwriting.

My finger trembled slightly. The information just... Wasn't there.

I only became aware I'd even arrived at my destination because, after failing to exit the carriage as prompted, the carriage eventually lost patience with me and started ringing a bell loudly. If I'd bothered to attune to it, the logic bridge would probably have been yelling at me to understand that I'd be fined for disrespectful use of public transportation.

I stepped clumsily out into the street, but wasn't outside a house like I'd loosely expected. Instead, I'd ended up at that line of shops, cafes and restaurants about a block from what my destination was supposed to be. The streets were bustling with people shopping or on their commute home from work, some of them staring at me as I stood in the middle of the street with a vacant expression.

Uh, what's going on?

Where was I going, again?

My head felt so foggy, and I looked around desperately. Fortunately, I caught sight of a group of workers - golems, mostly, with a couple human overseers - digging up a large stretch of the pavement, exposing the bronze sewer pipes beneath. A hanging cloth sign warded away pedestrians and stopped traffic diverting from the main road.

Right, they're retrofitting the whole system with runework, I managed to recall, the thought rising to the surface like a bubble from the bottom of a muddy swamp. So carriages can't get there. You have to take a little side-path.

A side path... Yes, I remembered. Her house was just a couple streets away, but the carriage wouldn't have been able to make it, so the system defaulted to the closest reachable destination. Samium must not have checked.

Well, that was fine. I'd just walk back there. I go this way all the time. Why do I feel so confused? It must be the drugs he mentioned.

I blinked a few times, trying to push through the dissonance in my thoughts.

I walked a little down the street, towards the corner that would lead me into the residential area (the same street that Ran would confront me on over a year in the future). The smells from the various storefronts wafted over me, still seeming somehow abnormal, disconnected what smelling delicious food was supposed to be like, even if it was stirring hunger in my gut.

Hey, I thought. You were going to eat as much expensive food as you wanted, right...? Go ahead. Knock yourself out!

But even the hunger felt wrong. And... I didn't think I had the energy, anyway.

After not even a minute, I started to feel tired and a little dizzy. It'd been one thing in the clinic when I had people to help me, but now that I was trying to walk alone, especially out here, where the snow had been crushed by foot traffic into ice and sludge... I was wearing boots, thankfully, but it was still difficult to stay balanced.

I ended up wandering over a wooden bench outside one of the shops, sheltered by an overhang. I sat down, and pulled my cloak tightly around my shoulders. The cold was also starting to hit me more generally. I sat like that for a while, trying to find the energy to keep going.

It'd been probably a little shy of a half hour since I'd awoken at this point, but up until this point, I still hadn't really had a moment to - properly, consciously - process what had happened.

But as I sat there, trying to stay warm, I saw my breath collecting in front of me. And I heard the sound of my breathing. I stared, for several seconds, and my hands. My long, spindly fingers that one third of my mind seemed to think were completely normal, and two thirds were completely baffled by, half-concluding that I'd had some kind of hand transplant. Neither intuitively grasped what had really happened.

I reached into my pocket, and withdrew the metal box Samium had given back to me. I opened it.

Inside was the one memento of my old life that I'd decided, despite it seeming to contradict the very nature of what I was trying to do in the first place, to risk asking Samium: The logic engine that Shiko had given me, what felt like a lifetime ago. My most treasured possession, that had filled me with hope, then bittersweet regret.

I miss her, I thought, instinctively.

The gears had long wound down over the course of the missing month, and laid still behind the glass case. I turned it over. The name 'Kuroka' was still engraved on the underside. I could see my fingerprints on the False Iron.

But they didn't match my fingers.

I remember buying this, I thought, suddenly. I bought the model itself from the mechanists' guild in town, then had the casing refitted by a jeweler in the little set of shops in my grandma's neighborhood. I spent thirty-two luxury debt.

I remember touching it as they passed it over the counter. I remember feeling like it was tacky, and kind of a cop-out gift, but then deciding it was no big deal because I was too busy.

She liked it, so it was fine, anyway.

The thought felt like seeing a frog crawl out of a bowl of soup. Something in me stirred.

I can't miss Shiko, I thought. That makes no sense.

Because... This is her. This is the same person who I knew.

We're in the same position.

These are her hands. And my hands.

And her thoughts. And my thoughts.

Suddenly, I felt a sense of intense vertigo. It felt like I was standing in front of a wall from which I had just removed a load-bearing brick, and now the entire thing was precipitously close to collapsing on me and cracking my skull open like a watermelon.

Thoughts started to bubble into my mind uncontrollably, without rhyme or reason. Not the manageable, muted flickers I'd experienced so far, but a torrent. Thousands of days on which I'd visited this street, hundreds of trips to the shops for groceries or family meals, innumerable incidental moments on my way to the tram station. And then each of those branching into other things. People, places, complicated and contradictory feelings about those people and places. Raw emotional responses for which there were no words. All garbled, still only partially comprehensible, overlapping one another.

And then deeper thoughts. Trends of thought. Patterns of thought within patterns of thought, all self-referential. Connections across things that made no sense, and patterns of thought wrought from that. Patterns of thought where the meaning was lost, that yet stood like towers without ground floors. Spirals of emotion crossed with taste crossed with movement crossed with philosophy crossed with desires! Colors and symbols and significance and jokes to myself that no one heard!

street/tram/homework/food/lunch/sick/tired/sleep/bed/room/piano/last time playing piano/need to play piano/time i messed up playing piano/time i peed myself as a kid near here/embarrassed myself in music today/embarrassment/bad impulse control/heard racial slur/slurs/embarrassment/racist teacher/mom's bad politics/mom's good cooking/dad's bad cooking/embarrassment/dad nearly got fired/caught dad jerking off/kind of horny/drama stars/saw a drama star on this street once!/iwa's acting/she sucks/no be nice/guilt/school theater/school open day/open day food/those snacks they did.../hungry/pastry/coffee shop logo/downtown pool/swimming/TIRED/bedsheetsgraphicnovelswannaseeiftheyhaveanewissueartpracticejealousnerdyhobbiesdramaEMBARASSMENTneckhurtslookingdownpatternonstonespatterntohoponstonesgameslogicgamesWANNAGETHOMEfreetimeparentsoutparentsfailingmarriagedivorcerelationshipsboyfriendgirlfriendhornygraphicnovelsaxionfromclockworkparadiseisdumbgoodshipwithtarunthoughlogicseaHOMEWORKTIREDlogicseacallyuyuhousebigweirdsmellbadfoodHUNGRYdinnertableleftnovelneedtoreadparchmentfingercutmedicineclinicappointmenttramtramadsconditionerhairdirtyheadliceneedtolookupifbaldpeoplegetitiwastupidquestions--

I craned my neck forward and had to cover my mouth to stop myself puking all over the street. My eyes watered and felt like they were going to fly out of their sockets. The world cracked at the seams, seeming to splinter and reform before my very eyes, like contorted rubber snapping back into its default shape.

I've said before that people can never really know others, but I feel like that probably comes across as a bit of a trope. You know-- 'You can never really trust anybody! They could all be out to get you!'

But that's not what I mean. What I mean is that individual humans are so complicated as to be essentially unknowable. This isn't a particularly hard thing to realize if you make an effort - just make a point of observing your own train of thought for a little bit, even when it comes to making minor, everyday decisions. Try to be aware of every point of cognition along the way, and the manner of your cognition itself. Then try to do that with the stuff that's really important to you. That fires your passions, positive or negative, like nothing else.

It's no secret, we just don't like to think about it. So we largely conceptualize others as either philosophical zombies or clones of ourselves with different backstories. Gods, you could say the latter is all that empathy is.

I suppose I'm fortunate - or maybe it would be better to call it a sort of poetic irony - that I, unlike the overwhelming majority of people, genuinely got to know the person I cared about the most. Because up until that moment, I'd thought that I knew Utsushikome of Fusai. That we had been, for a while, close.

But I knew almost nothing about Utsushikome of Fusai. The person who had existed in my mind for the better part of 10 years was nothing but a shadow of a shadow. A single, curated persona among several, and not even the most intimate. Yet even all those personas amounted to nothing more than a single drop of water from an entire basin. A series of lies and, even at best, simplifications made necessary by the crude nature of human communication itself.

Even if we'd never fallen out and had remained friends for our entire lives, I would never have learned even a fraction of how much I came to understand about her in just those few moments.

It wasn't just things about her personality - what she thought about the most, how her mind linked them together, and the vulgar, petty and judgemental traits she'd kept hidden - but how the nature of her thinking was different, and how that nature, I was realizing, had already replaced my own since I'd woken up. As my old self, my mind had felt like swimming past a series of whirlpools; awkward and slow, except for sudden bursts of speed when I was almost unwillingly pulled towards something. Meanwhile, for Utsushikome, it almost feels like I have multiple minds running in parallel. Different voices shouting over each other, and a silent notary desperately scribbling down the whole thing and trying to make sense of it.

...I say that, but to be honest, I don't even know if the former part is fully accurate. Because though I can remember the kinds of thoughts I had back then in abstract, my old mind no longer makes any intuitive sense to me. It's alien.

I suddenly knew her better than anyone else, even her parents. And in that state of knowing, I ceased to be fully myself.

Even if it was what I'd signed up for on paper, it was so much more harrowing than I'd imagined. There was a sense of tremendous loss-- Of a light flickering out forever, never to be rekindled. And yet, even as I shook with horror, part of me was pleased.

I really did it, I thought in manic disbelief. It wasn't goodbye after all.

We're... Both here...

And that was before the medication even wore off.

The shoe dropped further when I made it home. After a few minutes, I managed to stumble back to my feet, and walked - very slowly - down the street over the course of about 20 minutes, pacing myself and trying not to think about anything. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I made it to Shiko's house. Part of me couldn't help but stare saucer-eyed at the sight of it-- It was huge even compared to her grandmother's house, and so modern (in style if not in actuality) that it felt like something that belonged in science fiction. It seemed wrong to even approach it. Like I'd be trespassing. No, this was trespassing.

This can't be trespassing. You live here. Now hurry up. You need to get inside and steal all the nice things I wanted, before someone catches me in my own house. Your own house.

First, I had to press my hand to a logic bridge to get the exterior gate to open. Then, down the path, the front door, requiring its own key. I remembered that it was in my school bag, grabbed it, and opened the door. I tried not to absorb anything that was inside to keep my head clear, staring at the floor. I let my feet carry me up the steps to what I knew would be my room. As Samium had told me, the house was quiet. No one was around, even their two cats. I was alone.

I made it to the door.

This is my room. I can't go in here. She'll be upset if I sneak in without her permission.

...no, uh...

I shook my head, pushing down the thought. I stepped inside, still not looking up. Just get to bed. Everything will make sense again after you've slept a little.

I found the mattress and undressed hastily, shutting my eyes outright. This is just a strange dream. It will be over soon. I climbed into the bed, lying on the soft blue sheets. It was everything I imagined. Warm and cool at the same time, and even softer and more comfortable than the one in Shiko's guest room. A place where I was finally safe.

I clutched the pillow close to my face, and breathed deeply, curling partly into the fetal position. My tender skin pushed against the smooth sheets, and I felt strongly that, even though I no longer really understood what was going on, things would be alright.

Then I made the mistake of opening my eyes for a moment. Across from the bed was a mirror.

I saw the face. The same one I'd seen on the beach. The same one I'd seen on my birthday. The same one I'd seen at the docks. And the same one I'd seen every day in the mirror since I was born, that was not beautiful or special at all, but utterly mundane and ordinary. I stared into the dark eyes.

And suddenly, everything connected. The center of gravity of my mind shifted. I remembered that I was Utsushikome of Fusai. The two narratives of my life convened, and I realized what had been done to me. And that the culprit was right here, with no boundary between us whatsoever.

My two selves fully 'woke up'. Blood sputtered out of my nose, mixed with snot.

My eyes went wide.

I started to scream.