—DAY RESET.—
Morning light touched the world as if it mourned it.
The sun climbed over the skyline, spilling its glow across the wooden floor—
soft and golden,
like fingers that forgot how to hold anything.
The wind slipped in through the open window, making the curtains shiver.
A gentle, meaningless flutter.
As if the room remembered how to breathe, even when its inhabitant did not.
Asahi lay in his bed.
Unmoved.
Unchanged.
Unalive in all but name.
The clock on the wall ticked—8:30 AM.
His body twitched.
A slight turn of the neck.
Lids parting just barely.
His eyes opened.
And they were—
Blank.
Lifeless.
Like windows to a world long since abandoned.
He exhaled in short, uneven breaths.
Like every second was borrowed.
Like living was an accident.
He did not blink.
He did not stir.
He simply existed.
A ghost wrapped in skin.
Breathing for the sake of breathing.
And beneath that still surface…
There was something worse than pain.
Hopelessness.
The kind that makes the heart forget its own rhythm.
The kind that rewrites suffering into silence.
—Inside His Mind: The Blank Abyss—
There was no ground.
No ceiling.
No sound.
Only void.
Blackness stretched beyond thought.
An ocean of nothing.
Not quiet—absence.
Not darkness—erasure.
Asahi floated in it.
No tether.
No voice.
No time.
The loops played behind his closed mind, like a film burned into his skull:
His mother, crying herself into collapse.
His father, clutching a photo frame with shaking hands.
Anari… screaming.
Then shattering.
He saw it all.
He always saw it all.
Every death.
Every goodbye.
Every scream that died just before reaching him.
Again.
And again.
And again.
12:00 AM.
—DAY RESET.—
The curse played on.
Same.
Same.
Same.
Time had become a sadist.
It grinned behind ticking hands.
It chewed memory like glass in a child's mouth.
Every reset dug the knife deeper.
And at some point, pain gave up.
—The Stillness—
8:30 AM.
Again.
Asahi lay there.
As if he had never moved.
As if he had never lived.
His left eye sealed shut.
His right—open, but hollow.
This time…
There were no footsteps.
No hushed voices outside the door.
No weight of love in the air.
Not even Anari came.
A faint creak in the hallway.
Then stillness.
Silence stretched like frost on skin.
Colder the longer it stayed.
He waited.
Like always.
Like a child waiting for summer in a world where it never came.
5:30 PM – When she used to whisper stories.
6:30 PM – When she used to cry softly, just outside the door.
8:30 PM – When his mother would hold his limp hand and hum lullabies.
10:30 PM – When his father would pretend everything would be alright.
Now…
Only the hum of hospital lights.
Only the sound of his own lungs, begging to stop.
A single tear slipped down the edge of his sealed eye.
It did not fall.
11:30 PM.
He blinked.
Once.
And mouthed into the void, with no breath behind it:
"I'm still here..."
—The Figure—
11:50 PM.
The door creaked.
But it had been open since morning.
So what moved?
The curtain shifted.
Not from wind.
But from something else.
Presence.
The kind that makes silence deeper.
The kind that makes the world hold its breath.
Asahi did not look.
He didn't have to.
He felt it.
The cold entered first.
Then the dread.
And then—
The recognition.
His heart—
Or whatever was left of it—
Tightened.
A scream brewed inside him.
Silent. Familiar.
ARARARARARARARA—
The figure stepped into the light.
Same white shirt.
Same hollow smile.
Same mangled eye.
Same hair, bleached by some unnatural agony.
Unknown Asahi.
UA.
He grinned.
Cruel.
Almost bored.
"Still haven't woken up?"
His voice scratched reality like a nail across wet glass.
Laughter spilled out.
Wrong.
Wrong in a way language can't explain.
Asahi clutched his own head.
Trembling.
Crying.
Breaking.
UA grabbed him by the throat—
Lifted him off the bed like he weighed nothing.
A puppet, slack in his grip.
ARARARARARARA—
Then—
He saw it.
The door.
Wide open.
Anari's body.
Collapsed.
Lifeless.
Her eye had rolled toward him.
Wide.
Frozen.
It watched.
His parents—
Dead.
Torn.
But still holding each other.
"ANARI!!"
"MOM!!"
"DAD!!"
He spoke.
For the first time in what felt like centuries.
His jaw cracked.
The words came out twisted.
UA tightened his grip.
"This is what you've been waiting for, right?"
"The truth of your forever."
Blood ran from Asahi's left eye.
Thick. Black-red. Alive.
His head slumped—
But then—
TWITCH.
A shiver through his neck.
Through his spine.
He grabbed UA's wrist.
UA didn't flinch.
He smirked.
"You can't do anything."
But the eye—
That eye—
A black hole veined in glowing red,
Screaming every name he failed to protect—
It stared into UA's soul.
"REPEL."
CRACK.
The wrist exploded in his hand.
Bones sliced the air like knives.
UA staggered back.
Expressionless.
Asahi stood.
Shaking.
Bleeding.
Awake.
His veins glowed green.
Then blue.
Then a soft, terrifying white.
He laughed.
It wasn't joy.
It was the laugh of someone who remembered what agony tasted like and chose to chew it anyway.
The clock ticked—
11:59.
Asahi raised his head.
Blood dripped down his chin.
His hands wouldn't stop trembling.
But his heart—
It beat.
For the first time in days.
Or months.
Or lives.
"Bye."
He waved.
UA stepped forward.
"HUH—NO—"
ARARARARARARARARA—
He lunged.
And then—
12:00 AM.
—DAY RESET.—
But this time...
Asahi opened his eyes.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
And they were—
Awake.