(Liam's POV)
I pushed myself off the rough, crumbling brick wall, the grit scraping against my palms as I tried to shake off the heavy, static numbness that had been settling over me all evening. The night air was thick and humid, clinging to my skin like a second shadow. I took two tentative steps forward, my boots crunching softly on the gravel, when a familiar figure stepped cleanly into the amber glow of the flickering streetlamp.
It was Linna.
She stood there, radiating an effortless warmth that felt entirely detached from the cold dread I had been harboring. She greeted me with a brilliant, wide smile—the kind that usually had a knack for melting away whatever cynicism I was holding onto. Wanting to mask the turbulent storm brewing in my own mind, I forced my tense shoulders to drop. I mirrored her expression, offering her the exact same warm greeting, trying my best to make my voice sound normal. "Hey, Linna. Good to see you."
Linna tilted her head, her eyes dancing with an immediate, playful mischief. She crossed her arms, stepping right into my path with a theatrical air of suspicion. "And where exactly are you heading off to in such a monstrous hurry?"
Before I could even open my mouth to formulate a casual excuse, she took a half-step closer, a classic, teasing smirk playing on the corners of her lips. "Let me guess... does that mean you're leaving because you somehow knew I was coming? Or," she leaned in slightly, lowering her voice to a dramatic whisper, "is it because you still have feelings for me and just can't handle it?"
I opened my mouth to protest, a sudden flush of heat creeping up my neck, but before I could stumble over my words, Linna burst into a soft, melodic laugh. She waved her hand dismissively, brushing the tension away. "I'm just kidding, Liam. Relax. Honestly, I'm just really glad you came."
The lighthearted playfulness evaporated the exact millisecond she stopped speaking. For me, the atmosphere didn't just fade—it shattered. The weight burning in my chest felt too hot, too heavy to ignore for another second. I couldn't play these games tonight. I was entirely consumed by an eager, almost desperate thirst to finally unearth the truth that had been tearing at the edges of my sanity.
I looked her dead in the eye, my expression completely stripping away any lingering trace of humor.
"Linna," my voice was dangerously steady, vibrating with an intensity that caught her completely off guard. "Do you know where Aaron is? Or rather... do you even know *who* Aaron is?"
The effect was instantaneous. Linna's vibrant smile vanished, swallowed whole by the shadows of the alley. Her eyebrows furrowed deeply in sheer, unadulterated confusion. She searched my frantic face, scanning my eyes as if trying to decipher a foreign language or figure out if this was some twisted joke.
"Yes," she answered slowly, her voice dropping into a quiet, hesitant register that made my stomach plummet. "I've known about him since a very long time ago. Why on earth are you asking about him?"
My heart did a strange, erratic skip against my ribs, a frantic thud that echoed loudly in my ears. "What do you mean by 'a long time ago'?" I pressed, stepping forward into her space, my voice tightening with a raw, demanding edge. "Linna, what do you mean?"
Linna sighed, looking down at the pavement for a brief, agonizing second before meeting my desperate gaze. There was pity in her eyes now, and it absolutely terrified me. "I don't really know him personally, Liam. But I know what happened to him two years ago."
Every single word that left Linna's mouth felt like a physical blow straight to my chest. I froze entirely, a sudden, icy paralysis locking my joints. The world around me seemed to lose its color, bleeding into a stark, terrifying grayscale.
"What..." I choked out, my throat suddenly tight and dry. "What happened two years ago?"
I could barely force the syllables past my lips. Suddenly, the open alleyway felt incredibly narrow, the brick walls closing in on me like a trap. It felt as though the oxygen was being violently, brutally squeezed out of my lungs by an invisible hand. My chest heaved, but nothing was getting through. A rising wave of sheer panic hit me, and my body reacted as if I were a drowning man clawing my way through pitch-black water, desperately trying to break the surface of a deep, suffocating ocean, only to find the surface frozen solid.
Then, Linna delivered the final, crushing blow. Her voice dropped to a solemn, devastating whisper that seemed to echo off the walls.
"Aaron drowned in the river two years ago, Liam. No one really knows the full story or what exactly happened that night, but... some of the locals said it wasn't an accident. They said it was more like a suicide."
The ground beneath my feet tilted violently on its axis.
My breathing turned ragged, harsh and shallow, a terrible, desperate sound in the quiet night air. My chest heaved violently as adrenaline and horror slammed into my bloodstream. It couldn't be true. It *couldn't*. Everything Linna was saying—every horrific, chilling detail of her story—slammed with brutal, agonizing force against the vibrant, living memories I held in my mind.
I remembered Aaron's voice. I remembered the warmth of his laugh, the way he walked, the conversations we had shared just days ago. Aaron was supposed to be alive. Aaron *was* alive. The memories were too bright, too real to be the ghosts of a man who had died twenty-four months ago.
But as the suffocating, heavy silence settled between us, and as I looked into Linna's genuinely sorrowful eyes, a terrifying, reality-shattering realization began to sink its claws into my mind. I was left entirely unanchored, drowning in a freezing sea of my own broken perception, with absolutely no air left to breathe.