Megumi had stopped being alive.
He did not die, of course. His heart continued its stubborn rhythm. His lungs drew breath. His body moved through the world with mechanical efficiency rather than will.
But the part of him that mattered, had gone quiet. Dormant. Buried under so much ash that he could no longer remember what it felt like to burn.
It had started gradually, as these things always do. One and a half years of silence. One and a half years since Sunny had stepped through the doors of the Awakened Academy and vanished into the Dream Realm, leaving Megumi with nothing but a government apartment, a second bed that would never be slept in, and a communicator full of old messages that he read until the words burned themselves into his retinas.
The Dream Realm had no communicators. No signals. No tether back to the waking world. Once an Awakened entered, they were gone.
Sunny had known this. He had warned Megumi before he left, his hands on Megumi's shoulders, his onyx eyes fierce.
*I won't be able to call. I won't be able to write. But I'll come back. I promise.*
Megumi had believed him. He had to believe him. The alternative was a void too dark to contemplate.
But belief eroded. Slowly. Grain by grain, day by day, until the sharp edges of hope wore smooth and dull.
But the silence stretched on. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. And months became a year.
And Megumi began to unravel.
---
The school noticed first.
His absences, initially rare and excused by "illness," became frequent. Then constant. He would wake up and stare at the ceiling for hours, unable to summon the will to move.
The bed was too soft. The silence was too loud. The air tasted of nothing, and nothing was worse than the rust and mildew of the shed because at least the shed had 'meant' something. At least the shed had been theirs.
When he did attend, he was a ghost in a uniform. He sat in his assigned seat by the window, staring at the gray sky beyond the glass, hearing nothing of Miss Cammy's lectures or Mr. Vance's historical droning. His notebooks remained blank. His pen sat untouched. The other students gave him a wide berth, whispering about the gloomy boy from the outskirts who had gone from odd to unsettling.
His friends tried. They tried so hard it almost hurt to watch.
Louis was the first to breach the walls. The blond-haired boy cornered Megumi after class one Tuesday, his usual casual demeanor stripped away, replaced by something raw and earnest.
"Talk to me," Louis said, blocking Megumi's path in the hallway. The corridor was emptying, students streaming toward lunch or the courtyard. "Please. Just tell me what's happening."
Megumi looked through him. "It's none of your business."
"Bullshit. You haven't spoken more than ten words in three weeks. Miyu cried yesterday because you wouldn't look at her when she asked if you wanted to study together."
Megumi's expression did not change. "I don't care."
"Why? What happened? You don't go to class. You don't eat during lunch. You don't speak with anyone." Louis's voice cracked, frustration bleeding through. "We care about you, you idiot. We're trying to help."
"I don't need help."
"Everyone needs help sometimes."
Megumi stepped around him. "Not from you."
The words landed like a slap. Louis flinched, his hands clenching at his sides. Megumi walked away without looking back. He heard Louis call after him, something wounded and angry, but he did not stop. He could not stop. If he stopped, if he let them in, if he accepted their warmth and their worry, then he would have to feel everything he was keeping at bay. And that would break him completely.
Miyu tried next, gentle and persistent as water wearing down stone. She left notes in his desk. 'Are you okay?' She brought him food, actual homemade onigiri, left them on his desk when he wasn't looking. He never ate them.
Rain tried differently. She did not approach directly. She watched him from her seat three rows away, her eyes filled with a confusion that bordered on distress. She asked Miss Cammy about him once, Megumi later learned. 'Is he sick? Is he going to be okay?' The teacher's answer was noncommittal. 'Some students struggle with adjustment. He'll find his footing.'
He did not find his footing.
He stopped going altogether.
---
The apartment became his coffin.
Megumi stopped looking at the communicator. The device sat on the small table by the window, its screen gathering dust, its battery slowly draining. He could not bear to check it anymore. The empty inbox was a wound he kept reopening, and eventually, even he grew tired of bleeding.
He stopped sleeping. Or rather, sleep became something that happened to him by accident.
When he did sleep, he dreamed of Shinjuku. Of Sukuna's grin splitting his own face. Of Yuji's broken, desperate eyes. Of Sunny's lifeless body. He woke screaming, sometimes, though the sound was muffled by the pillow he pressed over his face.
He stopped eating. The government ration allotment provided real food—bread, eggs, synthetic meat, vegetables—but the act of chewing, of swallowing, of keeping something down felt like a betrayal.
Sunny was somewhere in that hellscape, fighting for his life, and Megumi was here, in a warm apartment, eating buttered toast. The guilt was a hand around his throat, squeezing until the food became ash in his mouth.
He grew thin. Dangerously thin. His uniform hung loose on his frame, the blazer swallowing his shoulders. His face became sharp, haunted, the cheekbones cutting shadows that made him look older than fourteen. His eyes, always dark, became pits—empty, lightless, reflecting nothing.
But there was one thread he did not cut.
Every three days, without fail, Megumi sent a message to Master Jet. It was always the same. 'Is my brother alive?' Nothing more. No pleading. No elaboration. Just those four words, tapped out with trembling fingers, sent into the void.
And every three days, she answered.
'Yes.'
Sometimes she added more.
'He's still breathing, kid. Don't lose hope'.
Each reply was a reprieve. A stay of execution. When the communicator buzzed with her response, Megumi would close his eyes and feel, for a brief, flickering moment, the crushing weight lift from his chest. Sunny was alive. Somewhere. Somehow. That was enough. That had to be enough.
But the relief never lasted. It bled away within hours, leaving him emptier than before.
---
The notice arrived on a Monday morning, slipped under the door of Apartment 407 by a government courier who did not knock.
Megumi found it when he returned from a rare excursion to the corner store, he had gone only because the hunger pains had become sharp enough to interfere with his ability to think. He held a bag with a single loaf of bread and a bottle of water. The envelope on the floor was thin, official, stamped with the seal of the Awakened Affairs Bureau.
He set the bag down. He picked up the envelope. He opened it.
The words were clinical, precise, written in the detached language of bureaucracy.
Subject: Termination of Dependent Support Services
Reason: Primary Awakened (Sunless, Designation: Sleeper) has exceeded maximum estimated survival window for active Dream Realm deployment.
Status revised to: Lost Cause. Probable Deceased.
Effective immediately, all support allotments (housing, education, nutritional, medical) for dependent (Megumi, Designation: Civilian Minor) are suspended. Eviction from government housing will proceed within 72 hours.
Please report to Outskirts Processing Center for reassignment to civilian orphanage system.
Megumi read it twice.
Then a third time.
His hands did not shake. His breathing did not hitch. He felt nothing at all. Just a vast, echoing silence that seemed to swallow the room whole.
'Lost Cause. Probable Deceased.' The words did not register as real. They were abstract concepts, meaningless shapes on paper. Sunny could not be dead. Master Jet had said 'yes' three days ago. It meant he was alive. The government was wrong. The government was always wrong.
But beneath the numbness, something darker stirred. A recognition. A memory of standing in a hospital room in another life, looking down at a girl with dark hair who would not wake up. Tsumiki. The coma that had defined his adolescence, the helplessness that had shaped his silence. He had failed her too. He had been too weak, too slow, too 'Useless' to save her from the curse that stole her consciousness.
And now it was happening again.
Megumi folded the notice along its creases with mechanical precision. He walked to the bedroom. He pulled out the single duffel bag he had brought from the shed and began to pack.
There was not much. Two changes of clothes, courtesy of the government. A worn copy of a chemistry textbook he had stolen from a public terminal years ago. The rusted knife he had used to clean his nails in the shed, now dulled and pitted. The communicator, which he placed in the bag last, its screen dark and silent.
He did not cry. He had forgotten how.
He sat on the edge of the bed and waited for morning, when he would walk back to the outskirts, back to the rust and the rain, back to the only world he had ever truly belonged to. The government apartment had been a dream. A temporary illusion of safety built on the assumption that Sunny would return. Now the dream was over.
He was not angry. He was not sad. He was simply... finished.
---
The knock at the door came at 9:00 AM, sharp and insistent.
Megumi stood up from the bed, his body stiff from sitting, his head light from lack of food. He walked to the door, duffel bag in hand, prepared to find a government agent or a housing enforcer ready to escort him out.
He opened the door.
Master Jet stood in the hallway, her dark blue uniform immaculate, her silver epaulets catching the fluorescent light. Her raven-black hair was shorter than he remembered, cut with severe precision. Her eyes—ice on deep water—fixed on him with an intensity that made him take a step back.
She looked at the duffel bag in his hand. Then at his face. Then at the hollows beneath his eyes and the sharp edges of his cheekbones.
"You're an idiot," she said.
Megumi blinked. "Master Jet."
"May I come in, or are you going to stand there looking like a kicked stray?"
Megumi stepped aside. She entered the apartment with the fluid grace of a predator, her boots clicking against the linoleum. She surveyed the room in a single sweep, the untouched second bed, the empty refrigerator, the dust on the table, the notice crumpled beside his bag.
She picked up the notice. Read it. Crumpled it tighter and threw it into the trash bin with a sharp, angry motion.
"That," she said, "is being handled."
"What?"
Jet turned to him. Her expression was not kind. It was not gentle.
"I'm taking custody of you," she said. "Effective immediately. I've filed the paperwork with the Bureau. You are now under my guardianship until your brother returns."
Megumi stared at her. The words made no sense. "Why?"
"Because someone has to."
"I don't need—"
"Charity?" Jet's voice cut through his like a blade. "Is that what you were going to say? You don't need charity?"
Megumi's jaw tightened. "I don't."
Jet stepped closer. She was taller than him, and she used that height now, looming, her presence filling the small room. But when she placed her hand on his shoulder, the grip was not harsh. It was firm. Grounding.
"Listen to me, kid," she said, her voice dropping to something low and fierce. "And listen well, because I don't repeat myself."
She bent slightly, forcing eye contact. Her gaze was unyielding, the pale blue of glaciers, and in them Megumi saw not pity, but something harder. Anger. Disappointment. And beneath it, a protectiveness so fierce it bordered on violence.
"I have spent the last three months watching you destroy yourself," she said. "I've read the school reports. The absence records. The medical flags. I've seen the photographs of what you look like now versus what you looked like when Sunless brought you here. And do you know what I see?"
Megumi said nothing.
"I see waste," Jet said. "I see a boy with more intellect in his left hand than most Awakened have in their entire souls, pissing it away because he's too proud to accept that the world hasn't ended yet. I see someone who has decided that suffering is the only currency that matters, and he's determined to bankrupt himself."
Her fingers tightened on his shoulder. Not enough to hurt. Enough to hold.
"Do you know how many children in the outskirts would murder for what you have?" she continued. "Real food. A bed. A school with actual teachers. A future that doesn't involve scavenging the Trash Heap until lung-rot takes them at twenty. Do you know what your brother endured in his First Nightmare to secure this for you? Do you have any concept of the sacrifices he made, the debts he owes, the dangers he faces every single day in that hellhole of a realm so that you can sleep safe and warm?"
Megumi's breath hitched. The first crack in his armor.
"And here you are," Jet said, her voice trembling with controlled fury, "squandering all of it. Throwing it away because you think pain makes you loyal. Because you believe that if you suffer enough, it will somehow reach him. It won't. He doesn't need your suffering. He needs you to survive."
The words struck Megumi like physical blows. He felt his knees weaken, felt the careful walls he had built around his grief begin to buckle.
"I can't—" he started, his voice barely audible.
"You can," Jet said. "You will. Because I am not asking. I am telling you, as your guardian and as someone who has watched too many good kids die for stupid reasons: you will go back to school. You will eat. You will sleep. You will live. And you will do it not for yourself, but for him. Because when he comes back, and he will come back, he deserves to find a brother. Not a ghost."
The silence stretched between them, heavy and sharp.
Megumi looked down at the floor. His vision blurred. He blinked, and something hot and treacherous slid down his cheek. A tear. He had not cried since Sunny left. He had thought himself dried out, hollowed, incapable.
"I don't know how," he whispered.
"You'll learn," Jet said, her voice softening by a fraction. "One day at a time. And when it gets hard you remember that he is still out there. Still fighting. Still keeping his promise. The least you can do is keep yours."
Megumi stood in the center of the apartment, the duffel bag slipping from his fingers to land on the floor with a soft thump. He looked at the window, where the gray sky pressed against the glass like a mourning shroud.
"Okay," he said.
It was the smallest word. It weighed more than mountains.
---
Going back was harder than leaving.
The first day, Megumi stood outside the school gates for twenty minutes, staring at the brick facade, his hands trembling in his pockets.
When he finally walked through the gates, the whispers started immediately.
'He's back?'
'Did you hear he almost got expelled?'
'I heard he was in a hospital. I heard his brother died.'
He walked through them like a blade through water, his expression flat, his eyes fixed on the path ahead.
Louis saw him first.
The blond boy was sitting on the steps leading to the main building, laughing at something Jun Park had said. He looked up as Megumi approached, and the laughter died in his throat. His eyes widened, taking in Megumi's gaunt frame, the dark circles, the haunted hollows of his face.
"Megumi—" Louis started, standing.
"I'm sorry," Megumi said.
The words were quiet. Simple. They cost him much more than he had expected.
Louis stared at him for a long moment. Then his face crumpled, just slightly, and he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Megumi before Megumi could retreat.
"You absolute bastard," Louis muttered against his shoulder, his voice thick. "Don't ever do that again."
Megumi stiffened. He did not know how to accept affection. In his previous life, hugs had been rare, awkward things, usually followed by violence or death. But Louis held on, and after a moment, Megumi felt his own hands rise, tentatively, to grip the back of Louis's jacket.
"I will try," he said.
Miyu found them next. She rounded the corner, saw the embrace, and stopped. Her hand flew to her mouth. Then she ran forward, colliding with them both, her arms squeezing tight enough to bruise. She was crying, Megumi realized. He could feel the dampness of her tears through his shirt.
"We thought you were gone," she whispered. "We thought you—"
"I'm here," Megumi said.
Rain watched from the hallway window, her onyx eyes unreadable. When Megumi caught her gaze, she did not look away. She nodded, once, a small, solemn gesture. Then she turned back to her friends, and Megumi felt something shift in his chest. Not healing. Not yet. But the possibility of it.
---
The months that followed were monotone.
Megumi attended classes. He ate meals. He slept, fitfully, but he slept. He answered Master Jet's messages.
Each message was a rope thrown into a pit, and Megumi climbed hand over hand.
He did not smile. He did not laugh. But he functioned.
Louis and Miyu became his shadows in the daylight, flanking him in the cafeteria, walking him to classes, filling the silences he could not bridge with their own chatter. They did not ask about his brother anymore. They simply stayed. That was enough.
Rain remained distant, but not absent. She would pass him in the hallway and leave a pen on his desk if he had forgotten his. She would correct a homework assignment he had missed, sliding her notes. Their shared silence was a language of its own.
Winter came to the city, bringing with it a cold that Megumi felt in his bones. The rain turned to sleet. The gray skies darkened further. The days grew short and the nights endless, and Megumi marked time not by the calendar but by the messages from Master Jet.
'Still alive. Still fighting. Hold on.'
He held on.
---
The day after the winter solstice, the world changed.
Megumi was in the cafeteria during lunch break, sitting at a corner table with his back to the wall.
He was absentmindedly eating, his mind empty, waiting for the bell that would signal the end of break and the return to the monotone procession of classes.
Then he heard it.
A whisper at first, snaking between the lunch tables. Then another, louder, pitched with disbelief. Then a cluster of students near the far wall, their communicators out, their faces illuminated by screens, their mouths hanging open.
"No way."
"Is this real?"
"Look at the news feed—it's everywhere."
"Hundreds of them. They just... appeared."
Megumi's head turned. Slowly, as if his neck were rusted. His eyes found the group of students, then tracked to another cluster three tables away, then another by the windows. The whispers were multiplying, spreading through the cafeteria like a contagion, infecting every conversation, silencing every laugh.
Louis and Miyu sat across from him, they had taken to joining him at lunch, ignoring his silence, filling the space with their presence if not their conversation. Louis had his communicator in his hand, his thumb scrolling, his face shifting from casual to confused to stunned.
"What..." Louis breathed, his voice barely audible.
Miyu leaned over, looking at his screen. Her hand flew to her mouth. "Oh my god."
Megumi stood up. His chair scraped against the floor, the sound sharp enough to cut through the rising noise. He walked toward Louis.
"What is it?" Megumi asked. His voice was flat.
Louis looked up at him, his eyes wide, his face pale. "The Lost. The ones who disappeared into the Dream Realm. They're... they're coming back. Hundreds of them. All at once."
The words did not register immediately. Megumi heard them, understood their individual meanings, but could not assemble them into a coherent whole.
Sunny.
The name detonated in his chest like a bomb. His vision narrowed to a tunnel. The sounds of the cafeteria—the clatter of trays, the rising babble of voices, the ping of notifications—faded to a distant hum.
"Where?" Megumi asked. The word came out strangled.
"The Academy," Louis said. "They're being processed at the Awakened Academy."
Megumi moved.
He did not say goodbye. He did not grab his bag or his jacket or the communicator sitting in his pocket. He simply turned and ran, his long legs eating the distance between his table and the cafeteria doors in seconds.
"Megumi!" Louis shouted, standing so fast his chair toppled. "Wait—"
But Megumi was already gone, shoving through the double doors, his shoes pounding against the linoleum of the hallway, then the concrete of the courtyard. The winter air hit his face like a slap, cold and biting, but he did not slow. He sprinted toward the school gates, his chest heaving, his mind a white-hot scream of a single thought.
Sunny.
Behind him, he heard more shouts. Louis calling his name. Miyu crying out. Rain's voice, sharp and desperate, cutting through the noise. He did not look back.
His communicator was in his hand, trembling, as he ran toward the transport station, tapping Jet's number with fingers that barely worked.
Down the hallway, past the lockers, through the doors, into the gray winter afternoon. The cold hit him like a slap, but he did not slow. His communicator was in his hand, trembling, as he sprinted toward the transport station, tapping Jet's number with fingers that barely worked.
She answered on the first ring.
"I know," she said, before he could speak. "I'm already en route. Stay where you are."
"I'm at the school," Megumi said, his voice shaking. "Please. Please hurry."
"Five minutes."
They were the longest five minutes of his life.
---
The PTV ride was a blur of gray streets and gray skies, the anti-grav cushions humming a tuneless song that matched the pounding of Megumi's heart. Jet drove in silence, her jaw tight, her eyes fixed on the road. She wore her full uniform, the three silver stars gleaming, and the vehicle's government markings cleared traffic like a blade through flesh.
The Awakened Academy loomed ahead, a fortress of stone and steel that Megumi had only ever seen in photographs. Today, it was besieged.
The plaza outside the main gates was a sea of people. Press vans with satellite dishes clustered like vultures, reporters shouting into cameras, their voices a cacophony of speculation and breaking news. Families pressed against barriers, holding photographs, screaming names, weeping openly. Government soldiers in black armor formed a cordon, their faces hidden behind visors, their stances rigid.
And beyond them, emerging from the Academy's doors in controlled waves, were the Returned.
Megumi saw them through the PTV's tinted windows. Awakened in various states of dress—some in armor, some in rags, some in the simple training uniforms of Sleepers who had left years ago and come back aged by decades. They were escorted by medical personnel and government officials, guided toward waiting families or press interviews or transport to medical facilities.
A woman in the crowd saw one of the Returned and screamed—a sound of such raw, piercing joy that it cut through the noise like a knife. She broke through the barrier, past the soldiers, and threw herself at a scarred man with a vacant look. They collapsed together, weeping, clutching each other as if the world might steal them apart again.
Megumi watched, his hands pressed against the glass, his breath fogging the window.
"Not yet," Jet said quietly. "We need to get inside."
She parked the PTV in a restricted zone, flashing her credentials at a harried officer. The crowd parted for her, for the uniform, for the authority she carried. Megumi followed in her wake, his school uniform a stark contrast to the chaos around him, his heart hammering so hard he thought it might crack his ribs.
They reached the gates. A soldier blocked their path, his rifle held across his chest.
"Restricted area. No civilians."
"Master Jet, Ascended, Government Liaison," she snapped, producing her identification. "This is the dependent of Sunless, one of the Lost. I am his guardian. National emergency protocols grant me clearance."
The soldier hesitated. Behind him, another officer approached, her face drawn with exhaustion. "Master Jet, we can't just let—"
"Check the registry," Jet said, her voice like ice.
The argument stretched. Minutes passed. Megumi stood frozen, his hands clenched at his sides, his eyes fixed on the Academy doors. Every time they opened, his heart lurched. Every face that emerged, he searched. Every time it was not Sunny, the hope dimmed, but did not die.
He did not notice the blind girl.
She stood near the eastern edge of the plaza, separated from the main crowd, her hand resting lightly on the arm of a well-dressed older woman who was weeping into a handkerchief. The girl was young, perhaps sixteen, with pale blond hair that caught the winter light like spun gold. Her eyes were covered by a strip of black cloth, but her face was turned in Megumi's direction.
She could not see him. But she *looked* at him.
Her expression was a landscape of sorrow. Of guilt. Of pity so profound it seemed to weigh her down, bending her shoulders, trembling her lips. She stared at Megumi for a long moment, her fingers tightening on her mother's arm, her chest rising and falling with shallow, painful breaths.
Then she turned away, leaning into her mother's embrace, and was guided toward a waiting vehicle. She did not look back.
Megumi never knew she was there.
---
Hours passed.
The crowd thinned as the Returned were processed, reunited, or escorted away. The press began to pack up, their stories filed, their deadlines met. The families who remained were the unlucky ones—those whose loved ones had not appeared, who stood in shrinking clusters, clutching photographs, their eyes hollow with a grief that had no bottom.
Megumi was one of them.
He stood near the Academy gates, his body rigid, his face a mask. Jet had tried to make him sit in the PTV, to rest, to eat something. He had refused. He would not move from this spot. Not until he knew.
"Megumi," Jet said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. "It's been six hours. The main wave is over. If he were in the first group—"
"He's not dead," Megumi said. The words were flat, absolute. "He's not."
Jet's jaw tightened. She looked at the Academy doors, then back at Megumi. Then she made a decision.
"Come with me."
She grabbed his arm—not roughly, but with the firm grip of someone who would not be argued with. She marched toward the gates, toward the soldiers who had been turning away civilians all day. Her credentials flashed. Her voice rose, sharp and commanding, invoking emergency protocols, guardian rights, the bureaucratic machinery of a government that could not afford to look heartless on a day like this.
The soldiers relented. The gates opened.
The Academy interior was sterile, white-lit, humming with controlled chaos. Medical staff rushed past with stretchers. Officials barked orders into communicators. The air smelled of antiseptic and fear.
Megumi followed Jet through corridors he did not know, down staircases, past checkpoints. His heart beat faster with every step. The hope that had sustained him for months was now a fragile, flickering thing, burning his chest from the inside out.
They reached a set of double doors marked *Medical Recovery - Sleeper Pods.*
Jet paused. She turned to Megumi, and for the first time since he had known her, he saw uncertainty in her eyes. A hesitation.
"Megumi," she said quietly. "Whatever we find in there... you are not alone. Do you understand? You are not alone."
He did not answer. He pushed through the doors.
---
The room was white. White walls, white floor, white ceiling. Rows of cylindrical pods lined the space, each one a transparent cocoon filled with pale blue fluid, each one connected to machines that hummed and beeped in rhythmic symphony.
Most were empty.
One was not.
Megumi saw him from the doorway, and the world ended.
Sunny floated in the pod, suspended in the blue liquid, naked but for a thin medical gown. His eyes were closed. His face was pale, peaceful, almost serene. He looked younger than Megumi remembered, or perhaps the months had simply worn Megumi's memory down to its sharpest, most painful edges. Tubes ran from his arms, his neck, his spine, feeding him nutrients, draining waste, keeping his body alive while his mind...
While his mind was elsewhere.
A monitor beside the pod displayed readings. Brain activity: minimal. Soul Core resonance: active. Status: Alive.
He was alive.
He was trapped.
Megumi took a step forward. His legs gave out.
He collapsed to his knees on the white floor, the impact jarring through his bones, but he felt nothing. The sound that tore from his throat was not a word. It was not a scream. It was something older and more terrible—a howl of anguish ripped from the deepest part of his soul, the part that had died in Shinjuku and been reborn only to die again.
"No," he choked, his hands clawing at the floor, his body curling inward. "No, no, no—"
The memory hit him like a physical blow. Tsumiki. The hospital room. The white sheets. The machines beeping their endless, indifferent song. Her face, so still, so peaceful, while her mind was trapped in a curse's grip, unreachable, untouchable. He had sat by her bed for days, weeks, months, years. He had promised to save her. He had sworn to find a cure, to break the curse, to bring her back.
He had failed.
And now here he was, on his knees in another white room, staring at another still face, listening to another machine sing its lullaby of false hope. Helpless. Useless. Broken.
"I failed," Megumi gasped, the words tearing his throat raw. "I failed again. I couldn't—I can't—"
Jet was beside him, her arms around his shoulders, pulling him against her chest. He fought her, thrashing, his grief too vast to be contained, too wild to be comforted. But she held on, her grip iron, her own voice breaking as she whispered into his hair.
"He's alive. Megumi, listen to me. He's alive. He's coming back. Not today. Not tomorrow. But he's fighting. You know him. You know he doesn't stop."
"He promised," Megumi sobbed, the tears coming now in a flood, hot and endless, the first true tears he had shed since his rebirth. "He promised he'd come back. He promised—"
"And he will." Jet's voice was fierce, desperate. "But you have to be here when he does. You have to be whole. You have to be waiting."
Megumi collapsed against her, his body shaking with sobs that felt like they were tearing him apart from the inside. He cried for Sunny. For Tsumiki. For Yuji and Nobara and every person he had ever loved and failed to save. He cried for the life he had lost and the life he could not build and the brother who floated in blue light, unreachable, just out of reach, always just out of reach.
The machines beeped. The white room held them. And somewhere, in a realm of eternal night, a young man with onyx eyes and a crooked smile fought battles no one could see.
---
Away from the breaking boy, in the entrance hallway connecting to the pod room, a young woman sat in a wheelchair.
She was beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful—sharp, pale, terrible. Her white hair was cropped short, her golden eyes fixed on the closed doors through which the sounds of grief filtered, muffled but unmistakable. Her hands rested on the wheels of her chair, the knuckles white with pressure.
Nephis.
Changing Star. The hope of the Forgotten Shore. The girl who had returned from the Dream Realm only to find that the battle had cost her everything she had not already lost.
Her fist clenched. Her nails dug into her palm. She clenched harder. The skin broke. Blood welled, dark and hot, dripping down her wrist, staining the white sleeve of her medical gown.
She did not notice.
She stared at the doors, her eyes burning, her jaw tight, and she made a silent promise to the boy who was weeping inside.