Lea lost count how many times she drifted in and out of consciousness.
One moment she felt refreshingly awake and the next second, she felt irresistibly sleepy.
During those very brief moments of wakefulness, sometimes she heard her mom's voice, other times it was her dad's.
Strangely, Lea thought she also heard a man's voice that didn't belong to her brother or anyone else she knew but then, that may be another dream too.
At one point, there was a moment of stillness when it finally registered to Lea that she was lying in an unfamiliar room.
'Where am I?'
She turned her head to the side and saw a a note written in large bold letters - 'If you're reading this, push the button in your left hand.'
Lea indeed felt something like a remote in her left hand. She did not press the button right away, instead there was something she needed to check first.
'Body check. Toes and fingers are wiggling, but I can't lift my arms and legs. I don't feel like I'm bound to the bed so why does my body feel heavy?'
This entire situation was suspicious and yet, her stranger-danger radar wasn't going off.
Lea read the note again. The corner of her mouth lifted slightly at the rough sketch of her favourite anime character at the bottom of the note. Her dad used to leave notes like that every time she woke up from when she was little.
Those memories felt like a lifetime ago.
This time, she pressed the button.
Shortly after, the sound of the door sliding was heard. Two people walked in; a male doctor and a female nurse who looked to be in his fifties and her forties respectively.
Lea was disappointed that they weren't her parents.
"My name is Doctor Timur. Do you remember your name?"
Lea nodded her head.
"Can you tell me?"
Lea parted her mouth but didn't speak. She remained wary towards these two unknown people and gazed at the door, hoping, waiting for her family to walk in.
"The hospital's visiting hours are already over for the day. Your parents will come again to see you in the morning," the nurse informed her in a gentle voice when she caught the direction of Lea's gaze.
'Hospital.'
Lea reacted to that word.
"This is the New Hope Hospital. You've been hospitalised for… quite some time."
If the drowsiness hadn't suddenly draped over her mind, Lea would've caught how careful the nurse sounded at the end of her words.
"My name, Lea Carter."
Lea persisted through the drowsiness and answered the doctor's question.
Doctor Timur proceeded to ask a couple basic questions like the names of her family members and the date of her birthday.
After every answer, Lea's voice gradually sounded weaker and her eyelids became difficult to stay open. This didn't go unnoticed under Doctor Timur's observant eyes.
"Last question, what's the last thing you remember?"
"I was outside, walking…"
Lea furrowed her brows when she couldn't remember it exactly. Moreover, she reached her limit. She couldn't resist the drowsiness any longer and her eyes shut completely.
The hospital room went silent except for the beeping on the monitor.
"How long is it today?"
The nurse checked the stopwatch before answering, "About twenty minutes. She's a strong-willed girl."
"Continue to record the number of times the patient wakes up each day and how long she stays awake. Hand the data over to the sleep specialist when he arrives."
"Yes, doctor."
.
.
.
On the day Lea was able to stay awake for more than an hour, she was propped up on the hospital bed with the help of the nurse before Doctor Timur began to explain about her condition.
"It's called Hibernation Syndrome."
Lea knew a bit about Hibernation Syndrome. She learned it from school, students called it the hibernating bear disease because it was easier to remember for tests.
"It's a relatively new 'illness' that appeared sometime after mana particles became known. To be afflicted with such an illness is usually because the person's body was simply incompatible with mana particles to begin with. The body shuts itself down into a comatose-like state as a defensive mechanism until the accumulated mana particles in the body fully stabilised. This process could take as long as a year or two on average, depending on the person."
'Another reason was overexposure to mana particles in a short amount of time and that was considered to be an extremely unique case,' Lea recalled.
After Doctor Timur was done explaining, Lea asked the crucial issue, "How long did I sleep?"
"Six years."
Lea thought she misheard and asked again, "How long?"
"Six years."
Doctor Timur repeated the same number matter-of-factly.
There was a long silence after that.
Doctor Timur patiently waited for her to process the piece of shocking information and thought how unfortunate it was that her family wasn't here to comfort her. They just had been unlucky with the timing.
"No way," Lea muttered in disbelief. "Today must be April 1st, right?"
"I understand that it's difficult to believe," Doctor Timur spoke slowly. "It will take some time to adjust but we will do our best to help you in your recovery."
Lea pressed her lips together and looked down at her clasped hands. Then, she was struck with a realisation and raised her head.
"Right now, how old am I?"
The doctor did not expect that would be her second question after finding out that she had missed six years of her life.
"Technically speaking, you are twenty-five years old. Since the time you were diagnosed with Hibernation Syndrome, you appear to not age at all or rather you're aging at a very slow rate which is most remarkable. The most plausible explanation is your body's growth was stalled during the process of your body adjusting to the mana particles. We need to examine your body to be certain, and also to determine…"
"Doctor, you're confusing the patient."
The nurse intervened before Doctor Timur began a monologue of medical jargons.
"Ah, yes," he coughed and then simplified his answer to Lea's question. "You are twenty-five years old while retaining the same appearance as you were six years ago."
Lea stared at him with an incomprehensible look.
"Would you like to see it for yourself?"
The nurse held a compact mirror to Lea's face.
She looked at her face in the mirror and said the very first thing that came to mind, "There's a half-dried mummy in the mirror."
Both the doctor and nurse looked away when they couldn't stifle their laughter.
Since Lea looked sickly, she couldn't tell if she looked any older than twenty, which basically wasn't very helpful in convincing her with the whole 'you slept for six years' situation.
Then, she narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the air above Doctor Timur's head who'd been standing at the foot of the hospital bed the entire time.
'Does that have anything to do with this?'