I was tired—tired in a way that sleep couldn’t fix.

  Tired of life finding new angles to break me on.

  The first time I learned what it could take was when Airi and I became orphans. I didn’t even get to grieve before our so-called relatives dumped us in a damp box that pretended to be an orphanage and walked off with whatever insurance money was meant for us. That was the day I understood: it was me or no one. I was the roof. I was the wall. I was the lock on the door.

  Odd jobs weren’t the hard part.

  Keeping the money away from the orphanage manager’s “fees” was. I learned to fold cash into the hem of my jacket, to hide it under loose tiles, to skip meals so Airi wouldn’t have to. I told myself that if I could just keep her in school, the world would eventually blink first.

  Then the next thing hit.

  They tried to sell her—called it “adoption,” said all the right words with dead eyes. We ran. Left behind the one place that at least kept rain off our faces. Slept in stations, stairwells, places where the cameras didn’t look. I worked whatever kept us moving: loading docks, night deliveries, call centers where your voice has to smile till it bleeds.

  And then somehow, brick by brick, it steadied. I landed a white-collar job—with an ID card and an email signature. We were never rich, just… upright. Rent paid on time. Groceries without counting. Airi talking about exams and scholarships like the future had finally heard her name.

  That’s when the episodes started.

  At first it was nothing. A blink too long between words. A pause mid-sentence like she was listening to something I couldn’t hear. Then tremors. Blank stares. The cup she dropped in the kitchen that didn’t shatter because I caught it, hands shaking so hard the water inside made its own rain.

  The night she didn’t wake up, I learned a new kind of silence. It had weight.

  The public hospital took her in. Not because we had pull. Because a resident fought for “observation” and a social worker put her name on a list with three stamps and one mercy. Machines breathed with her. Numbers blinked. Days stacked like chairs.

  Then the calls started.

  “We’ll need a decision soon, Mr. Ryou.”

  “Resources are constrained.”

  “Bed committee meets Friday.”

  “Her condition meets criteria.”

  “Please understand.”

  Understand what? That charity has a timer? That compassion expires at the end of a shift?

  I stopped sleeping. Deadlines at work piled up and the world narrowed to screens—one with graphs I could control, one with graphs I couldn’t. Coffee trembled in paper cups, black and sour. At night, when my eyes finally closed, I fell into dreams that felt like a drill bit turning.

  A circle chalked on the floor.

  A slow hum, like wires under skin.

  Airi’s voice, not warm but near: “Don’t move. It needs to finish.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  A kneeling figure at the edge of the circle, whispering syllables shaped like commands.

  Light gathered, too bright to be holy.

  I woke with damp pillowcases and the taste of metal in my mouth, like I’d been breathing coins. My hands ached as if I’d been holding something heavy and letting it go, over and over, until my palms forgot how to be empty.

  The hospital called again. Final tone. Administrative voice that clipped at the end of sentences.

  “We can’t keep her on support beyond this month, Mr. Ryou. You’ll need to sign the consent. If not, the committee—”

  I ended the call before “committee” finished walking into the room.

  I stared at the phone like it had grown teeth. My thumb hovered in blank air, over nothing. The office around me was a quiet storm of other people’s deadlines. I could hear the hiss of air-conditioning, the little rattle of someone’s leg hitting their desk drawer, the too-bright laughter of a joke I couldn’t afford to understand.

  The screen blinked.

  No ringtone. No app icon. No sender. Just the slide of a notification across the top edge, quiet and certain, like a note pushed under a locked door.

  Uplift your Reality.

  Read below.

  Under it, a line with no app name, just a title: Dreamers Manuscript.

  I didn’t breathe. I didn’t ask how it got there. Could’ve been spam. Could’ve been a scam. Could’ve been the universe finally admitting it owed me one. The words were wrong in all the right ways—too on-the-nose to be random, too calm to be safe.

  The office lights flickered—just once, the way they do when the building swallows. In the glass of my monitor I saw my face—hollowed out, eyes like two burnt fuses—and behind it, for the smallest second, the chalk circle from my dream. On the carpet. Around my chair.

  I blinked and it was only carpet.

  My brain did the math: no money, no miracle; public hospital, finite beds; signatures with knives under them. I felt the month closing like a book I hadn’t finished and the last page was stuck together. I thought of Airi’s hair floating in lamplight the night before the hospital, the way she’d tried to laugh off a tremor and failed, the way she always pressed her thumb against my knuckles when she needed to say “I’m scared” without letting the words exist.

  Something inside me made a sound. Not a voice. More like a hinge.

  I clicked. I clicked right away.

  Even if it was spam—what could it take that I hadn’t already given up? My savings were ash. My sleep was a rumor. My pride was a chipped tooth I kept tonguing. They wanted me to become the kind of god who pulls a plug. I would rather be a fool.

  The link opened to a page that shouldn’t have loaded that fast on our office Wi-Fi. Black background. White text. No ads. No scroll bar at first, like the screen wanted me to decide before it did.

  THE DREAMER’S MANUAL — EXCERPT 1.0

  Below it were instructions — something between a ritual and a user guide, written in a tone too precise to be human.

  Each line sounded like fantasy, yet too cold to be fiction.

  When the text stopped, another message began to scroll up the screen — deliberate, like someone typing from the other side of a wall.

  We are not new to you, Akai.

  You are not new to us.

  You have only forgotten.

  But we can give you what you seek.

  You do know what you want, don’t you?

  I swallowed. My throat clicked.

  The floor hummed.

  No — not the floor. The blood behind my ears. The office noise faded, swallowed by something that wasn’t silence but intent. Even the air conditioner’s hiss drew back, as if told to listen.

  Maybe it was a cult. Maybe a scam. Maybe just another joke life wanted to pull before the credits rolled.

  But I didn’t care.

  If this was madness, I was ready to meet it halfway.

  If it was a lie, I’d let it lie to me — as long as it whispered her name.

  What’s life even worth if I can’t save her?

  And if there’s truly a way to bring her back…

  I’m ready to pay the price.