How do you explain what light feels like when you don’t even remember the shape of the darkness?
I felt suspended—frozen in a place where time didn’t move.
There was no pain, no thought, no memory.
Just stillness.
So when my eyes opened for the first time, the light didn’t feel warm.
It felt like a curse—too bright, too invasive, as if it was peeling layers off me I didn’t know existed.
And then I saw him.
Leon.
Staring at me like the moment I woke was the only thing he had been waiting for.
My brother.
My parent.
My everything.
We have only ever had each other.
Life wasn’t kind—not even in the basic ways people assume are normal. A bed, comfort, rest—those were luxuries life rarely permitted us. But because of him, I had something close to safety. I realize now how much he shielded me from—the pain, the fear, the weight of the world—by carrying all of it alone.
Just when things were finally getting easier—his new job, a little stability—my episodes began again.
And I became a burden.
Again.
Sometimes, in the darkest moments, I wished I had died young.
Not from hopelessness, but because maybe then Leon could’ve had a life that wasn’t built on sacrificing his own dreams for mine.
Every day I saw the exhaustion behind his forced calm. And every day it broke something inside me.
I don’t remember when everything slipped away.
Or how.
I just… stopped being here.
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And now, somehow, I’m awake again.
The only thing I know with certainty is this:
no one could ever do what Leon did for me.
I was thinking that when she walked in.
A girl. Soft-spoken. Careful—like the air itself might hurt me.
“Hello,” she said.
Her voice felt distant, like it had to travel through memories I no longer had.
I asked who she was—because I didn’t remember her.
She introduced herself as my brother’s friend.
A strange wave of relief went through me.
Despite everything, despite chaos and fear and sleepless nights… Leon had someone.
That mattered.
I even felt myself smile as I said:
“Oh—you know Leon? Wait a second, he just stepped out for formalities. He’ll be back soon.”
And instantly—her expression changed.
Something dimmed in her eyes.
She hesitated before asking:
“Is Leon… another name for your brother Akai?”
The name hit me like a physical blow.
Akai.
My heart monitor spiked. My vision blurred. Something inside me cracked open—not a memory, not a thought, but a grief so enormous it swallowed oxygen.
My throat tightened. My skull felt like it was splitting. Tears fell before I even understood why.
“I—I don’t know—”
The words tore out of me, broken, panicked, desperate.
“I don’t know! I DON’T KNOW!”
And just like that—the world flickered.
Everything felt wrong again.
I don’t know who Akai is.
I don’t remember ever hearing that name.
But the pain… the pain felt like losing someone I couldn’t afford to lose.
Why does a stranger’s name feel more familiar than my own?
Why does it feel like my entire chest is hollow when I hear it?
And worse—
Why does Leon, my brother—the man who gave up everything for me—now feel like a stranger wearing his face?
At first, I thought it was just my brain adjusting after the coma.
But ever since that name—Akai—echoed in this room, even looking at Leon hurts.
He tends to me with the same patience, the same devotion, the same tired kindness…
and yet every instinct inside me recoils.
I don’t understand how someone I’ve known all my life feels unfamiliar—
and someone I’ve never met feels like loss.
So I searched.
Coma memory distortions.
Broken emotional recognition pathways.
Words like:
Jamais Vu.
Capgras Delusion.
Maybe that’s all it is.
Maybe being half-dead for so long severed something inside me—
and now my brain can’t tell truth from whatever fragments survived.
Maybe I’m grieving a phantom.
Maybe I’m losing my mind.
Or maybe—
maybe something I’m not supposed to remember is trying to come back.
