(Liam's POV)
I pushed myself off the rough, crumbling brick wall, the coarse grit scraping agonizingly against my raw palms—a superficial sting that barely registered against the heavy, static numbness settling over my soul. The night air wasn't just warm; it was an oppressive, humid weight that clung to my skin like a second shadow, breathing down my neck. I took two tentative steps forward, my boots crunching softly, almost apologetically, on the gravel.
And then, the universe played its cruelest trick. A familiar figure stepped cleanly into the amber, sickly glow of the flickering streetlamp.
It was Linna.
She stood there, practically radiating an effortless, golden warmth that felt entirely, violently 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. Desperate to mask the turbulent, raging storm brewing in my own mind, I forced my tense shoulders to drop. I mirrored her expression, offering her a hollow facsimile of that same warm greeting, desperately trying to anchor my voice to a normal frequency. "Hey, Linna. Good to see you."
Linna tilted her head, her eyes dancing with an immediate, playful mischief that made me feel physically ill. She crossed her arms, stepping right into my path with a theatrical air of suspicion that felt entirely too heavy for the fragile ground I was standing on.
"And where exactly are you heading off to in such a monstrous hurry?" she teased.
Before I could even open my mouth to formulate a casual excuse, to construct the lie that would save me from scrutiny, she took a half-step closer. A classic, mocking smirk played 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, stage-whisper, "is it because you still have feelings for me and just can't handle it?"
I opened my mouth to protest, a sudden, suffocating flush of heat creeping up my neck, but before I could stumble over my words, Linna burst into a soft, melodic laugh. It was a beautiful sound, but tonight it sounded like glass shattering in a quiet room. She waved her hand dismissively, brushing my tension away as if it were nothing but lint on a jacket. "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 into a thousand jagged pieces. The weight burning in my chest felt too hot, too volatile to ignore for another second. I couldn't play these social games tonight. I was entirely consumed, driven mad, by an eager, almost feral 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, leaving nothing but bare, bleeding desperation.
"Linna," my voice was dangerously steady, vibrating with a low, tight 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 sudden, devouring shadows of the alleyway. Her eyebrows furrowed deeply in sheer, unadulterated confusion. She searched my frantic face, scanning my eyes as if trying to decipher a foreign, dead language, or perhaps trying to figure out if this was some twisted, cruel joke I was playing at her expense.
"Yes," she answered slowly, her voice dropping into a quiet, hesitant register that made my stomach plummet into a bottomless void. "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, hollow thud that echoed loudly in the cavern of my ears. "What do you mean by 'a long time ago'?" I pressed, stepping violently forward into her personal space, my voice tightening with a raw, demanding edge that bordered on a plea. "Linna, what do you mean?"
Linna sighed, a heavy, exhausted sound. She looked down at the stained pavement for a brief, agonizing second before forcing herself to meet my desperate gaze. There was pity in her eyes now—thick, suffocating pity—and it absolutely terrified me. It was the look you gave to the broken, to the inconsolable.
"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 delivered straight to my sternum, knocking the breath clean out of me. I froze entirely, a sudden, icy paralysis locking my joints until I felt like stone. The world around me seemed to instantly lose its color, bleeding out into a stark, terrifying grayscale where even the amber streetlamp felt cold.
"What..." I choked out, my throat suddenly tight, dry, and coated in ash. "What happened two years ago?"
I could barely force the syllables past my lips. Suddenly, the open alleyway felt incredibly narrow, the towering brick walls closing in on me like a trash compactor. It felt as though the oxygen was being violently, brutally squeezed out of my lungs by an invisible, mocking hand.
My chest heaved, but nothing was getting through. A rising wave of sheer, unbridled 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 into a sheet of unyielding ice.
Then, Linna delivered the final, crushing blow. Her voice dropped to a solemn, devastating whisper that seemed to echo off the walls, sealing my fate.
"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, spinning out of control.
My breathing turned ragged, harsh, and shallow—a terrible, desperate scraping sound in the quiet night air. My chest heaved violently as adrenaline and horror slammed into my bloodstream like acid. 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 from yesterday. I remembered the warmth of his laugh, the distinct way he walked, the heavy, late-night conversations we had shared just days ago. Aaron was supposed to be alive. Aaron *was* alive. The memories were too bright, too visceral, too freshly painted on the canvas of my mind 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, unblinking eyes, a terrifying, reality-shattering realization began to sink its icy claws into my mind. I was left entirely unanchored, stripped of my history, drowning in a freezing sea of my own broken perception, with absolutely no air left to breathe.