He lay there, small chest rising and falling, eyes half-open in the murk of early dawn. The woman stirred nearby, murmuring in sleep, the man's heavy breathing a low rumble beyond. Safe, warm, protected.
But inside, the gray-self trembled.
Fragments of the old life flickered — the hiss of subway brakes, the bitterness of instant coffee, the dull glow of a computer screen filled with meaningless numbers. He tried to seize them, to hold them tight.
But when he reached, the shapes dissolved. A station's name blurred into nonsense. The face of a colleague collapsed into smoke. Even his old name—his anchor—grew faint, like writing scrawled on fogged glass, melting before his eyes.
Panic surged. No. Not yet. If I forget… if I forget, then what remains?
The new name whispered again, muffled through baby ears but undeniable. It slipped beneath his skin, coiling into his bones. A thread of power, alien and sharp, stitching him to this world.
He clenched his fists, drool wetting the blanket beneath his chin. He wanted to cry, to scream, to tear open his throat and drag his old life back into the light. But his body gave him nothing — only a pitiful whimper.
And in that helpless sound, he felt it: the first fracture. A small piece of his past life—his own name—gone, beyond reach.
He shivered. He was being unmade, piece by piece, until nothing of the office worker would remain.
The new name would consume him.
And there was nothing he could do.
No.
He would not let go.
Somewhere in the haze, he forced himself to pull at what was left of the gray life. Faces — even if blurred — he dragged them back. The smell of burnt paper in the office printer. The click of keys. The weight of the commute. The emptiness of his tiny apartment. Even if they were miserable, even if they crushed him, they were his.
Each fragment felt like gripping shards of glass, cutting into him as he held them. But he welcomed the pain. Pain meant memory. Memory meant existence.
The new name pressed harder, echoing in his ears, wrapping him in warmth he had not asked for. It was tempting—dangerously tempting. To let it wash over him, to sink into its sweetness, to abandon the gray.
But he clenched his tiny fists, fingernails digging into soft palms. He pressed his face into the damp blanket, forcing his mind to hold the images of the old world, ugly as they were.
I am still me.
His silent vow rang in the hollow of his chest.
Yet even as he fought, he felt the ground sliding beneath him. Already, certain memories had holes. What was the name of the street he lived on? Who was the neighbor who nodded to him in silence every morning? What had he eaten last before the accident?
Gone.
He panicked, clawing at the emptiness, but there was nothing to grab. His past was bleeding away like ink dropped in water.
Tears welled in his eyes. His baby throat released a soft, broken cry. The sound was pitiful, weak, but inside it was a howl of defiance.
And still, the new name came, warm and unrelenting.
The parents stirred at the noise, soft voices calling to him in gentle tones, repeating that name as though it were the only truth.
He trembled. Half of him wanted to surrender, to be loved, to be theirs. The other half screamed that surrender was death.
And so he hung there, caught between two worlds, clutching fading shards of the old even as the new wrapped tighter and tighter around him.
His chest burned.
Not from breath or hunger, but from the weight of the struggle. Resistance was fire in his veins, each flicker of memory cutting him raw. He could feel himself splintering, cracking like glass pressed too hard.
If he kept fighting, if he clung tighter, something inside him would shatter. He knew it. The gray life, the dull despair he thought he despised—it had become his anchor, his proof of being. But the more he clawed at it, the more it slipped through his grip, leaving his hands bloody with absence.
He could not win this way.
But to surrender—
The very thought froze him.
The new name whispered again, soft as a lullaby, rich with warmth, belonging, comfort. A world offered to him, if only he opened his hands and let go of the past. If only he allowed himself to dissolve.
And in that warmth lurked terror.
Because if he let go, if he stopped resisting, if he gave himself over fully to that new word, that new life—then what remained of him would be gone forever. The man who had walked gray streets, who had known loneliness and humiliation, would vanish without a trace.
Death would have been cleaner.
This was worse: to watch himself slowly erode, to feel the pieces of his soul dissolve one by one.
He whimpered, a broken, animal sound. To the parents, it was only the cry of an infant. To him, it was the voice of a man standing at the edge of annihilation.
No way forward.
No way back.
To resist was to break.
To surrender was to be erased.
He trembled, caught in that silent scream, as the world pressed closer.