The beeping sound of the patient monitor rang steadily in the small hospital room, its rhythm soft yet unyielding, like a clock that refused to pause. On the bed lay a boy who looked no older than nine or ten, his fragile frame swallowed by the crisp white sheets.
A thick bandage of cotton wrapped around his forehead, concealing the wound beneath, while a faint shadow of exhaustion lingered on his pale face.
His breathing was calm, simple—each inhale and exhale rising and falling in gentle waves, and the monitor's glowing line confirmed what the heart had already whispered: his condition was stable.
The room itself felt like a cocoon of silence, dim and subdued. Only the weakest traces of dawn had begun to slip past the curtains, the muted gold of the sun spilling faint streaks across the sterile floor.
Outside, the world was waking—birds chirped softly in the distance, their song threading through the stillness as if reminding the boy's body that a new day had already begun.
But the said boy's condition did not seem nearly as calm as his outward appearance suggested, for behind those closed eyelids he was dreaming—dreaming of someone. A man named Dave.
Dave was nothing extraordinary, just a normal man who had grown up, lived, and walked through life as any other. Normal in every way, except for his passion—the boundless, consuming world of anime and manga that had made him into what people called an otaku.
In the boy's dream, Dave's story played out like fragments of a life that did not belong to him: the early days of warmth when his parents were still there, followed by the aching emptiness of their loss; the weariness of jobs that drained his spirit; the desperate yearning for freedom that made him dream of living as a NEET.
Then came the moment he resigned, cutting ties with that suffocating monotony—only for his life to end in a way far from the quiet solitude he once longed for: dying to protect someone, someone whose face even the dream could not give shape to.
The boy's young mind, still too small to even fully grasp the multiplication tables, was suddenly drowned in the memories of a man scarred, weathered, and exhausted by life far heavier than anything he could imagine.
He was too young to understand—but he felt it. The ache of loneliness. The fatigue of countless struggles. The bittersweet yearning for something better.
And then, within that dream, something changed. Amid the storm of borrowed memories, warmth came. It was subtle at first, like gentle hands cradling him, pulling him into a secure embrace. Someone was holding him, someone whose touch felt achingly familiar, as if he had known them for all his life.
And strangely… they felt the same toward him. That warmth seeped into him, spreading from his chest to every corner of his small body, bringing with it a strange shift—something stirring within him, something he could feel but could not yet name.
Outside, the effect of this unseen phenomenon began to reveal itself. The patient monitor at his bedside, which had been steady and calm, suddenly quickened.
His heart rate rose, the beeping coming faster and faster, sharp against the silence of the empty room. The sound echoed unnervingly, the boy's condition shifting in a way no one was there to witness.
But then, just as quickly as it had begun, the storm stilled. The warmth settled, the rhythm slowed. The beeping grew quieter, steadier, until it returned to its previous pace—normal, stable, as though nothing had happened at all.
But just as the patient monitor stabilized, the boy's eyes snapped open. There was no grogginess, no sluggish blink of someone waking from sleep—his gaze was sharp, almost startled, as if he had never truly been asleep at all.
Suddenly, his small hands flew up to his ears, pressing hard against them, his face twisting with pain. His body trembled, features contorting in raw agony as though some unbearable sound was piercing straight into his head.
Yet the room remained utterly silent, save for the steady beeping of the monitor and the distant calls of morning birds. Whatever he was hearing, it was not of this world.
Then, as if a dial had been turned down, his strained expression eased. His hands slipped away from his ears, and he began to huff, drawing in heavy breaths like someone who had just surfaced from deep water.
The sound that had assaulted him was gone—replaced by a faint, whispering hum at the edges of his mind. Not gone, not silenced… but suddenly within reach, like a tide pulling back to reveal what lay beneath.
"What… the hell was that?" he muttered under his breath, his own voice sounding strange in the quiet room. His chest rose and fell rapidly, but miraculously, he calmed far faster than expected. Each exhale steadied him until his breaths no longer trembled, until the wild confusion in his eyes softened into a wary calmness.
Only then did he notice where he was. Slowly, his gaze shifted, scanning the dim space around him—the plain white walls, the faint streaks of sunlight filtering through the curtains, the stillness broken only by the clock ticking above. His brow furrowed in puzzlement.
"A… hospital room?" he whispered, the words hanging uncertainly in the air.
The question felt strange on his tongue, because he had no memory of coming here. Nothing about sterile walls or doctors or nurses flickered in his mind. Instead, he felt the faint tug at his head, something pressing tightly against his scalp. Instinctively, his small fingers rose, brushing over the thick cotton wrapping his forehead.
"What… is going on?"
He closed his eyes, reaching back into the fog of memory, trying to trace the last thing he could recall. Images surfaced: laughter, voices of his friends, the echo of footsteps on school stairs. Then—his body slipping, the sharp shock of falling, and blackness. His hand lingered on the bandage as the pieces fit together.
"So… I fell down the stairs. Lost consciousness." He frowned, his young voice quiet. "Someone must have brought me here after that."
His gaze drifted toward the clock on the wall. The thin hands ticked forward with unbothered rhythm, while faint golden light spilled further through the curtain edges. Coupled with the chorus of birds outside—chirping, calling, their chaotic noise weaving together in wild unity—he pieced together the time.
"Dawn," he murmured with certainty. "Not dusk. Birds don't sing like that to end the day… they're starting it. Starting their work."
And though his lips spoke rational words, a deeper realization stirred within him. That dream he had seen—of a man named Dave, of a life not his own, of warmth and a strange shift—had not just been a dream.
Something had awakened in him. Something that let him hear the chaos, the tangled voices and sounds that no one else could.
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