"Have I died?"
He felt a mix of emotions: fear, anguish, sadness, and at the same time something like… relief? But why would he feel relief? He didn't know.
"Where am I? Who am I? Ah… I can't remember anything."
He had several questions, but no answers.
He started looking frantically around him and realized something unsettling—he couldn't see anything.
No, that wasn't the correct answer.
There was nothing.
Just a void.
Was this death? Or his personal hell?
He couldn't say for sure.
And suddenly something in his mind clicked as he processed the information.
.
.....
.....
..
..
.
"Wait… I died."
The idea repeated itself in his mind over and over again, as if he couldn't accept it.
How? When? Where?
The questions kept piling up, crashing into each other, but none of them could find an answer.
He didn't understand anything.
And yet… there he was.
He didn't feel cold.
He didn't feel heat.
He didn't feel his body.
He tried to move, or at least he believed he tried.
Nothing happened.
He was simply there, existing in a way he had never imagined experiencing.
Time stopped making sense. He lost count when he tried to measure it, and hours passed… or what he believed were hours.
Until he noticed something: a point of light had appeared in the middle of the nothingness.
It was strange.
Something like that didn't make sense there.
Or so he believed.
Time passed.
The point remained there.
He couldn't take his eyes off it.
And at some point he stopped really seeing it.
When he regained awareness, he realized something: the point had grown, and now it was like a flashlight pointing directly at him.
He tried to look away but couldn't.
Until he saw it.
The void surrounding the point—not the light—began to contract.
Without warning, brightness flooded everything, blinding him in the process.
But he didn't have time to process it.
He felt the light pulling him toward it.
Fear invaded him. He tried to fight it, but it was useless—he couldn't do anything until the light completely enveloped him.
And he felt himself being compressed.
As if something was pulling him from every direction at the same time, as if something was
pushing him toward a narrow place.
He wanted to scream, but he had no mouth.
He wanted to cry, but he had no eyes.
The only thing he could do was let himself be dragged wherever that thing was taking him.
And he disappeared.
.
...
....
...
..
Or so he thought.
When he began to hear sounds, he realized something—were those
voices?
He didn't understand anything.
He had spent hours without understanding anything, and that still terrified him.
After a few seconds he managed to identify them:
They were two men and a woman.
When he recovered some of his sight, the first thing he saw was a doctor pointing a flashlight at him.
Was that… the light he had seen? Wasn't he dead?
What was happening? Why was that woman calling him son? W-why were that woman and that man calling him son? Why were they so worried about him?
"Itsuku… Itsuki?"
Who was Itsuki and why were they calling him that?
He didn't know.
He could only hear scattered words. He felt sleepy, and a headache prevented him from thinking.
Someone said something about a blow and that there wouldn't be any… serious consequences?
He only managed to nod when the woman spoke to him. He was more focused on the pain.
The last thing he managed to hear before falling asleep was something about a quirk exam.
What a strange word.
$
He woke up suddenly.
And the first sound he heard was an engine.
"W-what happened?" he asked, completely disoriented as he tried to adjust himself in the seat.
The woman he had seen with the man and the doctor was now in front of him, sitting in the driver's seat, and the man was in the passenger seat.
The woman had adjusted the rearview mirror in such a way that he could see her amber-colored eyes fixed on the road.
He saw the man turn toward him.
"Ah," he sighed. "I'm glad you finally woke up, son. You gave us quite a scare at the hospital, but luckily the doctor told us you just fell asleep."
He didn't know what to do, other than give a slight nod, which made the man visibly relieved.
He saw the woman slightly tighten her grip on the steering wheel.
It wasn't a sudden movement—barely noticeable—but her knuckles tensed before she spoke.
"How do you feel?" she asked in a whisper, loud enough for him to hear.
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
He didn't even know how he really felt.
He looked away to find something to say, until his eyes landed on his wrists.
He saw nothing.
His eyes widened slightly.
"I think I'm fine," he finally said.
The woman released the breath she seemed to have been holding, and the man beside her relaxed his shoulders.
Seeing that they wouldn't ask him more questions, he stared out the window, completely separating himself from the world around him while trying not to fall asleep. He couldn't understand what had been happening, but for some reason… he felt at peace.
The sound of the engine slowly faded until it stopped completely.
There was a silence—short but strangely comfortable. In it, he caught a glimpse of their destination: a house.
Sleepiness began to intensify.
To the point that when he saw the couple get out of the car, he followed them in silence.
He responded with clumsy movements when they spoke to him, guided more by instinct than by his own will.
His body felt heavy.
Too heavy.
When they reached an open room, he didn't even ask anything. He simply lay down on the bed and didn't think—he only stared at the ceiling while darkness slowly covered him.
Exhaustion wrapped around him, and this time he didn't try to fight it.