She started wandering in the academy aimlessly.

  At first glance, it looked… normal.

  Hallways filled with students. Lockers. Classrooms. Laughter drifting through open doors. It could have passed for any ordinary school if she ignored the small things—no personal electronics in sight, uniforms mixed strangely with casual clothes, rules that felt present but unspoken.

  They looked like regular kids.

  But were they?

  He had called her an ordinary human.

  So what did that make them?

  The thought didn’t linger long.

  She tried to find her way back to her room and failed. The corridors folded into each other, repeating until irritation crept in. Eventually, she stopped a passing student.

  He smiled too easily and offered to guide her.

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  He talked as they walked. Small things. Classes. Dorm rules. Nothing important.

  Aki stared at his feet.

  She didn’t look at his face even once.

  Halfway through his sentence, her body suddenly felt heavy. Like something had been pulled from her veins without warning. Her steps slowed. The hallway blurred.

  She was dragging her legs at the direction of that stranger.

  After that, sounds faded away, her memory dissolved into fog.

  She wasn’t sure how she got back to her room.

  Only that she did.

  She sat on the bed and stared at the patient gown she was wearing. The same one. Always the same.

  She thought about going to the library.

  The thought alone exhausted her.

  Instead, she lay back down and scrolled through her phone without reading anything. Time slipped. Light faded. Night came and went.

  She sat up. Lay back down. Turned. Stared at the ceiling.

  And then it was morning.

  Five days passed like that.

  No progress. No decisions. No resistance.

  Just breathing.

  On the fifth day, the cat returned.

  It slipped through the open window and landed on the floor like it belonged there. Aki followed it without hesitation.

  No questions. No curiosity.

  She found herself in Dr. Nicolas’s office.

  He spoke calmly, as if this were routine.

  “A water tank will be installed in your room,” he said. “Drink from it daily.”

  She nodded.

  When she returned, the tank wasn’t in the room.

  It was connected to everything.

  The sink. The shower. The small kitchen unit.

  There was no avoiding it.

  The first time she bathed, the smell hit her.

  Familiar.

  She couldn’t place it, but her chest tightened anyway.

  Fragments surfaced the voices, words, the Chancellor’s calm tone—but they slipped away before she could hold them.

  She started eating.

  Cooking with the ingredients delivered to her door. Drinking the water. Sleeping when her body told her to.

  She didn’t leave the room.

  And strangely—

  she felt better.

  Lighter. Steadier.

  Alive.

  Maybe she had finally settled in.

  Maybe this was what accepting reality felt like.