While most of the city is still asleep, Ryoma Takeda stirs. Consciousness returns to him in fragments, slow and unwelcome, as if his body is reluctant to admit the night is already over.
Light reaches him first. Not sharply, not all at once, but as a pale pressure behind his eyelids, as if someone has turned the world back on without warning him.
Ryoma's eyes flutter, resist, then open a fraction before he closes them again. The light is wrong, too white, too even. It's not sunlight, not the harsh glare of an arena either.
It presses at his temples, seeps inward, makes his head feel thick and heavy. The ceiling swims into view, featureless and unfamiliar, lines blurring at the edges.
"… A hospital?"
The thought comes without panic, more like a box checked. The smell confirms it; clean, sterile, layered faintly with something chemical and dry.
Pain follows, rolling in after awareness like a delayed tide.
