Deniz moves through the room with quiet efficiency, the kind that comes from learning how to make order out of chaos.
He folds my shirts—still faintly scented with the mansion's lavender—and places them into the open suitcase with careful hands. Each crease smoothed. Each edge aligned.
He's done this before. Probably more times than I know.
The past month has blurred into a single, endless stretch of white ceilings, beeping monitors, and the soft footsteps of nurses changing IV bags.
But now… something is shifting. The walls aren't closing in on my body anymore. Just everything else.
I stand by the bed, pulling my own clothes over my skin for the first time in weeks. The fabric feels soft—cotton, familiar… mine.
The hospital clothes were soft, expensive even—but they never felt like mine.
I breathe in the scent of my shirt. And something in my chest loosens.
