Li Wei woke to Sunlight filtering through the doorway.
Not suddenly. Not with panic or pain or the immediate terror that had defined every previous return to consciousness. This time, awareness came slowly, gradually, like water seeping through cloth.
His mind surfaced from depths it hadn't reached before, and for the first time since the square, he felt something that resembled actual rest.
The pain was still there, constant and present in every breath. But it had dulled somehow, retreating from the forefront of his awareness to become background noise instead of all-consuming agony.
His body ached, and his chest throbbed where the wound was, but these sensations felt distant, manageable, like they were happening to someone else and he was merely observing from a safe remove.
He lay still for a long moment, taking inventory. The wooden floor was hard beneath him. The vessels of water sat nearby, exactly where he'd left them. The empty chest gaped open against the wall. Everything was as it had been before sleep claimed him.
I slept. Actually slept. Without dying. Without bleeding out or suffocating or any of the hundred ways I should have died.
The realisation should have brought relief, should have sparked something positive. Instead, it just added to the growing list of impossibilities that defined his existence. He closed his eyes again, not quite ready to face consciousness fully.
Sleep pulled at him. Not the unconsciousness of trauma or blood loss, but actual sleep. Real rest. His mind drifted, loosening its desperate grip on awareness.
Darkness took him.
…
White ceiling. Textured in that specific way that only modern construction created. He knew that texture intimately. Popcorn ceiling. His ceiling. The light fixture in the centre had a dead bulb he'd been meaning to replace for weeks, maybe months. Time had a way of slipping past when every day was the same.
The glow from his monitor painted the wall blue. He'd been working on something before lying down. Code, always code. Lines of it stretching endlessly down the screen. His eyes hurt from staring but he couldn't look away, wouldn't look away.
The work had to be finished, though he couldn't quite remember why or when the deadline was. The thought slipped away before he could grasp it.
His bed was soft beneath him, memory foam that had moulded to his body over years. The pillow under his head had the perfect amount of give.
He'd spent actual time researching pillows, reading reviews and comparing thread counts and fill materials and loft heights. All that effort for something he barely noticed anymore.
Comfortable. Safe. Familiar.
The room smelled like stale air and electronics. He should open a window and let fresh air in, but that would mean getting up, mean moving, mean breaking the comfortable stillness that had settled over everything.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand, notification light blinking insistently. He didn't reach for it. Someone from work probably, or some automated reminder about something he'd already forgotten. The phone could wait. Everything could wait.
Outside his window, the city continued its endless noise. Cars and voices and the mechanical hum of civilisation functioning. All of it distant, all of it happening to other people in other places. Nothing to do with him.
He was alone, had been alone for so long that the state had stopped feeling like loneliness and started feeling like baseline existence. This was normal. This was life. Wake up, work, eat, sleep, repeat until—
The image shattered like glass.
—
Dirt under his fingernails. Dark earth packed so deep that scrubbing never quite removed it all. His hands moved through the soil.
Pulling weeds that had grown overnight. The roots came free with resistance, making small popping sounds as they separated from the earth.
The sun pressed down on his neck, heavy and insistent. He'd been in the field since dawn, and the day stretched ahead with hours of work still remaining.
His back ached from bending and his knees protested from crouching, but the discomfort was familiar. Expected. Part of the rhythm of life that had defined his existence for as long as he could remember.
The field stretched in neat rows ahead of him. Grain stalks swaying slightly in the breeze, not ready for harvest yet. Another few weeks, maybe a month if the weather held.
He could tell by the colour of the leaves, by the way the stalks bent, by the feel of the grain heads when he rubbed them between his palms.
His father had taught him these things, how to read the crops and judge when they were ready and work the soil so it would produce again next season. Knowledge passed down through generations, practical and essential and tied directly to survival.
Someone called from across the field. A voice he recognised but couldn't quite place. He looked up, squinting against the sun, trying to see who it was.
The figure was distant and indistinct, waving at him. He waved back automatically, knowing without knowing that whoever it was belonged to the village.
Everyone knew everyone here. Everyone helped everyone because that was how things worked, how they'd always worked.
The woman who lived three houses down would bring bread tomorrow. Fresh bread that steamed when broken open. She always brought extra when she baked, said it was no trouble, said the village looked after its own.
He'd offer to help with her fence in return because the wood was rotting on the north side and needed replacing before winter.
That was the way of things. Give and take. Help offered and accepted without formal accounting. Trust built through years of proximity and shared struggle.
He returned to the weeds, his hands moving automatically, following patterns worn so deep into muscle memory that thought wasn't required. Pull, discard, move forward. Pull, discard, move forward. The rhythm was meditative and peaceful in its simplicity.
The earth smelled rich, full of life and potential. He breathed it in deeply, filling his lungs with the scent of growing things and sun-warmed soil.
This was real. This was solid. This was home in a way that had nothing to do with walls or roofs and everything to do with the land beneath his feet and the people who shared it.
The field needed him and he needed the field, and the balance between those two needs was what gave life structure and meaning.
His hands continued working while his mind drifted to the evening ahead. Dinner would be simple, bread and whatever vegetables were ready from the garden behind his house. Maybe some dried meat if he felt like preparing it.
Then sleep on his straw mattress while the village settled into darkness around him. Tomorrow would come with first light, and he would return to the fields, and the cycle would continue as it always had and always would.