Got it. Let's take it back to a slightly heavier, more intense tone—more weight, more reflection, a subtle tension—but still in your older narrator, reflective style. Here's a rewritten chapter:
I listened to my mother's voice as she moved around me, soft and low. The scrape of her feet against the wooden floor echoed in the quiet room.
Sunlight came through the window, cutting across the furniture and curtains. The warmth pressed against me, steady and familiar, while the world outside kept moving, indifferent.
Hana leaned over and cooed something I didn't understand, then set me down on the cot. I stayed still, letting the room settle around me, letting the weight of it all sink in—the furniture, the curtains, the faint lines of the sliding door.
The television in the corner caught my attention. The screen flickered, and a man appeared. Broad-shouldered, impossibly tall, like he had been carved from stone.
Red, white, and blue stretched tight over muscles that didn't seem real.
A wide grin spread across his face. Confident, shining. Two golden shapes jutted from his head like horns—or wings.
Even through the screen, he felt larger than the room. He carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, and everything else seemed smaller in comparison.
The light shifted slowly. Shadows stretched and shrank. Hana moved quietly, humming, carrying objects from one side of the room to the other. The scrape of her feet, the faint creak of the floorboards, the soft hum—they threaded through the hours.
I kept watching him, and the recognition hit with sudden force. Horror and certainty intertwined. I knew who he was.
It took a long time for my mind to catch up. Even longer to accept what I was seeing. The room stayed the same, the sunlight still warm, Hana still moving quietly, but something inside me shifted.
And then a thought settled, sharp and undeniable: if I could enter a fictional world, I could find a way out too.
I didn't know how. I didn't know when. I didn't know if it would work. But the idea changed something in me. My chest felt lighter, my mind sharper.
I watched the man on the screen. He moved and laughed with impossible ease, filling the space around him. Time seemed to stretch and fold, but I stayed, letting it all sink in. One thought repeated itself: I could try. I could act.
And somehow, just knowing that felt like the first step.