Beep… beep… beep…
A year had passed since the day his world stopped, and he could still remember the wind striking his face and the burning in his lungs as he pedaled desperately because he was late, as always, to his university classes.
His greatest flaw had always been the same, an almost nonexistent sense of direction. He was the kind of person who needed to memorize every street, every turn, and multiple landmarks just to avoid getting lost. But that day, the panic of being late made him trust a shortcut suggested by one of his few friends.
He turned sharply at a tight corner, convinced that the narrow street would lead him to the main avenue, but there was no time to react.
The last thing he remembered from the accident was the roar of an engine, the desperate honking of the driver demanding he move aside, and the screech of brakes, as the metallic mass of a truck filled his entire vision before the asphalt swallowed him. His final thought was absurd, that shortcut had turned out to be the shortest path to his own end.
When he woke up in intensive care, he believed it was all a nightmare, thinking that if he tried hard enough, he could get up and shake off the dust. But reality was a cage, he had lost all sensation and movement from the neck down. He was nothing more than a conscious mind trapped in a body that had become dead weight.
Life turned into a routine of silent humiliation. Every two hours, without exception, the nursing staff came in to turn him as if he were an object. The shame of depending on others for his bodily needs, for drainage bags and his most intimate hygiene, was constant torture, because he never managed to get used to that sense of helplessness.
His only escape was a tablet mounted on a mechanical arm in front of his eyes. Thanks to an eye-tracking sensor, he could browse the internet, so he spent months consuming web novels, binge-watching anime, and watching YouTube videos. But as time passed, everything interested him less and less, to the point where he found everything boring.
He had always been fond of fantasy, and perhaps because of his situation, he ended up devouring stories of protagonists who died under the wheels of a truck only to awaken in magical worlds. Though he once found them unbearably cliché, now they only felt ironically cruel.
He smiled bitterly at the thought. He had read so many stories like that that he grew tired of the genre, and yet there he was, victim of the same cliché, but without magic, without a leveling system, and without a second chance.
Before the accident, his life had been simple. He was the responsible older brother who took care of the younger ones while his parents worked. He enjoyed the warmth of home, laughter in the kitchen, and video games at night. But now, he regretted being alive, convinced he was an unbearable burden to those he loved most.
As he sank into that spiral of thoughts, the door slowly opened, and his parents walked in.
His mother's eyes were red, and his father kept his gaze down, shoulders slumped, something unusual for him, as he always had rigid posture. That detail alone was enough for him to understand that something was wrong, very wrong.
Usually, they brought his siblings and tried to fake smiles, pretending everything was fine. But that day, the silence was sepulchral. His heart began to race, and the monitor betrayed him with a frantic rhythm.
Beepbeepbeepbeep…
"Doctor, have we really exhausted all options?" his mother whispered, her voice trembling.
The doctor sighed as he looked at them with pity and replied, "The patient depends entirely on the ventilator, and the nerve degeneration shows no signs of reversal. We have done everything possible."
He didn't need to hear more. He had watched enough dramas and read enough tragedies to recognize that script. His condition hadn't improved in over a year, and his family could no longer financially sustain the situation.
They approached the bed, and his mother caressed his cheek, the only place where he could still feel.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, my child," she said as her tears dampened his unmoving skin.
"You are our pride. You always will be," his father added, his voice breaking.
He stared at the ceiling, trapped in icy panic. For the first time in months, the desire to die disappeared, but not out of fear of death itself, rather because of everything he would never get to live.
So many things he hadn't experienced, so many places he hadn't visited, so many memories he hadn't built. He wanted to feel the air on his face, hug his siblings, read one more story, play video games with them, and explore the world around him at least once more.
But he knew he couldn't stay alive. His existence carried too high a cost, and it was his family's future.
With overwhelming mental effort, he fixed his gaze on the tablet's virtual keyboard. His eyes moved from letter to letter, struggling against the sensor while tears blurred his vision. It took an eternity.
Finally, the device's speaker emitted in its robotic voice, "Thank you."
It was his farewell.
He closed his eyes and let the tears flow freely, tracing a sad and contradictory smile across his face, as the doctor approached the panel and, with a dry sound, disconnected the ventilator that had kept him alive.
The machine's hiss ceased, and the room fell into absolute silence, broken only by the last fading heartbeats.
Beep…
Beep…
Beep...…
Everything turned to darkness.
Yet despite being surrounded by darkness, he gradually began to perceive new sensations, vague, confusing, and difficult to define. He felt hunger, thirst, and pain, as if experiencing things like eating, suffering, and crying. Even that constant desire to die mixed with an absurd need to cling to life a little longer.
Everything felt unreal, like a nightmare he couldn't wake from. The void that had enveloped him for so long began to slowly fade until it disappeared completely, replaced by a wave of pain that coursed through his body with overwhelming intensity.
The first thing he perceived was the smell, a dense, nauseating mix of vomit, sour sweat, and an artificially sweet floral perfume that, for some reason, disturbed him. He also began to hear words in a language he couldn't understand.
He tried to open his eyes, expecting to find the familiar ceiling, the heart monitor, and his mother's tired face, but it wasn't so.
What appeared before him was a floor of damp wood and straw. Before he could process it, a rough voice shook him.
"Move, wretch. We won't have enough to buy Soma wine if you don't get your filthy ass moving and earn money."
A sharp pain pierced his side, and he realized someone had kicked him. He instinctively curled up, protecting his abdomen, and in that movement, something happened that left him momentarily frozen.
He could feel his hands. They were small, covered in dirt, but they responded when he tried to move them. Just being able to do that was enough to make him cry with happiness, even though he felt injured, hungry, and utterly exhausted.
His amazement barely had time to settle before a second blow struck his shoulder.
"Are you deaf, Luan? Get up!"
He lifted his gaze with difficulty, and instead of the parents who had accompanied him throughout his life, he found a boy and a girl who appeared to be children. Their features were fine, almost youthful, yet worn down, their faces devoid of vitality, as if life had long been drained from them.
They wore hardened leather armor, cracked and covered in dirt. Their sunken eyes, framed by deep dark circles, had that dull, glassy sheen of those enslaved by addiction.
The names came to his mind effortlessly, like foreign pieces forcing themselves into place within his consciousness, Kael and Mara.
They were his parents, but in their bodies, there was no trace of warmth or youth, only the desperation of those who had gone too long without their next dose.
Only then did he notice that beside him, a small bundle began to cry, emitting a weak, broken sound closer to a whimper than a real cry.
It was Liliruca Arde, his little sister.