Fighting your demons (SaneOba)

Part 1

Sanemi didn't remember the moment he was born, but then again, who did? He had no reason to suspect his life was anything but ordinary. He grew up an only child, living with his grandmother, who raised him with a quiet strength that had shaped him. They were close—closer than most could understand—and Sanemi had loved her fiercely. She was all he had, and he took care of her as best as he could.

But when he turned nineteen, everything changed. His grandmother passed away quietly one evening, slipping from the world without warning. Her death left him with a hollow ache that he couldn't fully explain. It hurt—of course it hurt—but it was a strange sort of pain. It felt too familiar, as if this was not the first time he had experienced loss this deep. The grief gnawed at him, yet somewhere in his mind, it was as if he had already braced himself for this kind of pain. It was almost second nature, and that realization disturbed him. Why did loss feel like an old companion?

He hadn't lost anyone else. Not before her. He couldn't understand why his heart felt so accustomed to the weight of sorrow, as if it had been there long before his grandmother's passing.

Sanemi tried to distract himself by moving forward. He worked for a while, earning enough money to start university, and threw himself into his studies. He focused on his career, on building a future. But no matter how hard he worked, a strange emptiness lingered. It was like a shadow that followed him, haunting his every step. Every day felt... hollow, like something important was missing from his life, something he couldn't name.

It was in the small, everyday moments that the emptiness would creep up on him. The taste of his morning coffee, for example, began to stir something deep within him—a sense of déjà vu that made no sense. He had always liked coffee, but recently, it felt oddly familiar, as if it was linked to a part of him he couldn't quite access. He'd sit at his table, cup in hand, staring into the dark liquid, feeling an inexplicable sense of longing that he couldn't understand. It made him uneasy, like a memory was just out of reach, waiting to resurface.

As the days passed, these strange feelings became more frequent, more intense. Sometimes, in the middle of a perfectly normal day, Sanemi would feel a wave of emotion rise up inside him, out of nowhere. Once, he had even found himself crying—silent tears that he couldn't explain. They came unbidden, and all he could do was wipe them away, confused and frustrated by the sudden flood of grief that didn't seem to belong to him.

And it wasn't just grief. There was something else, too—an unfamiliar yearning. He would watch siblings interact in public, their closeness, their bickering, their laughter, and something inside him would ache in a way that he didn't understand. He admired them from a distance, wishing he had what they did. It didn't make sense. He had never had siblings, yet the longing for that connection felt so real, so deep, as if he had lost his siblings before, as if he even had any to begin with.

Every day, it became harder to shake off the feeling that something was wrong. The déjà vu, the emotional outbursts, the flashes of vague memories that weren't his—they all added up to a growing sense of confusion. Sometimes, Sanemi would sit quietly in his room, staring at nothing, trying to piece together the fragments of memories that slipped in and out of his mind. There were faces he couldn't remember, emotions that weren't his own, and a sense of loss so profound that it made his heart ache.

He would lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering what was happening to him. Maybe he was tired? Maybe the pressure of university was getting to him? He was working hard, studying every day, trying to build a future, but it felt like his mind was unraveling bit by bit. He tried to push the feelings away, tried to ignore the flashes of memories that came and went, but it was becoming impossible to keep them at bay.

The worst part was the sense of familiarity, the way these emotions felt so lived-in, as if he had experienced them all before. It was like a puzzle he couldn't solve, each piece slipping through his fingers before he could put it into place. He never got the full picture—just fleeting glimpses of a life that didn't belong to him.

And yet, the more he tried to deny it, the more these memories haunted him. Faces in dreams that he didn't recognize but felt like he should. A scarred man's face that stirred something deep within him. A name on the tip of his tongue that he could never quite say. And that hollow, gnawing ache for a brother he had never had, a brother he had never lost.

Sanemi was lost, adrift in emotions and memories that didn't make sense. He didn't know why he felt this way or what was happening to him. But the more he tried to dismiss it, the more these feelings of loss, love, and regret clawed at him, pulling him closer to something buried deep within his soul—a past life, a forgotten tragedy, waiting for him to remember.