Morning felt normal.
That was the problem.
Minho woke without a jolt, without sweat soaking through his shirt, without the ugly weight of some чужный(alien) life clawing at the edges of his mind. No palace halls. No silk sleeves. No strange memories that did not belong to him, pressed into his skull like they had always been there. Just the dim ceiling above his bed, the familiar shape of his room, the stale quiet of a morning that looked entirely ordinary from the outside. He lay still for a while anyway, staring upward as if waiting for the universe to flinch first. It did not. Nothing whispered. Nothing shifted. Nothing tried to reach for him from the dark.
By the time he got to campus, the day had already arranged itself into something painfully predictable. His head still ached in that dull, annoying way injuries liked to insist on, but it was manageable. No sudden dizziness. No unwanted flashes of impossible lives. No sense that reality had split and forgotten to tell him. He made it early too, which felt almost suspicious in its own right. Fifteen minutes before class, on time enough to feel smug about it, and early enough to convince himself that maybe the worst of yesterday had been just that. Yesterday. He climbed the stairs with his bag slung over one shoulder and a careful kind of confidence in his steps, like he could walk himself back into normal life if he moved steadily enough.
The lecture hall was already half awake when he stepped inside. Voices overlapped in loose clusters, chairs scraped against the floor, someone laughed too loudly at something that probably did not deserve it, and a few students sat bent over their phones with the serious focus of people who had long since given up pretending lectures were the highlight of their existence. Toward the back, a group of girls had claimed their usual corner and were busy with mirrors, lip gloss, and brushes, treating the classroom like an extension of their vanity shelf. Minho let out a slow breath at the sight of it all. It was messy, noisy, pointless in the exact way ordinary life always was. It was real. It made sense. For a moment, he actually felt his shoulders loosen.
Then his eyes moved.
And stopped.
Jisung sat a few rows ahead, angled slightly to the side, hood up over a yellow sweatshirt, black headphones covering his ears. His head shifted faintly in time with whatever he was listening to, and the movement was so subtle it might have been nothing at all. He looked relaxed. Detached. Just another quiet student waiting for class to start. Nothing about him screamed danger. Nothing about him looked like the thing Minho had been trying not to think about since the first day he walked in. That was what unsettled him most. Not a threat. Not a warning. Just a boy in a hoodie, sitting still as if he had every right to be there.
Minho stared a second too long, then looked away with a tiny scoff under his breath. "You're overthinking," he muttered to himself as he dropped into his seat. He told himself that like it would stick. Like saying it softly enough might make it true. Because clearly everything was fine. Clearly nothing strange had happened. Clearly his nerves were just trying to turn one weird day into something bigger than it was.
The answer came faster than comfort ever does.
The classroom door opened, and Mrs. Kim walked in.
The change was immediate. Conversations died. Phones disappeared. Chairs went still. A whole room full of students straightened in near unison, not because they respected her, but because survival had taught them better than to look careless when she entered. She set her books down at the front with the same precise efficiency she always had, her presence filling the space without any effort at all. Strict. Sharp. Controlled. The exact kind of woman who made students sit up straighter before she even said a word. Minho relaxed a fraction. That at least was familiar. That at least was what the world was supposed to feel like.
