Venti_______Simp
Aroan woke up to a pain he didn't recognize: the blinding, yellow-white glare of fluorescent lights humming overhead. The air, thick with the scent of chalk dust, floor polish, and the faint, sweet perfume of a girl two rows over, was an assault on senses still reeling from the acrid smoke and copper tang of a battlefield that was no longer there. He was slumped over his desk, the hard grain of the wood pressing into his cheek, and a dead weight was cradled in his arms. It was his older sister, her body as limp and pliant as a ragdoll, her hair spilling like dark ink across his textbook. Her skin was cool to the touch, her stillness a terrifying echo of a reality he was suddenly desperate to forget.
Around him, the classroom was a ghost town of resurrected faces. The gentle, melodic drone of his teacher's voice, teasing him for dozing off, was a sound he never thought he'd hear again. The shuffling of papers, the distant laughter from the hallway-it was a symphony of a life he'd lost. His gaze swept over classmates who should have been memories, their faces free of the prejudice that had once twisted them. He couldn't remember the subject, couldn't recall the lesson. It was his final senior year, a time capsule he'd been violently shoved back into.
A dizzying vertigo washed over him, a feeling mirrored in the wide, disbelieving eyes of his best friend, Kevin, sitting across the aisle. And then, his breath caught in his throat. He saw her. Seated by the window, bathed in a soft halo of sunlight that caught the dust motes dancing around her, was the girl he had always loved. The girl whose memory had been a flickering candle in the darkest pits of his despair, the one who had slipped through his fingers and fallen into a place he had trained himself to ignore. A hollow ache bloomed in his chest, but this time, it was followed by a ferocious, iron-clad promise that settled deep in his bones: he would not make the same mistake.