Prologue: New Trauma: Unlocked

TW: Suffocation, Death

I'm not breathing.

Something is breathing for me.

Ah, right. The ventilator.

My lungs feel so crowded, like a bunch of bees were surgically put in there, and somehow they're still alive, angry, looking for a way out.

I need to take another breath.

The ventilator isn't breathing.

Why isn't it breathing?

Did it stop working?

I want to breathe.

I need to breathe.

The machine is not breathing.

My head feels dizzy.

I think air just entered my lungs.

Or wait, did it?

I don't know.

Why do I feel dizzy?

Is it the lack of oxygen?

Is it the sedative the doctors gave me?

I don't know.

I don't know.

It feels like I am drowning. Like that one time I accidentally went under in a swimming pool and inhaled water.

It hurts.

It hurts.

Where are the doctors? Where is that nice nurse who read me that bl webnovel without giving me a judgemental look?

There is no one.

Not my mom, not my dad, not my friends.

I'm alone. And probably dying.

It feels like I'm about to die.

I don't want to die. Not yet.

I have to do so many things still.

And what about all the ongoing manga and manhwa I read? I can't die before I know how they end.

My head feels heavy.

There is blackness, crowding into my vision.

I need to breathe.

I need to breathe.

But I can't.

* * *

The girl in the mirror has pink hair.

I don't have pink hair.

I'm looking in the mirror.

What.