Sauce smell… again.

  But this time, Kazeem didn’t rise to it.

  His body lurched before he even opened his eyes. He turned and threw up next to the bed, bile thick and bitter. His stomach twisted as if something had been clawing through it all night. His hands trembled. The spinning wouldn’t stop.

  The headache was still here.

  The chaotic noise was still here.

  The hunger was still here.

  His breaths came in uneven gasps, like the air itself didn’t want to stay in his lungs. The world was tilting… no, crumbling. It felt like the floor was dissolving beneath him, like gravity was broken, like his very presence in this world was being erased.

  And he remembered.

  The blood. The cough. The people watching but not seeing. The way they had just walked around him, as if he wasn’t there, as if he wasn’t real.

  The helplessness.

  The weakness.

  The frustration.

  It clawed up his chest and cracked something in his ribs. The loop had always made him feel like a stranger in his own skin, but this? This was worse. It felt like reality itself had pushed him out. Like the script had been written and he’d dared to improvise, only to be ejected from the stage.

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  He curled tighter, hugging his legs to his chest, nails digging into his arms until tiny crescents of pain tried to drag him back into the present.

  But nothing worked.

  The anarchic buzzing in his head rose again. Whispers layered over whispers.

  Gb?gB?GB?Gb?

  Too many to count. Too many to fight. They swelled until it was screaming again.

  He shoved a dirty cloth over the vomit, not even caring if it helped. His body shook. He rocked slowly, like a child trying to hush himself to sleep. Tears mixed with spit, and all of it smeared across his face.

  Wake up. Wake up. Wake up!

  His amber eyes were bloodshot. His nails had left thin, raw lines down his forearms. His heartbeat stuttered behind his ribs like it wanted to give up too.

  He couldn’t let his mother hear this. He couldn’t cry. He couldn’t scream. If she came in—

  No. He clenched his jaw so tightly it ached.

  And then—

  Something touched his face.

  It was cool. Solid.

  Not wet like his tears. Not soft like cloth.

  A familiar shape.

  The mask.

  He didn’t know where it came from. It wasn’t by his bed. It hadn’t been since the 10th. But here it was, pressing against his cheek like a hand. Like it had been summoned by his collapse.

  His fingers grasped it desperately, clutching it like a lifeline. The whispers dulled. The hunger quieted slightly. The chaotic buzzing melted into murmurs, then faded into the background like a memory you weren’t sure you’d had.

  And the pain?

  It didn’t vanish, but it pulled back. Enough for him to breathe. Enough to keep him from breaking entirely.

  He didn’t know why it helped. He didn’t care.

  The mask had saved him.

  He didn’t know how but it did.

  He passed out not long after, curled around it like a child clinging to a stuffed doll in a burning house.

  He woke again two hours later.

  The house was still.

  The only sound was the bubbling of sauce graine over the fire, and his mother humming softly in the kitchen. That same quiet melody without shape. The one that used to soothe him.

  Now it filled him with dread.

  The scent of his favorite food hung in the air like a taunt. And he knew, he couldn’t eat it. Even if he tried. His stomach turned at the thought of it. The hunger remained, but it had changed shape. The body wanted gb?, not plantain.

  He sat on the edge of his mat, elbows on knees, head in hands.

  “What did I do wrong?” he whispered to no one.

  He went over the scene again in his mind: the merchants, the slap, his panic, the intervention.

  His mistake.

  Right before he acted, right before he stepped forward, his instinct had whispered to him.

  The same instinct that had protected him so far. That had warned him when to stay quiet, when to stop talking, when to back away.

  And this time, he’d ignored it.

  He thought he had no time. He thought it would be too late if he hesitated.

  He acted anyway.

  And he paid the price.

  That wasn’t the way.

  It wasn’t about just changing the events.

  There were rules to this dance with time.

  And if he misstepped again… he wouldn’t wake up.

  I read again some of my first chapters aaaand yeah…