Not peaceful.
Not calm.
Artificial.
I woke up gasping.
My body snapped upright like I'd been dragged out of deep water too fast, lungs screaming as air tore into them sharp and wrong. My heart slammed against my ribs—too fast, too uneven—each beat arriving half a step before the last had finished.
For a second, I didn't know where I was.
The moment stretched longer than it should have.
My mind reached for context and came back empty—no ceiling height, no familiar sounds, no sense of direction. Even my own body felt delayed, like sensation arrived a fraction of a second after movement.
I tried to anchor myself to something simple.
Gravity.
The bed beneath me felt solid, but even that certainty wavered, as if the room hadn't fully decided what "down" meant yet. My fingers pressed into the fabric beneath me, testing resistance the way a swimmer tests water before trusting it.
Everything answered back.
Too perfectly.
White light washed over everything.
Not warm.
Not soft.
Clinical.
The room was… clean. Too clean. Smooth walls without seams or joints, no visible panels, no vents, no corners where shadows could settle. The light didn't come from anywhere specific—it simply existed, evenly coating every surface.
The air smelled faintly metallic.
Like rain after lightning. Filtered. Sterile.
My hands moved before my thoughts did.
I checked my chest.
Bandages. Wrapped tight. Layered carefully. Still warm.
Not fresh.
Whoever had done this knew what they were doing.
Something tugged faintly at my wrist.
I followed the sensation down.
A clear line ran from the inside of my arm into the wall beside the bed—thin, flexible, pulsing faintly with each beat of my heart. Glucose. Electrolytes. The fluid inside was colorless, almost invisible unless the light caught it just right.
An IV.
That alone should've grounded me.
Instead, it made my stomach twist.
Hospitals had IVs.
Not places like this.
I stared at it for a second longer than necessary—then pulled.
The needle slid free with barely any resistance.
Too easy.
A bead of blood welled up… then stopped.
I frowned.
No sting.
No lingering burn.
I flexed my fingers.
They obeyed instantly.
Slowly, carefully, I looked down at myself.
My arms.
No swelling. No bruising deep enough to explain the pain screaming through my nerves. Faint discoloration at the edges—yellowing where purple should've been. Healing that looked days old.
My chest rose and fell unevenly beneath the bandages.
I peeled them back just enough to look.
Unbroken skin.
No stitches.
No sutures.
No signs of trauma severe enough to match what I remembered.
But I *remembered*.
Cracked ribs.
Collapsed lungs.
The way breathing had felt like inhaling glass.
My hand slid to my side, fingers pressing gently.
Pain flared immediately—deep, internal, sharp enough to make my breath hitch.
There it was.
Not surface damage.
Something underneath hadn't caught up.
I swallowed hard and shifted my legs over the edge of the bed.
They moved.
Too well.
Muscles responded with strength they shouldn't have had yet. Balance came naturally, like my body was following a blueprint instead of its own condition.
And yet—
When I stood, dizziness surged behind my eyes, pressure blooming at the base of my skull. My heartbeat stuttered, uneven, like it was recalibrating mid-motion.
Whatever they'd done to me…
It wasn't healing.
It was correction.
"…Renya."
The name tore out of me, raw and instinctive.
I swung my legs off the bed—
Pain detonated through my body.
I cried out and collapsed forward, palms slamming against the floor. Heat surged through my muscles like they'd been hollowed out and refilled with fire. Every nerve screamed at once, delayed and overlapping, like my body couldn't decide which injuries to prioritize.
But I didn't care.
"Renya!" I shouted, voice cracking so hard it barely sounded human.
I forced myself upright and staggered toward the door.
There was no handle.
No keypad.
No seam.
Just a smooth vertical line etched into the wall, barely visible unless the light hit it just right.
"…Open," I growled, pressing my palm against it.
Nothing.
My breath came fast and uneven, chest burning with every inhale.
Then—
The wall split open silently.
No grinding.
No mechanical sound.
It simply parted.
Beyond it—
Nothing.
Not darkness.
Space.
An endless, starless void stretched beyond the doorway, swallowing all sense of depth and distance. No floor. No horizon. No reference point.
Just an impossible emptiness humming faintly, like reality holding its breath.
The sound wasn't audible—not exactly.
It was closer to pressure, a vibration behind my ears that made my teeth ache slightly, like standing too close to high-voltage equipment. My skin prickled as if the void were observing me back, registering my presence the way a machine recognizes input.
The longer I stared, the more my sense of scale collapsed.
Distance stopped meaning anything.
The doorway didn't feel like an exit.
It felt like a boundary I wasn't meant to cross.
"What… the hell…"
I stepped back instinctively.
An illusion.
It has to be.
I stepped forward—
The floor vanished.
"NO—!"
I fell.
Time unraveled.
There was no rush of air, no sense of acceleration—just the sickening certainty that I was moving without traveling. My stomach twisted violently, muscles bracing for impact that never came, nerves firing warnings with nowhere to send them.
I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or closed.
The void swallowed orientation itself, stripping away up and down, front and back, until my body was just a bundle of instincts screaming into nothing.
This wasn't falling.
It was removal.
There was no wind. No temperature. No resistance.
The scream ripped out of me as gravity seized my body, dragging me down into nothingness. My stomach dropped violently, that sick, hollow sensation of falling without end.
This isn't real.
This is a dream.
Or some kind of hallucination.
This again—
My chest locked.
No.
Not again.
Then memory snapped into place.
The hospital.
The rain.
The way the world had folded.
The moment I'd appeared behind Jacklin without moving.
Teleportation.
Focus.
I forced my breathing to slow even as I fell, air tearing past my ears. Panic clawed at me, but I shoved it down with both hands.
Think.
At the hospital, I hadn't moved. I hadn't jumped.
The world had shifted around me.
"It wasn't speed," I muttered through clenched teeth. "It was… displacement."
I squeezed my eyes shut mid-fall.
Tried to remember the sensation.
That pressure behind my eyes.
That pull in my chest.
Like reality had briefly let go of me.
"Okay," I whispered. "If this is a power… there has to be a trigger."
Emotion?
Intent?
Position?
Anime logic flooded my mind uninvited—characters focusing, visualizing coordinates, synchronizing energy flows.
Ridiculous.
But it was all I had.
"Think," I hissed. "Fold space. Don't move through it."
I reached inward.
There—
A faint sensation.
Not heat.
Not strength.
Pressure.
Coiled just behind my heartbeat, tight and restrained, like something waiting to be acknowledged.
My vision blurred.
The air screamed.
For a split second—
The void warped.
Hope flared. "Yes—!"
Then—
Reality snapped.
This wasn't movement.
Gravity thickened.
Like the air itself had gained weight.
I slammed back onto solid ground, pain exploding through my body as the breath was knocked out of me in a sharp, choking gasp.
I lay there, stunned, staring up at the ceiling.
Same room.
Same bed.
Same walls.
Something else had decided where I belonged.
The realization settled heavier than the impact.
I hadn't failed to move.
I'd been corrected.
The room felt subtly different now—less like a space I occupied and more like a system that had acknowledged an error and reverted to a stable state. Even the light seemed more certain of itself, no longer flickering at the edges of my vision.
Whatever power I'd touched…
It hadn't let me keep it.
No void.
No fall.
I lay there gasping, chest heaving violently.
"…No," I whispered.
That wasn't teleportation.
That wasn't me.
Something else had pulled me back.
"…What is this place?"
Whatever this place was—it wasn't letting me leave.
And worse—
It had let me try.
The door slid open again.
This time, footsteps followed.
My body tensed instantly.
I pushed myself upright, ignoring the pain, eyes locked on the doorway.
She walked in.
Scarlet hair.
Silver-blue eyes.
Calm.
Unarmed.
Still dangerous.
Every instinct in my body screamed threat.
I grabbed the nearest object—didn't care what—and raised it weakly.
"Don't come closer," I warned hoarsely.
She stopped.
Slowly raised both hands.
Not surrender.
Reassurance.
"Relax," she said evenly. "If I wanted you dead, you wouldn't have woken up."
That voice.
I remembered it.
The pressure.
The way the world bent when she stepped forward.
"You," I said. "You were there."
"Yes."
My grip tightened.
"Where's Renya?"
Her eyes softened—just a fraction.
"He's safe."
One step closer.
"Alive. Unhurt."
My knees nearly gave out.
"…I want to see him."
"You will."
She paused, studying my face like she was reading damage I couldn't see.
"My name is Yuna Shirosaki," she said. "And before you ask—no, I'm not your enemy."
I laughed weakly.
"That's exactly what enemies say."
A corner of her mouth twitched.
"Fair."
She turned slightly toward the door.
"Come with me."
She reached for the panel—
Every muscle in my body tightened.
Not in preparation for attack—
In anticipation of another correction.
I didn't trust the space anymore.
I didn't trust what happened when people moved with confidence here.
I grabbed her wrist.
The moment my fingers touched her skin—
Something shifted.
Not power.
Not heat.
Resonance.
A vibration traveled up my arm, a frequency that matched the dull ache behind my eyes. For a heartbeat, our pulses synced.
Then she pulled away.
Yuna froze.
Her eyes flicked down to where I'd been holding her, then back up to my face.
"…Don't," I said quietly. "Something's wrong with this place."
For the first time since I'd seen her—
She hesitated.
Not fear.
Surprise.
"You felt that," she said.
I didn't know how to answer.
She gently pulled her hand free.
"You're right," she said after a moment. "But you're safe here."
She met my eyes again.
"Come on."
She grabbed my hand.
"HEY—!"
The world folded.
Not like before.
Not violent.
Not tearing.
Clean.
We stepped out—
And my breath vanished.
Because this place was bigger than fear.
✦ END OF CHAPTER 16 — The Place Shouldn't Exist ✦