Chapter Text
It’s dark.
I can feel, but I can’t move.
I sense the darkness pressing in, yet I can’t tell if my eyes are open or shut. My head throbs with a high-pitched ringing. I try to think, but my mind stumbles, trapped.
A strange instinct tells me I could move, that every muscle is coiled and ready. Yet something restrains me, an invisible grip pulling me back.
Then, suddenly, I’m moving.
But it’s not me guiding my limbs. A force around me compresses and releases, contracting like a heartbeat, squeezing from all sides. It’s invasive, tight. It feels wrong.
I don’t like this.
The ringing grows louder, pressing against my skull. The discomfort swells, muddling any thought to fight. I don’t know why or how, but I know this isn’t natural. It’s something beyond comprehension, something that stirs unease deep within.
Then, finally, something shifts. I feel the top of my head breach into cold, icy air, a hand seizing me, yanking me forward. Rough. Careless.
Noise fills the air. A ringing in my ears that travels all throughout my skull, so loud I almost couldn't hear a woman screaming. There was also a man’s voice in a language I don’t understand. The last of my feet are dragged into the open, exposed to the chill. I feel so small, so brittle, as if my very bones might shatter. I’ve never felt anything like this. This weakness. This terrifying vulnerability.
“It’s a boy!”
The voices fade, but the ringing lingers, relentless, as my mind slips away. It’s all too much. I feel myself sinking back into unconsciousness as a tidal wave of memories crashes over me.
It was a life. A life I once lived.
I died, or at least, I thought I did.
Shot. A protest against genocide. Blood filling my lungs. I remember choking, the helplessness but also the calm.
Then where the hell am I now?
-
Four years later
“Sae Magnolia! Are you even listening? I said clean these floors. Move!”
I tune her out, letting her words blend into the background, a constant hum of dissatisfaction. “Don’t just stand there, do something useful for once!”
The wet rag slapped against the floor with a heavy thud. Sinking to my knees, I began to scrub. The stone floor is rough against my knees, and the chill from it seeps into my bones. I focus on scrubbing, the movements mechanical, each drag of the cloth smudging dirt rather than removing it. I know it won’t be enough to satisfy her or him, but at least it keeps her voice at bay, even if only for a little while. She’s pacing behind me, muttering under her breath about uselessness and wasted time, her complaints fading into the same rhythm as my thoughts. I force myself to look down, pretending to concentrate.
Here, resistance is pointless; compliance is better.
I keep my head down, focusing on each stroke of the rag, mind slipping somewhere distant. There’s nothing else to do but clean, wash, and endure, blending into the stone walls like another piece of the dark. Resistance only leads to punishment; compliance brings a fleeting, fragile peace.
This is my life now and I'm not sure if I'll be given another.
I am Sae Magnolia.
I clean, and I clean, and I clean. Scrubbing the floors until the joints in my fingers ache, and the familiar numbness creeps up my arms. The rag is stiff from overuse, darkened with grime that seems impossible to fully wash out. The day’s work blurs my thoughts into something hazy and distant.
That was until I hear the heavy, unsteady footsteps echoing down the corridor.
He’s home.
As his footsteps echo closer, I see my mother tense beside me, her shoulders hunching ever so slightly. She curses under her breath, low enough that only I can hear. Her fingers twist around a rag of her own, eyes darting toward the door. She’s expecting the worst, just as I am. The resigned dread in her face tells me she's as aware as I am of what’s coming, yet she won’t say a word. She only tightens her grip on the cloth, the veins on her hands stark against her pale skin.
My stomach tightens as I hear him stumble, each step louder, more off-balance than the last. The door slams open, his shadow filling the room before he does. The sour stench of alcohol wafts in ahead of him, thick and rancid, clinging to his clothes and skin.
“There you are,” he slurs, voice dripping with disdain. The bottle dangles from his fingers, its contents swishing dangerously close to spilling as he sways. He’s in one of his moods; the kind that comes when he drinks enough to drown out whatever haunts him but not enough to forget I exist.
I stay rooted in place, hands still gripping the rag as if it could shield me.