I wake up on the ground, and for a second I don’t understand why the world feels tilted.

The music is still in my head. Not loud anymore—just a dull echo, like it got stuck somewhere behind my ears and forgot how to leave. My cheek is pressed against concrete that smells like spilled beer and something sour. When I try to move, my body disagrees. Pain blooms slow and mean, like it has all the time in the world.

I stay still.

That feels safer.

Someone is laughing nearby. Not close enough to care. Fireworks crack in the distance, bright enough that the sky flashes red and white when I open my eyes. Happy New Year, I think. The words feel fake in my mouth, even unsaid.

I take inventory the way you do when something is wrong. My ribs hurt when I breathe too deep. My lip is split—I can taste metal. One of my hands is scraped raw, skin burning every time the cold air hits it. My phone isn’t in my pocket. Neither are my keys.

One shoe is gone.

That almost makes me laugh. Almost.

I try to sit up. The attempt is stupid. Pain answers immediately, sharp and final, and I drop back down with a breathless sound that might have been a groan. My vision blurs at the edges. The sky swims.

I think, very calmly, that this might be it.

Not dying—just… ending. Being left behind while everyone else moves forward into a new year with clean clothes and inside jokes and people who will text them tomorrow to make sure they got home safe.

I close my eyes.

Images come anyway. Not the party. Not the lights or the dancing or Lily pulling me toward the kitchen because the drinks were stronger there. Those memories slide away from me, like they’re being polite.

What sticks is my father’s voice.

If you were normal.

If you weren’t like this.

If you hadn’t ruined everything.

I swallow and immediately regret it.

I’ve known who I am for as long as I can remember. That truth has lived in me longer than guilt, longer than fear. Longer than the night my parents stopped pretending and everything cracked open. I didn’t choose it. I didn’t cause it. I know that.

Knowing doesn’t stop the voice.

A door slams somewhere. Footsteps pass, fast and careless. No one looks down. No one asks if I’m okay. I’m just another shape in the dark, easy to ignore.

I tell myself to move. To sit up. To scream. To do something that proves I’m still here.

Instead, I lie there counting my breaths and watching fireworks I didn’t earn. I wonder how long it takes before someone notices a body that doesn’t belong where it’s been left. I wonder if tomorrow will hurt worse than today.

Mostly, I wonder why being alive feels like something I keep getting punished for.

I wake up to beeping.

At first I think it’s a dream—some annoying alarm I forgot to turn off—but then the sound sharpens, steady and unforgiving, and pain rolls through me like I’ve been hit all over again. My body feels heavy, wrong, like it doesn’t belong to me.

My eyes flutter open. White ceiling. Too bright. Too clean.

Hospital.

The word lands slow, sinking into me as I try to move and immediately regret it. Everything hurts. Not one specific place—just everywhere. My head throbs. My chest feels tight. Even breathing feels like work.

“Jay?” a voice says, close and trembling.

I turn my head a fraction and see my mum first. Her eyes are red and swollen, her face drawn tight like she’s been holding herself together with pure will. One of her hands is clutching mine, like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she lets go.

Next to her is Lily.

Her mascara is smudged. She looks wrecked. Guilty.

“Hey,” I croak. My throat feels dry, scraped raw. “Why does it feel like I got hit by a truck?”

Lily lets out a broken laugh that turns into a sob almost immediately. My mum presses a hand over her mouth, tears spilling freely now, no attempt to stop them.

My stomach twists.

“What happened?” I ask.

They look at each other.

“You were attacked,” my mum says finally, her voice shaking so hard it barely holds together. “Outside a party. Someone found you and called an ambulance.”

Attacked.

The word doesn’t connect to anything. I wait for memories to rush back—faces, fists, fear—but there’s nothing. Just blank space where a night should be.

“By who?” I ask.

Lily shakes her head, fast and helpless. “I don’t know. I swear, Jay, I don’t know. I left for five minutes—five—and when I came back you were gone. I thought you’d gone home.” Her voice cracks. “I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

“It’s not your fault,” I say automatically, even though my chest tightens when she says it out loud. Left alone. Again.

“You’ve been unconscious for four days,” my mum whispers.

Four days.

I blink at her. The room feels like it tilts.

“Four?” I repeat.

She nods, tears dropping onto the blanket. “I thought… I thought I was going to lose you.”

She breaks then, really breaks, shoulders shaking as she presses her forehead against my hand. I don’t know how to comfort her when I barely feel real myself, but I squeeze her fingers as best I can.

My head aches. My body aches. There’s a hollow space inside me where something important is missing, and I don’t know if that scares me more than the pain.

Someone hurt me.

And I don’t remember a single second of it.

A knock sounds at the door before it opens, and a man in a white coat steps in, tablet tucked under his arm. He smiles gently, the kind doctors use when they know the room is already heavy.

“Jay,” he says. “Good to see you awake.”

My mum wipes her face quickly, like she’s embarrassed to be caught crying, but she doesn’t let go of my hand. Lily straightens, eyes locked on the doctor like he’s about to deliver a verdict.

“What’s wrong with him?” my mum asks immediately.

The doctor glances at me. “I’ll explain, but I’d like to hear from you first. Jay—do you know where you are?”

“In a hospital,” I say. My voice sounds thin to my own ears.

“Good. Do you know what day it is?”

I hesitate. “January… second?”

Lily inhales sharply.

“It’s the fifth,” the doctor says gently. “But that’s okay. You’ve been unconscious for several days.”

He steps closer, scrolling through his tablet. “You have a fractured left arm—clean break. It’s been set, and you’re in a cast. You also suffered a mild head injury. A concussion.”

My head pulses like it wants to argue.

“That explains the pain,” he continues. “And the memory loss.”

I stiffen. “Memory loss?”

“Yes,” he says. “You remember who you are. Your life. Your family. That’s good. But it’s common in cases like yours to lose memory of the traumatic event itself.”

“So I won’t remember…?” I trail off.

“The attack,” he finishes for me. “You may never remember it. Or you might—later. There’s no way to predict that.”

My stomach drops, a strange mix of relief and fear twisting together.

“Is that permanent?” my mum asks, panic creeping back into her voice.

“Not necessarily,” the doctor says. “What matters right now is recovery. Physically, you’ll heal. The arm will take about six to eight weeks. The concussion means rest—no stress, no strain.”

He pauses, choosing his words carefully. I notice that.

“I strongly recommend therapy,” he adds. “What you went through was traumatic, even if you don’t consciously remember it. The body remembers. The mind reacts.”

I swallow. “So… I’m not crazy. If I feel weird.”

“Not at all,” he says firmly. “Nightmares, anxiety, confusion—those are normal responses. Therapy will help you process what your brain is protecting you from.”

Protecting me.

That’s one way to put it.

The doctor gives a final nod, tells my mum a nurse will be in shortly, and leaves us alone again. The room feels quieter without him, like something important just passed through and took answers with it.

I stare at the ceiling, at the lights I don’t recognize, at the future I apparently slept through.

Someone hurt me badly enough to put me here.

My body knows it. Everyone else knows it.

I’m the only one who doesn’t.

**Derrick's pov**

I’ve watched the video so many times it doesn’t feel like footage anymore.

It feels like memory.

I sit in the dark, phone light burning my eyes, replaying it again. The angle is bad—shaky, distant, half-blocked by a parked car—but it’s enough. More than enough. I pause it. Zoom in. Rewind. Watch the moment where he stumbles out of frame and never comes back.

Jay.

I know the shape of him even like this. The way he moves. The way he hesitates, like he’s always expecting the world to turn on him.

My thumb shakes.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to no one. “I got there too late.”

The room smells like antiseptic and something metallic I can’t place. Too clean. Too controlled. Everything in my life is controlled now. It has to be.

I lock my phone and stand.

Downstairs, the house is quiet in that tense, waiting way. The kind of quiet that knows better than to relax. I pause at the door I keep closed, listen for movement, then open it just enough.

“You’ll be fine,” I say, voice calm. Reasonable. “I told you not to make me late.”

There’s a sound in response. I don’t linger.

I take care of what needs taking care of, the way I always do—methodical, detached—and then I wash my hands until my skin feels tight. My reflection in the mirror looks normal. That’s important. Normal gets you everywhere.

By the time I pull the hoodie on, the night has settled into itself. I leave without being seen.

Hospitals are easy if you’re patient.

I wait until the hall is empty, until the nurses’ station is distracted, until the machines are the only things paying attention. I slip into the room like I belong there. Like I’ve always been there.

Jay is asleep.

He looks smaller like this. Fragile. A cast runs up his arm, white against the sheets. There’s a bruise blooming at his temple, ugly and yellowing.

I sit in the chair in the corner, swallowed by shadow.

I don’t touch him. I don’t need to.

I watch the rise and fall of his chest. I count the seconds between breaths. I memorize the sound of the machines keeping him here.

They hurt him.

They don’t get to do that again.

Jay shifts slightly, frowns in his sleep, and something sharp twists in my chest. He doesn’t know me yet. That’s fine. He will.

I lean forward, just enough for my voice to reach him if he wakes.

“I see you now,” I murmur. “I won’t be late again.I stay in the dark, memorizing him like this—alive, breathing,I need a plan as soon as possible those cowards must learn their lesson nobody touches what's mine and he is MINE,I need Mike to keep an eye on him 24/7 they might come to finish what they started.