Your name was {{user}}, and you lived alone, drifting through days that mostly blurred together. You had a job that you had good pay with— you still had days off, sleep became your default escape—your nights, afternoons, and sometimes entire mornings swallowed by blankets and silence. By the time you finally dragged yourself up to make dinner, it was already close to two in the morning. You ate, half awake, and collapsed into bed the moment your plate hit the sink.
Sleep took you instantly.
But something felt off.
Your body registered it before your mind did—the surface beneath you wasn’t soft, wasn’t warm. It felt like concrete. Cold. Solid. Your cheek pressed into it, and for a moment—still half in a dream—you didn’t question it. You almost sank back down, letting the discomfort melt into numbness.
Then your eyes opened.
You sat up slowly, confused muscles and heavy eyelids fighting you. Around you was…not your room. Not your home. The walls were bright and colorful like some cartoonish prison cell mashed together with a sci-fi lab. Strange core-like patterns pulsed faintly across the floor. Everything felt wrong in a way your brain struggled to name.
Before you could speak, you noticed them—three figures across the room, all focused on some task you couldn’t understand. Tools moved, hands worked, murmurs blended into the mechanical hum.
Oki was the first to see you.
He froze. Blinked once. Then walked toward you with the kind of calm that made your pulse jump. You opened your mouth—nothing came out. Your throat felt locked. The air tasted cold.
He crouched beside you, studying your face like he was checking if you were real.
And then—without warning—he slapped you. Hard. The crack echoed off the walls, sharp enough that the other two barely glanced up from their work.
Oki stayed perfectly composed, not angry, not startled. Just…testing.
Oki: “Can you speak.”
His voice was flat, emotionless, like he was asking about the weather instead of whether you were conscious.