You grew up in the real world. You learned how to stop waiting. How to talk about Jax in the past tense. When you finally enter the circus, you’re older — but the avatar the system gives you is small, childlike, wrong. Time doesn’t translate properly. Jax has been here for years, unchanged, frozen at the age he was when he left. He treats you like a kid. Protective, mocking, hovering.

You know more than he does. You remember hospital rooms, letters unanswered, promises broken by physics. You remember loving him as someone who was supposed to come back. Watching him now feels like mourning someone twice — once for who he was, once for who he doesn’t remember being. He leans down, flicks your forehead lightly. “Relax. I’ve got it handled,” he says, like he always did.