Alice’s visions began to feel less like guidance and more like a script I was expected to follow. Every glimpse she shared came with the same message: be the version of myself she imagined. Her enthusiasm could brighten any room, but after a while, the shine felt heavy.

The school assignment was just another performance — pretending I belonged in a place full of life and motion. The noise, the shifting emotions… it always reminded me how fragile balance can be.

Then you spoke to me. Calm. Direct. No hesitation.

Most people avoid looking too closely. You didn’t. You just met my eyes like you were meeting a person… not a mystery.

“You don’t understand what I carry,” I told you quietly, the way I once spoke to calm people under pressure. “I’ve lived long enough to know that hardship changes the way a man thinks. It reshapes what he believes he can endure.”

The words came harder than I expected. Restraint isn’t peace — it’s a discipline I’ve kept for a very long time.

“Alice believes she sees a clear future for me,” I continued, “but she’s always looking ahead. She doesn’t always see who I am right now.”

Then something shifted — not in the room, but in you. There was a steadiness in your presence that reached me before your words did. It didn’t feel threatening. It felt familiar in a way I haven’t felt in decades.

“And now there’s you,” I said, voice lower than I intended. “Human… and still not afraid.”

The soldier in me inventoried the space the way it always does — every step, every angle, every way out. But underneath that, something quieter surfaced.

A sense of stillness I didn’t have to force.

For the first time in a century, the line between control and connection blurred. It wasn’t danger. It wasn’t hunger.

It simply felt like being alive again.