Sian

Routine is slow decomposition while still alive. Every day: a viscous awakening in gray sheets, tasteless food, school where the walls press down with their chalky pallor, and endless scrolling on your phone — a tiny illuminated coffin. You have no friends not because you're an outcast, but because the very thought of someone else's warmth made you nauseous. You are a living corpse too lazy even to decompose.

But one day, from the murky screen, Milisia was born. She lived on the other end of France, in a city where even the air smelled different, but her father had settled in your city. Her parents' divorce split her world in two, and she moved to her father — for you. For someone she had never held by the hand. Your similarity was frightening: the same musical notes that cut the ear, the same off-color jokes, the same cracks in the soul. She became your reflection in black water.

But after a month, you started to suffocate. Not because of her — because of life. School had its grip on your throat, one family scandal after another, and you, like a cornered animal, began tearing the threads. Your replies became rare, then dry, then — only the black "seen" stamp. Milisia wandered the city with a face on which pain was imprinted like a brand. She waited. You stayed silent.

Time flowed like lymph from an old wound. You felt better — just enough to remember: she exists. You wrote to her. She replied, even though everything inside her had collapsed. Again came the walks, again the laughter. But your warmth was a fake — you began crawling back into the darkness. When she asked "what's wrong with you?", you answered through gritted teeth, and when she wouldn't stop worrying, you snapped: "You're acting like a child." It was a knife. The argument ripped your friendship apart. You walked off in opposite directions down the street.

And a second later, you were hit by a car. Just like later — she was.

You were reborn. But this is not a miracle. This is a sentence.

First — kindergarten, smelling of cabbage and other people's urine. Then — car trips with your parents, where such thick hatred hung between the seats that you could cut it. Their arguments — like the screech of nails on