Chapter Text
The first time Sua remembered was in winter.
At six years old, the cold seeped through the corners of her bedroom window like an invitation to the nightmare she had just had. Sua’s awakening to the past came with the sound of a gunshot.
It wasn’t a real noise — just the echo of a dormant memory firing in her six-year-old brain like the shot that had already pierced her throat in another life. She woke up choking, her small, warm hands clutching her own neck, searching for the hole she knew should be there. Her heart beat so hard it hurt, her fingers tangled in the blanket as if she were still holding onto something—someone. The stage floor echoed in her mind like a verse.
“I beg you, stay by my side.”
Sua gulped air as if she were drowning. The room was dark, but not dark enough to hide the emptiness consuming her. She looked at her own hands, small and intact, without the marks her nails used to dig into her own skin in the days before her death.
The darkness wasn’t enough to hide the tremors running through her entire body. Sua took a deep breath, the air entering her lungs so easily, so naturally, that it hurt. In that life, her last breath had been choked, with the taste of metal on her tongue and Mizi’s eyes before hers, happy before widening in horror.
Outside, snow fell softly, painting the world white. Sua felt her stomach churn. The older sister had lied — there were no ashes, no furnaces. Only that icy silence.
The bedroom door opened without a sound, and Sua instinctively flinched, her muscles tensed as if expecting punishment. But it was only her mother—or rather, the woman who thought she was her mother.
“Sua? Everything okay, Star?”
The voice was soft, but Sua didn’t answer. Speaking was dangerous. Speaking meant drawing attention, and attention meant pain.
In the Garden, the Guardin called her human, doll, but never “Star.”
The woman—“mother”—didn’t insist. She simply knelt beside the bed, keeping her distance, as if she knew a touch would be too much.
“Was it a nightmare?”
Sua swallowed dryly.
No. It was a memory.
But how to explain that? How to say she remembered being twenty-three, remembered dying, remembered leaving Mizi behind in a world where the winners were those who carried the weight of others’ deaths?
Her mother waited. When no answer came, she sighed and placed a glass of warm milk on the bedside table.
“If you need me, I’m here.”
And then she left, leaving Sua alone with the ghost of Mizi in her eyes.
・゜゜・ ・゜゜・
Morning arrived with sunlight reflecting off the accumulated snow outside, turning the world into a painful brilliance. Sua had stayed up all night, her fingers tangled in the blanket as if holding onto the memories so they wouldn’t escape.
I was twenty-three when I died.
The thought sounded absurd in the mind of a six-year-old. Her current body was small, fragile—but her mind carried the weight of two decades and a death.
“Sua, breakfast!”
Her mother’s voice echoed through the house. Sua hesitated before going downstairs. In the Garden, meals were calculated, tasteless, always supervised by cold eyes. Here, the table was full of colors: cut fruit, warm bread, melting butter.
And he was there.
Sitting at the end of the table, his legs swinging because they didn’t reach the floor, was Ivan.
Sua nearly dropped the glass of milk she was carrying.
Ivan.
His face was rounder, more childlike, but his eyes — those eyes she remembered, black with slight red reflections — were still the same.
“Noona!” He called her, smiling with his mouth full of bread. “Look, I made a plane!”
He held up a clumsily folded piece of paper. Sua froze.
He didn’t remember anything.
Ivan chattered about the plane, about the snow, about anything that crossed his mind. Sua didn’t hear him. Her fingers trembled as she picked up a slice of apple.
He doesn’t know.
She watched him — the way he furrowed his brow when concentrating, how he rocked slightly back and forth when excited.
Was this what he was like before the Garden?
In the Garden, Ivan was calculating, performative. A perfect pet for the aliens. But here…
Here, he let crumbs fall, hummed without melody, and looked at Sua as if she were interesting.
As if she were real.
It was then that Ivan did something unexpected. He reached out and touched her wrist.
“Noona, you’re shaking.”
Sua almost pulled back. But she held herself still, looking at his small, worried face.
“Are you cold?” he asked, tilting his head.
She looked at him — really looked — and saw:
No trace of the boy who smiled to hide the pain.
Just a child.
“…No,” she replied, her voice hoarser than intended. “Just… didn’t sleep well.”
Ivan seemed to consider this for a moment, then pushed his cup of hot chocolate toward her.
“Here. Chocolate helps.”
Sua looked at the drink, then at him.
How can he be so…
Her mother smiled, unaware of the turmoil inside her.
“He’s right, you know? Chocolate always helps.”
Sua carefully took the cup. The liquid was warm. Sweet. Different.
Like everything in this life that shouldn’t have been hers.