Eru no longer trusted his own mind. Thoughts came and went like fog, drifting in without warning, then vanishing before he could hold on to them. There were days when he couldn’t remember what he had done just moments before. The world felt distant, muffled, as if he were watching everything through thick glass. Faces blurred. Words slurred. Even time felt unreliable.
He tried to concentrate. On anything. A book. A voice. A memory. But his mind couldn’t hold shape. One idea bled into another, then dissolved into static. He began to write things down—short, broken phrases, scattered across notebooks, napkins, the back of receipts. Things like “Don’t forget to eat” or “You’re still here.” But even those reminders began to lose their meaning. He would read them and wonder who had written them.
His body functioned. He could walk. He could speak. He could respond when someone asked a question. But none of it felt like him. It was as if his consciousness had been submerged beneath something heavy and cold, and no matter how hard he screamed from below, the surface remained still.
Sometimes, he would sit on the floor for hours, holding his head, trying to find a single clear thought. He told himself to breathe, to focus, to stay present. But the more he tried, the more his thoughts scattered like startled birds. Nothing stayed. Nothing made sense.
And yet, somewhere beneath the confusion, a part of him still fought. It was small, quiet, and flickering, but it was there. A fragment of willpower. A desperate, fragile hope that he could still find his way back. He didn’t know where “back” was. Only that it existed. That he hadn’t always felt like this. That maybe, just maybe, the person he used to be was still buried somewhere inside.
He clung to that hope like a man drowning clings to a piece of driftwood. Not because it would save him. But because it was the only thing left to hold.
Hint: It’s something Eru really doesn’t want to call it name…