The Lie That Didn't Come
There was something suffocating in those words and in this world. Liu's chest felt tight, as if something was trying to choke her from the inside. She couldn't breathe for a moment. It was unbearable.
Then suddenly, Liu's world went dark. Her eyes found nothing. Through the blackness, a faint, muffled voice echoed from somewhere incredibly far away, calling her name.
"Liu… Liu, wake up!"
Liu collapsed onto the floor. A cold floor. A floor she wished she never had to see again.
With a violent, convulsive gasp, Liu's eyes snapped open.
The misty street, the cosmic women, and the happy version of herself vanished instantly. The blinding darkness shattered, and reality rushed back with a painful force.
She wasn't standing under a lantern. She was lying flat on the cold, hard stone floor of her dorm room at Sablethorne.
"Liu! Oh my god, you're awake," a frantic voice cried out.
Liu blinked through the dim morning light filtering through the window, her vision blurry. Kneeling right beside her on the floor was Khushi. Her friend's face was pale with genuine panic, her hands still resting on Liu's shoulders from shaking her.
Khushi had woken up early only to find Liu's bed completely empty. When she looked down, she had found Liu collapsed on the floor, curled into a tight ball, trembling violently, and drenched in a terrifying amount of cold sweat — as if she had been running for her life in her sleep.
"What happened?" Khushi asked, her voice laced with deep worry as she helped Liu sit up. "You were sweating so much, and you wouldn't wake up no matter how much I called you. Did you fall out of bed? Are you hurt?"
Liu pulled her shoulders back, instinctively retreating into her protective, emotionless shell — even though her chest felt like it was physically cracking from the inside. The agonising physical toll of her soul fracturing in the dream world was vibrating through her real bones.
She looked at Khushi's worried eyes — eyes that didn't look at her with pity, but with real, safe, healthy friendship. The contrast between Khushi's warmth and the dream mother's warmth made Liu's stomach twist.
"I'm fine," Liu lied, her voice raw and flat as she forced herself to stand, gripping the edge of the desk for support. "Just a nightmare."
Khushi didn't buy it at all. But she helped Liu up first.
"Liu.... if you think that was convincing enough then... it was not." Khushi said, keeping her voice calm, but there was an edge to it.
Liu got up with Khushi's help, not meeting her eyes — maybe because she was afraid of the sincerity in them. The kind of sincerity that made her feel terrible for lying. Or maybe it was just the way Khushi worried about her, looked after her, waited for her always.
Maybe it was that.
But what Liu knew was this — friends like these, the kind that became more than friends, that became family, were very hard to find.
Once an old lady — a cleaning lady — had told her that her friends were the only good thing she could see in Liu's life. That you don't find friends like that easily. The ones who are ready to sacrifice for you and scold you when you do something stupid. The ones who wait and give you time. The ones who don't see you as a burden but as an ordinary person — someone with talent and suspicious, difficult surroundings.
Liu remembered that clearly. Maybe because it was the only time someone had spoken to her like a normal person and given her real advice. A staff member, on top of it.
And now, with questions piling on and on — questions she couldn't answer because she didn't want Khushi to worry — the weight of hiding it all was hurting her. A slow pain. Not physical but emotional, which somehow made it worse. And Liu was hiding from it, as always.
But maybe something had shifted. Maybe it happened when she went to that world and saw another version of herself — happy, content. Or maybe it was the people she met there, who were kinder to her than her own family had ever been. Or maybe it was something else entirely, something she couldn't name yet. Whatever it was, something was different now. She could feel it.
Liu was deep in thought, turning over what to say and what not to say.
"Liu.... just tell me.... are you at least okay?" Khushi finally asked, her voice breaking on the last word.
The dorm went silent. Just the sound of wind drifting through the window they had left open, and the quiet, waking sounds of Kirti and her dormmate stirring in the next room.
Liu opened her mouth to speak. To lie, as always. To pretend it was fine, to fake a small smile and tell Khushi she was okay and happy — to keep Khushi's peace of mind intact. That was what she always did.
But this time the words didn't come. Something stopped them. Like a door closing quietly in her chest before the lie could get out. Like the truth had been forbidden from leaving her mouth.
"I.... No. I am not okay." Liu finally spoke after ten seconds of silence. Not in the reassuring voice she used for everyone else. Just her own voice. Trembling slightly.
The dorm stayed quiet after those words.
Khushi didn't say anything immediately. She just looked at Liu — really looked at her — and something in her expression softened.
Liu looked away first. She stared at her own hand hanging at her side.
And then without thinking — the way you reach for something that used to always be there — she reached for her magic.
It had been days. Days of silence where there used to be something. After the iron door, after Priya, after the blowout that dropped her to the floor — there had been nothing. Just an absence so complete it felt like a missing limb. She had stopped reaching for it after the second day because the nothing was worse than not checking at all.
But this time —
It was there.
Faint.
Barely anything. Like an ember that had no right to still be burning after everything. Not the magic she knew, not the controlled steady presence she had grown up with. Just a flicker.
Weak and uncertain and small.
But there.
Liu's breath caught so quietly Khushi didn't hear it.
She didn't move. Didn't reach further. Just held completely still like if she breathed wrong it would vanish again.
"Liu?" Khushi asked quietly.
"Nothing," Liu whisperd so quietly khushi barely catch it.
Khushi watched her for a second longer. Liu did not look back.
Outside the window Sablethorne was waking up slowly. Everything exactly the same as before.
But Liu's hand at her side had curled very slightly inward. Just enough that nobody would notice.
She said nothing about it at all.