The world had shrunk to the size of a convenience store. The hum of the fluorescent lights was a constant, dreary soundtrack to my life, punctuated by the soft fizz of the drink coolers and the occasional rumble of a car passing by on the wet asphalt outside. Rain streaked the grimy windows, distorting the neon signs into bleeding ghosts of color. I was leaning against the counter, the phone in my hand glowing with a poorly written wiki article about some forgettable game. My mind was half-heartedly drafting a better version for my blog.

  ‘Probably would just be me and the twelve regurs reading it anyway,' I thought with a sigh.

  “ [bing-bong] Welcom….what the…”

  The electronic of the door chime was so routine it barely registered. But the voice that followed it was all wrong. Shaky, high-pitched, strained.

  “Empty the register… N..now.”

  My head snapped up. A kid—he couldn’t have been older than twenty—stood by the rack of cheap snacks. A pstic zombie mask was shoved onto his face, but it did nothing to hide the sheer terror in his eyes. He was holding a small, bck pistol, and his hands were shaking so violently the barrel was tracing tiny, erratic circles in the air.

  A strange, unnatural calm settled over me. This was a scenario I’d navigated a hundred times in games, but the reality had a different weight, a different smell—the scent of rain, cheap detergent, and pure fear.

  “Okay, dude…No problem. It’s all good… just rex a little bit,”.

  I turned slowly toward the register, my movements deliberate, my hands raised where he could see them, just so this kid did not do something stupid. In my mind, absurdly, went back on that article that I read once. 'The primary cause of death in these situations is escation—'

  “[BANG!]”

  The sound wasn’t just loud; it was a physical thing. A concussive bst that sucked all the air out of the room and repced it with a ringing silence. It was followed a split second ter by a searing, white-hot impact in the center of my chest. The force of it smmed me back into the gss door of the beer cooler.

  “[THUD…. CRACK.]”

  A spiderweb of fractures bloomed on the gss behind me. I didn't feel the cold. I just felt a shocking, spreading warmth soaking through my shirt. My legs gave way, and I slid down the cool gss to the floor, my vision already starting to tunnel.

  “FUCK!!! …[bing-bong]”

  The kid was gone, the door swinging shut behind him. chimed again, a grotesquely cheerful sound in the new, heavy silence. The darkness at the edges of my sight crept inward. The hum of the lights faded into a distant, high-pitched whine. The st thing I was aware of was the sticky, cold floor beneath my cheek and a single, clear thought that felt entirely too calm for the circumstance.

  “Well... this a damn stupid way to go…. I don’t even do anything…”

  Then, nothing. I wasn't dead ?.

  “COUGH! COUGH! ...what the???”

  A violent, full-body revolt, hit me like a brick wall. My throat burned, my stomach clenched, and I was choking, gagging, vomiting onto something soft. The taste was horrific—acrid and chemical, mixed with the sour tang of stomach acid. I dragged in a ragged, burning breath, my entire body is shuddering.

  I was on my hands and knees on a carpet. A plush, pink carpet. The air was thick with two competing smells: the vile stench of my own sickness and a cloying, floral perfume trying desperately to cover it up.

  'The fuck? Where am I? …The hospital?'

  I pushed myself up onto my elbows, my arms trembling with a weakness that felt alien. The room spun in a nauseating zy circle. Blinking through watery eyes, I grounded myself and take in my surrounding carefully.

  “Huh? …Pink? …is that a makeup?”.

  A smeared foundation on my palm irked me a little, and the I saw soft, pinkish light from a ridiculous cat-shaped mp. Walls covered in posters for anime and bands I didn’t recognize. A vanity table cluttered with makeup; this wasn't my apartment. My apartment was a monument to functional neglect, not this frilly sanctuary. Driven by a dawning horror, I used the vanity to haul myself up, my legs feeling like wet noodles. I caught my reflection in the mirror.

  ‘Hold on a minute…’ I froze.

  A teenager stared back at me. His—my—eyes were wide and scared, framed by a mess of dark hair. His face was softer, rounder, undeniably younger. But it was mine, it was version of me from a lifetime ago, when I was younger. And right now, I am wearing a silky, vender sleep shirt, which something I would never wear at all.

  "This isn't right," I whispered, and the voice that came out was higher, younger. A dream? Some kind of hallucination?

  Then the memories came. Not a trickle, but a flood. The first was visceral and immediate: the fsh of the gun, the thundercp of sound, the searing pain, the cold floor. The memory that I just went through.

  The second set was just as real, but it was felt foreign to me, like a life file being dumped into my brain: a crushing, suffocating despair. The feeling of shaking a handful of small, white pills into my palm. The bitter taste as I swallowed them dry, wanting everything to just stop.

  'Two deaths... One body...'

  The reality of it was too enormous to process all at once. A wave of dizziness and nausea threatened to send me back to the floor. I gripped the edge of the vanity, my knuckles turning white, and forced myself to take slow, deep breaths.

  'Okay. Just... okay. Don't panic. Panic is what gets you killed… First, let’s establish the facts... think rationally….'

  I spoke to my reflection, trying to anchor myself.

  'Calm down, me… and think….Fact one: oddly, I'm alive. Fact two: This is my body, but... younger... Fact three: That kid in my head... he was also me… but…He gave up… ??.'

  I sorted through the new memories. Sael Hardcox. Seventeen. The unbearable pressure to not being able to live the way he wanted, added with the government mandate, which is the reason for the pills. It was a bizarre, horrifying and utterly baffling story. and now, here I was, in his body, alive when I should be dead.

  I scanned the room again, finally seeing the details I'd missed. The feminine cut of the clothes in the open closet. The delicate way everything was arranged. It painted a clear picture of the life I'd inherited now. It was a lot to unpack and process, but at the end, the core of the truth was, however impossible, it is. I am here, and it is happening for real.

  ‘First I’m dead… now, I just woke up, in a body that just committed self-murder… hah…’

  My legs, feel like jelly, probably the aftermath of whatever poison I’d purged, I tried to stand properly, but suddenly, my knee buckled.

  “Oh, Shit!”.

  I pitched sideways, my hip smacking hard into the sharp corner of the vanity table. A jolt of pain shot through me.

  “[Ctter-Ctter-CRASH!]”

  A tall, gss bottle of perfume—something that smelled of roses and sugar—toppled over, rattled against the vanity, and hit the plush carpet with a heavy thud, rolling away. It was loud as heck, and also quite painful.

  “Ow! That hurts!”

  I hadn't even had a second to register the noise before the bedroom door flew open, smming against the inside wall with a startling

  “[BAM!]”

  She stood there, framed in the doorway, her hand still on the knob. It was Cathy, my mom or the original Sael mother. Her name surfaced from the new memories into my head and thought, the feeling is both strange and deeply familiar to me, but at the same time it also felt distant.

  Her blonde hair was disheveled, as if she’d been running her hands through it repeatedly. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with a pure, animal terror that made my heart clench instinctively. That look of terror shattered, melting into a devastation so profound it seemed to physically shrink her. Then, just as quickly, it was repced by a desperate, shaky relief.

  “Sael! Oh, baby, no!”

  She was across the room in a heartbeat, not even bothering to avoid the mess on the carpet. She dropped to her knees beside me, her hands flying to my face, my shoulders, trembling as they hovered, afraid to touch.

  “When I heard the noise… I thought… I thought you’d…”

  Her voice broke into a choked sob, and she gave up on hesitation, pulling me into a tight, desperate embrace. She buried her face in my shoulder, her whole body shaking as she cried.

  “Don't you ever scare me like that again! Don't you dare!”

  I froze. The old Sael’s instincts—the memories baked into this body’s muscles—screamed at me to shove her away, to recoil from the overwhelming affection, to curl my lip and say something cruel to make her let go.

  But the man I was—the one who had died alone on a cold floor—was utterly stunned. This raw, unconditional love… this terror of losing me… it was odd. A part of me that noticed a beautiful woman, registered her appearance—the kind, worried lines around her blue eyes, the warmth of her body, the way she felt both soft and strong—but it was a distant observation that is slowly begin to feels closer, though it was currently overshadowed by the tsunami of her emotion.

  Hesitantly, awkwardly, I raised my arms. The movement felt stiff, unpracticed, like using a limb that had fallen asleep. I pced them around her, returning the hug. It was the simplest of actions, but it somehow, felt like a monumental effort.

  “I’m okay, Mom,”

  I said, my voice muffled against her shoulder. The word felt more natural this time.

  “Just… lost my bance. That’s all… I’m sorry for scaring you.”

  I felt her sob again, a deep, shuddering breath of pure relief. She held me even tighter, as if I might disappear.

  ‘Just how shitty is this kid, that It made her mom, acted like this?’

  I barely got bits of his memory, and he was shitty as heck. But to make his own mother like this, was just the worst. So, I just sat there in her arms, whilst awkwardly patting her back, letting her just let out all of her emotions.

  “Are you okay now?”,

  I asked her, though she did not say anything. I can see the trace of both held down frustration and anger, that were masked and overwhelmed by happiness and relieved.

  “Come on, baby, everyone is waiting for you… Come,”,

  ‘Mom’ stood me up and dusted me. which I mindlessly just let it happened and just nodded like a parrot and followed her. The smell of something simple but hearty—a beef stew, maybe—guided me out of the bedroom. Cathy kept a firm, almost desperate grip on my arm, as if she were afraid, I’d vanish if she let go. She led me into the small, warmly lit living area that bled into a cramped kitchen. The air was thick with the aroma of food and a tension so palpable it felt like a third presence in the room.

  The table was set, crowded with mismatched ptes and gsses. And around it, they were all there, a gallery of faces frozen in various states of anxiety and forced normalcy.

  Natalia—Nadia—my grandmother, was pcing a bowl of steaming stew in the center of the table. She was even more striking up close. Voluptuous, with a breathtaking figure that her simple apron did nothing to hide. Kind eyes that couldn’t quite meet mine. She flinched almost imperceptibly when I entered, her hands fluttering before she quickly turned back to the stove, a flush creeping up her neck.

  "Sael! You're up," she said, her voice warm but strained.

  "I made your favorite. Well, I... I hope it's still your favorite." She offered a hesitant smile.

  "Are you... feeling a bit better, sweetheart?"

  'Her guilt is a living thing…. She thinks this is her fault.' I can see that waver in her eyes, I am a dude who’s introverted, and lived alone and have to work as a salesman at a gas station, I learn to read people by just looking at them. Their body nguage, their looks, the tone of their voice, so, I know that tone very well. But, God, she's gorgeous.

  Vera, my aunt, was already seated. Her bob-cut bck hair with its subtle red highlights seemed to frame a face of sharp, watchful intensity. She didn’t smile. Her dark eyes tracked me from the moment I entered, analyzing me like a hawk.

  "Look who decided to join the nd of the living," she said, her tone a mix of relief and her usual no-nonsense attitude.

  "You gave us a scare, kid… Don't do that again, now sit… You need to eat." As I sat down, she wordlessly reached over, took my bowl, and dled a huge portion of stew into it before pushing it back toward me. clearly wanted to make sure I ate something, no matter what.

  'Hmmm… Strong, protective, and with a Latina beauty that's just... wow,'. In both unintentionally and intentionally, my eyes briefly taking in her curvaceous frame. Damn, she is a real Latina.

  Then there was Bel. My cousin. Sixteen, with long, flowing bck hair and a slim, athletic hourgss figure that her simple t-shirt and shorts couldn't conceal, since she’s just like her mom, were built like a Latina bombshell. Her eyes were so full of hopeful, unguarded adoration, but at the same time, very careful with every action that she does.

  "Sael!" she breathed out, her voice full of earnest warmth.

  "I'm so gd you're okay. We were all so worried." She offered me a shy, trembling smile that could have powered the entire city block.

  "The stew is really good tonight." She added, which had her sentences felt even more awkward.

  ' Wow… The me in this world is an idiot,' I thought, feeling a pang of guilt for the memories of how he'd treated her. 'She's stunning. And she looks at me like I'm... something. Anything. That can harm her…hah, this is going to be a pain…'

  Emily, my sister, was the st to look up from her phone. Her blonde hair, streaked with blue, was a curtain she briefly peered around. She gave me a quick, cautious gnce—a look that was equal parts concern and self-preservation.

  "Hey," she said, her voice casual, too casual, trying to mask her worry.

  "You good? You look... better." Then, almost as if she'd revealed too much, she quickly added, "Mom was driving us all nuts with the worrying." She focused back on her screen, building a digital wall between us.

  'She's trying so hard to py it cool, …And she has our mother's curves... a natural-born influencer's looks. This family... it's like a gathering of goddesses…. And I'm the schlub they're all tied to.'. I realized, it was clear that I am a time bomb for this family. And I am surrounded by the hottest women that I have ever seen up close in my entire life.

  I am still adjusting to all of this, and I am hungry as heck, so I decided to shut my trap and eat. We ate in a silence that was punctuated by the clinking of spoons and awkward, light attempts at conversation that went nowhere, why? Because of me, of course.

  They were walking on eggshells around me. I was both their greatest hope and love, but also their source of heartache. And for the first time, I had to sit in this sort of situation, surrounded by hot women, but suffocated by awkwardness.