TATE
THE FIRST THING I felt was pain. My ribs throbbed like they’d been punched from every angle, my shoulders and legs burned with a dull ache I didn’t even know could exist, and my throat scraped raw as if I’d swallowed broken glass. Every inch of me whispered, don’t move, don’t move, don’t move, but my body wasn’t listening.
Then I turned my head and saw them—my glasses, placed neatly beside my head. Someone had set them there. Carefully. Deliberately. My stomach twisted into cold knots.
I reached for them, fingers trembling, brushing the edge of the lens as if it were fragile glass. Sliding them onto my face and the world snapped into focus and my heart sank
I was in Snzo’s room.
Everything about it—the faint scent of his cologne, the stiffness of the sheets, the shadows in the co
