Thomas woke up extremely dizzy. In the few moments after he regained consciousness, his memories were completely jumbled and his thoughts (if they could be called thoughts) were so hazy he didn’t know whether he was still dreaming.

For a few seconds, he just laid there with his eyes closed.

Suddenly, a small realisation came to his clouded mind. He was laid down with his back touching something soft, and his surroundings were calm and quiet. This proved that he was dreaming; there was no sound of the teacher speaking; it had been replaced by the sound of birds chirping and leaves rustling from afar. The rather uncomfortable chair to which he returned with every loop was nowhere to be found too; and in its stead was an array of something that felt like hay, gently cracking underneath the weight of his body as he slowly breathed.

Said hay was a little wet, it seemed; and he could already feel the cold moisture starting to soak up the back of his t-shirt. Nevertheless, despite it always being winter, it didn’t feel bad at all. Refreshing, if anything.

Thomas enjoyed this small moment of bliss. Despite knowing that he’d soon wake up, and when that happened, he’d go back to his stiff chair, to taking care of Clara, to continue trying to survive just as he’d been doing for as far as he could remember, he resigned to abandoning his worries even if nowhere else but his blissful dream. He’d long since yearned for a moment of peace, a moment where he could actually be on his own, in silence, without any worry.

Suddenly, a gentle breeze tickled his skin. And when it did, Thomas started feeling a little cold. Not in the physical sense, but more like a shiver, a feeling that he was forgetting something. Were the worries that plagued him so going to raze him even in his dreams? The few moments he could breathe outside the stodgy classroom?

He wanted only for the symphony of pleasant feelings to continue, but the increasing cold sweats he could feel running down his face told him otherwise. A little peeved, he finally opened his eyes; only to close them right after.

“ARGH, what the hell?!”

He’d looked straight into the sun. Jolted awake, he promptly rose to a sitting position, and when he looked around…

A wall of tall grass stood all around him. He’d never seen something like it before; the grass that surrounded him from all sides, dense as a bamboo wall, was at least half his size. After getting used to getting the same view every day after waking up, seeing something so wildly different made him freeze in shock, processing the situation for a few moments.

Then, he looked down, at the place where he was sitting. No dirt was on sight, only a surprisingly comfortable cushion of green fallen tall grass, some with white flowers at its tip. He dug his nails into it, only to find that there was dirt below it.

Finally, still reeling a little from the shock, he finally got up. And although he’d already concluded it, any doubts that he might’ve had were immediately cleared; the place where he stood was unmistakably not the classroom he’d been waking up to for as long as he could remember. It was a plain of sorts, with trees scattered here and there. The trees were rather weird; although there weren’t that many in sight, the ones that he did see were much taller than any he’d seen, with a canopy denser than his school’s roof (though that one was not very dense at all, his school had always been one to skimp on repairs), its beige trunks obscured by the shade of the intensely dark leaves.

The view enthralled him; for a few moments, his eyes were glued to the hypnotic waves generated by the tall grass when the breeze hit, the ruffling of the tree leaves, and to the colourful sky that stood above him. A sky that was painted in a tone of both blue and orange, lighted by a weak sun. Actually, it was evening, so the fact that he had been blinded by such a weak sun was surprinsing in and of itself.

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Then, he turned around. There, as the density of trees rose, the landscape slowly changed into a forest.

But before he could even start admiring it, suddenly, he snapped out of his daze, and he remembered what had happened before he’d been brought there.

“Right, that guy appeared and…”

Then, his highest priority came to his mind.

“...Clara.”

A few metres away from him, he noticed a place where the grass seemed to have been flattened. Then, the moment he got there…

“Clara…”

His light, his hope, the one that gave him a reason to continue living. She was solemnly lying there, looking exactly as she had the first time they’d met, seemingly asleep.

She was the one reason why he’d managed to continue sane. Well, sane might be a little too strong, functioning would be a better word.

Regardless, he looked at her, and then looked at his wrist - it lacked its usual pink bracelet - so hopefully, no explosion would happen.

Thinking about it, in the beginning, Clara had said that she had tried to run from the explosion, but instantly died nonetheless. He hadn’t thought about it the first time he’d heard it, but now, he realised that the most likely explanation was not that the explosion was big, but that the bracelets themselves were exploding.

That would explain the glowing liquid, and him surviving. Since he didn’t have his bracelet anymore…

He didn’t even finish his inner dialogue before perishing the thought. Him losing the bracelet could have technically been the reason why he survived, but it still didn’t make sense. The explosion had been so strong that not even corpses remained. It was unthinkable for him to not have instantly died, unless he had somehow been shielded from it. And he couldn't figure out a way that would have happened.

But there was a more pressing issue about having lost the bracelet. Before, so long as it broke, everything he had done disappeared. He'd killed and mutilated, the latter sometimes even himself, and yet whenever he broke his bracelet, everything returned to the way it was, surprisingly, himself included.

He had somehow managed to not die a single time, but at that point he might as well assume he was immortal. Though he still needed to eat and sleep, which was a mystery even now…

Once again, he decided to stop thinking about it. It was not like he’d reach a conclusion.

Instead, he decided to focus on what was right in front of him.

Clara.

He sat next to her, stranding his fingers through her dishevelled hair, and watching the air slowly entering and leaving her chest; the proof that she was still alive.

Hopefully, she’d soon wake up. Thus, he waited.

In the face of however much time he’d waited for her, a minute was almost meaninglessly small, but somehow, Thomas felt like they had suddenly become impossibly long. Like time itself had slowed down.

A mix of anxiety and excitement clouded his mind. He desperately yearned for her arousal, and yet, he couldn't help but wonder: what if it never came? What if she suddenly stopped breathing, what if the explosion brought them back to square one, or what if she just didn't wake up?

Both the best and the worst case scenario hovered in the corner of his mind, competing to see which one would turn out to be correct. But regardless of how much he thought about it, all he could do was wait.

Wait until she finally came back to him.

And after two long, long hours…

Her eyes finally opened.