The conversation had slowed, the weight of Halric's revelations pressing down on the group. But just as the silence was about to become too heavy, something in the room caught Echo's attention. His gaze drifted toward the small pile of neatly folded clothing resting by the wall, an odd sight in this otherwise sterile space.
"Wait, are those… clothes?" Echo asked, squinting at the neatly organized garments. They looked strange, but also too familiar. The fabric was something he hadn't seen in a while, but it carried a sense of comfort and simplicity—sturdy yet light.
Rook raised an eyebrow. "What’s the issue with our clothes?"
Echo knelt down to inspect the pile. His fingers grazed the fabric, but instead of the dirt-smeared, worn clothes they'd been wearing for months, these looked almost… new.
"I didn’t expect to see clean clothes like this, lying around." Echo’s voice was soft, almost as if he was speaking to himself.
Halric, who had been quietly observing, spoke up. "The staff provides extra sets for when yours get too damaged. If you need more, you can request them from the center of the Colosseum. As for cleaning, there’s a laundry room in the facility."
"A laundry room?" Rook asked skeptically, stepping closer. "Sounds too good to be true."
Echo couldn’t quite shake the odd sense of familiarity about these clothes, though. The pristine white fabric reminded him of something from his past—before the months of wandering in the ruins, before the isolation. His mind drifted, and for a brief moment, the room around him faded.
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FLASHBACK TO CHAPTER 1: THE FIRST CLOTHES
It had been six months since he’d first woken up in the ruins of a broken city, with no memory of who he was or how he got there. The oppressive air weighed heavily on him as the broken landscape stretched endlessly, a graveyard of a forgotten civilization. He had wandered through the wreckage, unsure of what to do, until he had found something unexpected—clean clothes.
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The first time he'd woken up in this strange world, all he had was the tattered remnants of a tunic and pants, dirt-caked and worn to the point of decay. His clothes had felt like an extension of the disarray around him—frayed, faded, and heavy with the burden of whatever had happened here. He couldn't even remember when he had last changed them.
The clothes that had been with him since he first awoke were the only ones he’d known. No replacements. No laundry. Just the same grimy fabric that had clung to him in this mysterious, hostile place. The once-dark tunic had faded to a dull gray, and his pants had holes, threads unraveling at the seams. He had long since stopped caring about their state—his focus had been solely on survival, on piecing together whatever he could to make sense of this world.
But now, the sight of these fresh, pristine clothes stirred something inside him—a strange longing, a sense of comfort. Why had he never found such a set for himself?
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BACK TO PRESENT DAY, CHAPTER 50
Echo blinked, the sudden flash of memory pulling him back to the present. His fingers hovered over the clothes on the floor, but his mind was miles away. His pulse quickened as the feeling—the sense that everything around him had been planned, designed, maybe even controlled—settled in his chest.
Rook noticed his distant expression and nudged him. "You okay?"
Echo snapped back to reality, forcing a smile. "Yeah... Just remembering something from the first day. The clothes... they were the first thing that felt like they belonged to me. Like they had a purpose."
Rook raised an eyebrow, his expression skeptical. "You sure that’s not just the head injury talking?"
Echo chuckled softly, brushing off the thought. "Maybe. But it felt significant, y'know?" He shrugged, trying to shake off the eerie sensation. "We’ve been here long enough. It’s just strange how... clean everything is, considering where we are."
Halric nodded knowingly, folding the map once more and sliding it into his satchel. "That’s the way things work around here. Everything gets replaced. When you wear these out, they’ll send you new ones, clean and fresh, like clockwork. As for the laundry... well, you can figure that out yourself."
Rook snorted, clearly not impressed by the explanation. "Sure, no big deal. Clean clothes just pop up out of nowhere."
Echo couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more to it—more to these clothes, the clean, organized world they were now part of, and how all of it tied together. It had to mean something. But for now, there was no answer.
As the conversation shifted, Echo found his eyes drifting back to the pile of clothes, each piece strangely comforting, but carrying with it the weight of his lost memories.