And just like that, the endless lecture began.
At first it was a whisper — a low, impossible voice that filled the room like a radio tuning to a dozen stations at once. Then it gathered momentum, pulling images out of the dark and stringing them into one long, merciless sentence.
"In the beginning—" the Unknown intoned, voice smooth as lacquered wood. "God made the light, and then light made children of itself. Stars were born, and some were lonely. Oceans boiled, mountains screamed into being. Life fumbled, crawled, and learned to bite."
Scenes like torn Polaroids flickered behind my eyelids: supernovae blooming, the first wet things writhing toward shore, a pterodactyl's shadow crossing a sun that didn't yet know it would be missed. The Unknown narrated with the bored delight of someone reciting a favorite recipe, and every second of each tale pressed into my skull.
"And Adam lived for 934 years… before his death" the voice went on, softer now. "His son, Seth was born 800 years before Adam's death and gave birth to Enos after living for 105 years." He quoted scripture like a channel-surfing pundit: "…And God regretted creating humanity and decided to erase his 'mistakes'."
My lungs forgot how to breathe properly. My stomach twisted. Heat crawled up my spine as if someone had lit a tiny sun under my ribs. Snatches of the Unknown's sentences lodged themselves in my head like thorns — pleasant anecdotes, brutal punchlines, the quiet, ugly wishes of fools who'd thought themselves clever. Each vignette folded into the next until history became a relentless, overlapping roar.
"—and then there was a boy who wished for the sun to be black—" the Unknown said conversationally, and the memory of that terrible grin flashed like a cut. "—and a merchant who wanted all the coins in the world and found himself wading in them like a drowning man. Ah, my favorites are the petty ones. So human."
I tried to scream, but the sound was thin and swallowed. I banged fists against the mattress until the noise blurred into the narration. Time had turned elastic: a single sentence stretched to an hour, and an hour snapped in half like glass. I felt every era pass through me in the span of a heartbeat. My teeth chattered, my vision smeared.
"School starts at 8:30, by the way," the Unknown added with breezy indifference, as if scheduling notices belonged to cosmic lore. "Don't miss the math test. They test you on integration by parts. Tragic, really."
When the voice finally tapered — not because it had ended, but because my brain had stopped trying to hold each image — I lurched upright, gasping. The clock on the bedside table glowed a single, accusing digit: 7:12. I should have been halfway down the street by now.
My mouth tasted like burned paper and sea water. I sat up, hands pressed to my temples. Facts tumbled out of me unbidden: "—Hittites, barter, grain, Noah—" I clamped a palm over my mouth, but more slipped past in a dry whisper. The apartment tilted.
Pushing the blanket away, I forced my legs over the side of the futon. They were unsteady, like two drunken poles. I tugged on socks, my fingers fumbling as if I'd learned how to tie shoes in some forgotten dialect. Each movement required a herculean will I didn't have.
Outside, the city was waking. Somewhere down the block, a vender was unpacking the day's pastries, oblivious to the fact that somewhere in a tiny second-floor room a boy had just listened to the birth of the cosmos and the minutiae of mankind's most embarrassing wishes.
I made it to the door, bag slung half-heartedly over my shoulder. I barely took two steps when the world hiccupped — a carousel of images slammed into me: the first plow turning furrows in wet earth, a chorus of horns at some long-dead coronation, someone somewhere making a wish stupid enough to implode a feast. My knees went weak. I pressed my palm to the cool wall to steady myself.
"1492… Columbus… no, wait—what was the other—" I muttered, voice thin.
A couple of students passed by, backpacks swaying. One kid glanced at me, eyebrows knitting. "You okay, Souta?" he asked. I forced a grin. "Fine. Just woke up philosophical."
Philosophy was an understatement. I tried to take two more steps and the world folded like bad origami. I sagged against the brick, breath leaving me in shallow, rattling pulls. Heat flushed across my skin, then a cold spike hammered behind my eyes. My limbs felt like foreign objects; the blood in my veins was sluggish, syrup-thick. The narration had been a lecture; the aftermath was a fever.
I slid down until I sat on the curb, bag at my feet, head bent between my knees. The skyline blurred into watercolor smears. Faintly, as if from the end of a long hallway, the Unknown's voice murmured, amused and unhurried.
"You shouldn't have wished in such a hurry," he said. "Rules are rules, now sit still and listen to my endless history class."
I tried to lift my head, to protest, to swear I'd learned my lesson about precise phrasing, but every swallow felt like sand. The world narrowed to the thud of my pulse and a constant, insistent replay: creation, flood, empires, petty wishes. My brain was full of history like pockets full of pebbles.
Someone knelt in front of me. A warm and soft hand, not a stranger's — rested briefly on my shoulder. "Souta?" a voice said. It wavered between concern and annoyance. "Are you actually going to school, or are you trying to collapse dramatically for attention?"
I blinked up. Kae's face hovered over me, eyes sharp, hair lit by the streetlamp glow. The sight of her steadied the storm in me more than anything the Unknown had done.
"Don't be dramatic," she said, but her tone carried worry. "Get up. I'll walk you to the nurse."
I tried to laugh. A choking sound came out instead. "Thanks," I managed. The single word felt enormous, honest enough to hurt.
The Unknown, sitting just inside the doorway where the lamplight couldn't quite catch him, gave the faintest of bows and lifted his mug in a mock salute. "Enjoy the nurse's office. I'll be back so don't die before lunch. It spoils the narrative."
Kae gave me one last look that belonged somewhere between irritated and oddly fond. "Move," she ordered, and hauled me up with a force that was more competent than any epiphany.
I let her. As she half-dragged, half-supported me down the street toward the clinic, the Unknown's laugh — soft, patient, and entirely delighted — folded into the air behind us like a shadow that refused to be left at the door.
Kae's grip was firm, almost annoyingly so, but it anchored me against the weight of a thousand years crashing through my skull. My body leaned into hers more than I wanted to admit, each step a negotiation between collapse and forward momentum.
The clinic smelled faintly of disinfectant and chalk dust — too clean, too normal. The nurse clucked her tongue as we stumbled in, guiding me toward the narrow cot by the window. "Honestly, Renjiro-kun, you look like you've wrestled with death and barely won. Lie down before you fall down."
I obeyed without argument. The moment my head touched the pillow, the fever hit harder, blooming across my forehead like molten lead. Sweat beaded at my temples. My chest rose and fell in shallow gasps, as if my body couldn't decide if it belonged in the present or buried somewhere in Babylon.
The nurse pressed a thermometer into my mouth and sighed. "Forty degrees? You're not going anywhere today." She scribbled something on a clipboard and vanished into the supply cabinet.
Kae lingered by the door, arms crossed, expression unreadable. She didn't fidget like the others would — no nervous shuffling, no forced chatter. Just stillness. Her eyes flicked over me as if trying to solve a puzzle.
"You seem… off," she said finally, voice low enough that the nurse couldn't hear.
"What… else does it look like?" I croaked.
Kae rolled her eyes, then dragged a chair closer, folding her arms on her knees. "Just sleep. I'll make sure you don't fall off and embarrass yourself."
Her presence settled over me like a blanket. For the first time since the lecture began, the roar dimmed to a murmur. My eyelids sagged.
And just as the edges of sleep closed in, the Unknown's voice slid through the quiet like a knife through silk.
"You should thank her," he murmured, invisible, perched somewhere above the room like a raven in the rafters. "Without anchors, mortals drown in my words. She's your anchor, boy. Don't lose her."
I wanted to curse him, to demand silence, but my lips refused to move. The fever dragged me under. The last thing I saw was Kae's silhouette, steady and sharp, keeping watch as I slipped into a dream littered with fragments of every story I never asked to hear.