it's xia yizhouver

lion dance caleb requested by @xiayizhou04 ! and some sillies i doodled

Caleb stared at the ceiling of his new room, the one Granny called "his." It had blue walls, not white, not sterile, and a bed with soft sheets that didn't crinkle like plastic. No beeps from machines, no hum of fluorescent lights. Just silence, broken by the occasional creak of the old house settling. He rolled onto his side, hugging the pillow to his chest. It smelled like laundry soap, not chemicals. This was supposed to be normal. But normal felt wrong.

He remembered everything. The cold tables, the needles, the endless questions from faces in white coats. And her, screaming, dying, coming back only to die again. He'd held her hand through it all, whispering promises he couldn't keep. "It'll be okay," he'd lied, over and over, while his own body burned from whatever they'd pumped into him. But now? She didn't remember. Granny said it was a blessing, a fresh start. She laughed and played like none of it had happened, her eyes bright and unscarred. Caleb envied her. He woke up screaming most nights, but he learned to muffle it quick so no one heard.

School was the worst. First day, he sat in the back, hands clenched under the desk. The teacher smiled, actually smiled, not that fake "this won't hurt" grin from the lab coats. "Welcome, Caleb," she said, and he flinched, waiting for the catch. But there was none. Kids stared, whispered, but no one strapped him down or asked how much pain he could take. Lunch was chaos, trays clattering, voices overlapping. He poked at the food, half-expecting it to be drugged. When a boy sat next to him and said "hey, wanna trade cookies?" Caleb froze. He nodded, silent, heart pounding like it was a test.

Granny was the hardest. She hugged him that first night, warm and gentle, no hidden needles or cold instruments. "You’re safe now," she said. Safe. The word tasted foreign. He didn’t know how to hug back, arms stiff like he might break her. And when she introduced Zayne, the neighbor kid with glasses and a serious face, Caleb bowed his head instinctively. When they told him he could use the same honorifics to refer to Zayne that MC used to refer to him he was confused. Zayne blinked. "Uh, just Zayne’s fine." Granny chuckled, but Caleb’s cheeks burned.

Everything was new, waking up without alarms, choosing his own clothes, eating breakfast that didn’t come in a tube. But the memories clung like shadows. He’d catch himself flinching at loud noises, or staring at MC too long, waiting for her to glitch, to die again. Normalcy felt like a trap, a dream he’d wake from back in those white walls. But Granny’s hugs got easier. School laughs came slower. And one day, when Zayne tossed him a ball and said "catch," Caleb did. without waiting for the pain.