Alone in the atrium outside the common room, I was finally able to calm down a bit and managed to take a deep breath. The strangling sensation in my throat was gone as suddenly as it had appeared, but left me feeling like I had run a marathon and was about to collapse from exhaustion any second.

"Hey, are you okay?" I heard Cloud's voice behind me.

"...fine," I muttered, without turning around.

"You don't seem to be fine," he said, as he walked around to face me.

I wasn't keen on being seen in my current state. My cheeks felt hot and were streaked with tears, and I stood with slumped shoulders and my head hanging, still trying to catch my breath. My black hair fell forward like two curtains beside my face, hiding it from his view, but I could see him step up right in front of me. He seemed to want to put his hand on my shoulder, but hesitated.

Slowly, I raised my head. He was looking at me, with his head cocked slightly to the side, scrutinizing me with his strange, blue-green gaze.

"Is your voice okay?"

"I am fine," I insisted.

With a weary sight, I rubbed a hand over my face and tried to regain my composure. The way he was staring at me really didn't make that easier.

"Sorry for storming out like that," I added.

"No, no, it's my fault... I really wish I hadn't set them up to it and told them about your memories. I shouldn't have...so I'm the one who should apologize," he said sullenly, and ran a hand through his hair in a nervous gesture.

He took a step towards me, and opened his mouth as if to say something else. But he didn't, and with his lips left slightly parted and his brows knitted together in an expression of concern, he just looked at me.

There was something about him – his strange eyes, or perhaps the overall uncanny beauty of his face, that caused my mouth to go dry and my mind to go blank. The only clear thought I had was that I finally remembered what the color of his eyes reminded me of. That distinct combination of a rich and deep blue, intermingled with bright and vibrant green looked just like those old images of the earth as seen from outer space – before it all went to shit and was turned into a nuclear wasteland. But the comparison was fitting, and just like the look in his eyes, there was something unfathomably beautiful about the thought, but also something devastatingly sad.

My heart began to race, accelerating more and more with each throbbing beat in my chest, while paradoxically, the world around me seemed to stagger to a complete halt as I found myself affixed by this strange gaze. Frozen motionless, I watched him raise his hand, and bring it up to the side of my face where my coughing fit had left my cheeks wet with tears. He was hesitant in his motions, probably waiting for me to shy away or step back. But even had I found myself in sufficient control over my body to do either of that, I somehow, to my own surprise, really didn't want to.

His fingertips brushed against my flushed face for just a fleeting moment, until suddenly, a spark of electricity seemed to jump over between us. We both gasped in shock, and reflexively backed away from each other.

This wasn't the hot, needle-prick shock of a static discharge. It was different – subtler, stranger, and nowhere near as unpleasant. The feeling rapidly surged through my body and caused me to tremble. It was gone again in a split second, but in its wake followed a flurry of confusing feelings – embarrassment, utter shock, and for some reason, gratefulness. And for a moment, I thought I saw all of those emotions reflected on Cloud's face.

"Ah... forgive me..." he whispered sheepishly.

The violent storm of emotions was raging within me, but overall, I just felt very confused. In any other dream, a feeling so intense and realistic would have yanked me back into the waking world, and I would find myself lying in my bed in my dorm room, with my eyes wide open and my heart racing. But not this time.

Instead of the darkness of the night in my room, I found myself staring at a pair of enigmatic blue-green eyes and a face so beautiful that that alone should have been enough to make it very clear that this could only be a dream. But why did it all feel so real? I began to wish it didn't.

For a few seconds, Cloud and I just stared at each other until we both snapped out of our perplexed state. He took a step back, dropping his gaze to the ground and clearing his throat. I could have sworn that a hint of a blush had appeared on his perfect porcelain skin, and I didn't even want to know what my own face looked like right now. Probably as dark red as Bridge's hair.

I rubbed my sleeves over my cheeks to dry the remaining tears. That was when I took note of that strange bracelet once again. While the overall look reminded me of the monitoring bracelet I had gotten in the hospital, this might as well have been a piece of jewelry, but I had seen that the other prisoners were wearing them, too. It sat so tight that I couldn't move it along my arm at all. It felt like it was cast around my wrist, made to fit there perfectly, like a shackle.

That's definitely no regular monitoring bracelet, I thought.

I turned my hands over to look at the other side of the bracelet, when I noticed something else. I stared down at my hands, turning them back and forth and flexing the fingers, and a very strange sensation overcame me. Somehow, I wasn't certain any longer that these hands were mine.

On the back of my right hand, there should have been a scar - old and almost completely faded, but still visible against my skin. I had torn my skin at one of my mother's rose bushes a couple of years ago. The cut hadn't been very deep, so I had never bothered to seek anti-scarring treatment, and I had been left with a fine, silver line – except that it wasn't there.

On a hunch, tried to feel for the old scar at my temple, near my hairline. It was from a wound that had been too severe to disappear completely, even after treatment. But that one was gone too, just like the small cut from the Daidala accident. And at the back of my neck, where the three little spikes from my implant were supposed to be, I could feel only smooth skin.

Of course, this was nothing but a dream, so nothing really had to make any sense. It wouldn't even be the first time that I was not myself in a dream. But a question crept up in my mind nonetheless.

If I'm not me, who am I?

Everything else seemed to be normal – my body felt perfectly like my own. I still had black hair, reaching just past my shoulders. My facial features felt the same when I touched my face. I still felt the same, overall.

"There really are no mirrors in this place, are there?" I voiced a suspicion. The bedrooms only had these black, non-reflective glass panels, and even in the common bath room, there had been no mirrors.

As I looked up from my hands again, I found Cloud staring at me intently. He shook his head in response to my question.

"Well.... I guess hell is other people," I muttered dejectedly.

"So, is that the impression the others left on you..?" Cloud asked.

"Oh, no! I didn't meant to – it's just a quote from a play. The protagonists find themselves locked in a room that is supposed to be hell. Ultimately, they realize that they are each other's torment. Hence, 'Hell is other people'. But I was only reminded of it because one of the characters is trying to check her appearance, but there are no mirrors..."

"I know." At my words, his eyes began to sparkle with excitement. "I'm just surprised that you know the story, too. So you really read Sartre, huh?"

"Yeah, I read a story or two in my time."

A wide smile lit up his features. "Okay, I really have to show you something!"

He reached out to grab my hand, but then froze halfway. He met my gaze for a moment, the expression on his face absolutely unreadable, and then he turned around to walk towards one of the doors in the atrium. The pleading look in his eyes left me flustered and startled, and for a moment I just stared after him.

"Come on, you'll like it, I promise!" he called over his shoulder.

I blinked a few times. That tide of confusing emotions within me had ebbed by now, and there was only one emotion left – a very weird and fuzzy feeling, somewhere deep within my stomach. But while my mind was still lagging behind in an attempt to process just what the hell was happening here, my feet began to move on their own and I followed him.