The ceiling was different.
It was made of wood, not the cold concrete he remembered. There was no beeping monitor, no tubes stuck to his arms, no scent of disinfectant in the air.
And he was… breathing. Calmly.
Leon Windsor sat up sharply, the blanket falling off his chest like the weight of a memory peeling away. His fingers gripped the edge of the bed. Smooth. Sturdy. Not hospital-standard.
He turned to look around.
Four beds. One wide window, the kind that caught sunlight and spilled it across the parquet floor like gold. A guitar leaned lazily against a wall. A half-drunk protein shake sat sweating on a desk.
And just then—
"Jesus, you move like a corpse in reverse."
The voice came from a tall, lean guy standing by the closet, holding a bottle of hair wax like it was a weapon of mass seduction. Wavy brown hair, dimples deep enough to hide secrets, and a grin too familiar.
"Felix… Duvall," Leon murmured, the name falling out like a ghost.
"Wow. Full name. Sexy. Should I be worried?" Felix winked and flopped into the armchair beside Leon's bed. "You okay? You look like you've seen… you."
Leon stared at him. In another life, Felix Duvall had died in a car crash three years before Leon's own accident.
But now here he was—alive. Talking. Joking. Making zero sense, as usual.
He looked at his own hands. No scars. No signs of the surgeries. No signs of the crash.
I'm back. I'm actually back.
Same face. Same time. Same place.
Windsor Academy. The elite boarding school for the powerful, the privileged… and now, the reborn.