Alone in the grey box they called an apartment.

He stood in the middle of the room, jacket still on.

He shrugged it off.

Warmth was a lie. Comfort was a trick. He knew better now.

After the loop of the snow, this felt like nothing.

He wasn't looking for escape. Escape was for fools, for people who still believed in someplace better.

He was looking for the opposite.

Understanding. He needed to understand the loops, the endless return.

His gaze moved, not really focusing, just drifting across the room. Desk in the corner, metal legs cold and functional.

Bed shoved against the wall, a thin mattress offering no invitation to rest. Kitchenette crammed into another corner, a steel sink reflecting the dull light.

Nothing personal. Nothing human.

He started to move, slowly at first, then with a growing urgency, a frantic energy buzzing beneath his skin.

He went to the desk. Opened the single, shallow drawer. Pens, a notepad, paperclips, junk. Nothing.

He ran his hand along the metal surface, cold and smooth under his fingers. Then he noticed it.

A faint line, almost invisible, running across the side of the drawer, where the metal met the frame. Too perfect, too straight for a scratch.

He pressed his finger against it, pushed. Nothing. He pushed harder, digging his nail into the line. A click, so quiet he almost missed it. The side of the drawer shifted, a fraction of an inch. A hidden compartment.

He pulled the drawer open further, revealing a narrow slit in the side, lined with dark felt. Inside, nestled in the felt, was a box.

Small, wooden, worn smooth with age and handling. He reached in, his fingers brushing against cool, polished wood.

He pulled it out. A music box. Plain wood, no carvings, no ornamentation. Just a simple, unassuming box. He turned it over in his hands, feeling the weight of it, the smooth surface against his skin.

Dust motes danced in the faint light, catching on the worn edges of the wood. It felt old.

He found the catch, a tiny brass clasp, tarnished with time. He flipped it open. Inside, a tiny metal cylinder studded with pins.

He knew what to do. He'd seen them in shops, in museums, in other lives. He wound the key on the side of the box, a faint click-click-click in the silence.

Then it started.

Music.

But not music as he knew it.

Not bright, not cheerful, not even sad in a way that made sense. This was something else. A melody, yes, he could recognize the bones of a tune, something vaguely familiar.

But it was wrong. Distorted. Slowed down, stretched out, notes sliding against each other in dissonant chords.

Like a child's lullaby played on a broken record, warped and twisted until it became a threat instead of a comfort.

How did he know this existed in the desk? He didn't, it was like an instinct that drove him to do this and now he's here.

He recognized the melody, distantly. A song from somewhere in the loops, a song he'd heard before, faint and elusive.

The "song." But now, distorted, slowed, dragged from the depths of a wooden box.

The melody crawled into his head, a slow, creeping vine of sound. He closed his eyes, letting it wash over him, letting the distorted notes vibrate in his skull. The music box melody wasn't just sound; it was a key. And as it played, the locks in his mind began to turn, clicking open, one by one.

Images flickered behind his eyelids, fragmented, disjointed, triggered by the unsettling tune. Rain.

Rain humming.

Not singing, just humming, a low, breathy sound, almost under her breath.

The melody was clearer in his memory now, compared to the warped music box version, but still unsettling.

Even her humming, he realized, had always been off.

Rain in the rain.

The first meeting of this 'Y/n'.

He saw it again, not as a memory of warmth.

Her drenched figure under the awning, the oversized umbrella like a dark shield.

The forced loneliness in her posture, the practiced sighs, the checking of a phone that never rang. It was a performance, he saw it now, staged for an audience of one 'him'.

Her smile.

The "sweetest smile." He remembered it, the way it made his heart skip a beat, the way it made him feel special.

But now, the sweetness curdled in his memory, turning sour. He saw the sharpness hidden beneath the curve of her lips.

It wasn't a smile of genuine happiness it was a fake, a carefully crafted mask.

The park date. Walking, talking, laughing, ice cream melting in the sun.

He remembered the happiness, the lightness, the feeling of finally being seen. But now, the memory was tainted, overlaid with a film of unease.

Her laughter sounded too bright, too forced. Her interest in his words felt like an interrogation, not connection.

The park itself seemed artificial, too perfect, too staged. The happy couples, the chirping birds all props.

The picnic blanket under the tree. The food she'd "made for him." The whispered confessions. He remembered the melting heart, the breath catching in his throat, the feeling of being chosen.

But now, he saw the possessiveness in her eyes, the steel beneath the soft words, the subtle shift in her tone that he'd ignored, desperate for connection.

"I want to do everything for you, so I can make your life better than ever!" The words replied in his mind, now sounding less like love, more like a threat disguised as devotion. "So I can make your life better..." Not share, not build, but make.

Control.

The kiss. He'd replayed it a thousand times in his head, the gentle, sweet kiss.

But now, the gentleness felt sour.

"Will you be my boyfriend?" The question, the breathless anticipation, his own eager "Yes." He'd felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

Now, the memory tasted like ash. He hadn't gained a girlfriend he'd signed a contract, binding himself to something monstrous.

She never saw him as a human, but as a tool she can unleash her feelings for.

The music box melody wound down, the notes fading, the silence returning, heavier now, more oppressive than before.

He opened his eyes. The grey apartment pressed in again.

He looked down at the music box in his hands. Simple wood, tarnished brass, a cylinder of pins.

A harmless object.

He asked himself why would this object bring those memories back?

But he also felt something weird about it.

He held the box tighter, the worn wood cold against his palm.

Understanding wasn't enough anymore.

He needed more than that. He needed to break free. And maybe, just maybe, this music box could show him how.

The distorted melody lingered in the silence.

And in that sound, he heard not just Rain's love, but something else.

A question.