The 18th Shade Of Summer (Fractured Script Series #1)

CHAPTER 01

Elaine Sei Cezero

I didn't need an alarm clock. Not when the walls had a voice of their own. Not when they sang every night at exactly 12:01 a.m. like a ritual only my neighbor knew by heart.

I lay on the mattress I'd dropped onto the floor last night, limbs sprawled like a broken puppet, eyes open and stinging. It wasn't even a real bed but just a thin slab of foam that made my back ache in all the wrong places.

I had planned to unpack the boxes or maybe put together the desk before sleeping, but my body had given up the moment I locked the door.

The room around me was hollow and pale, the kind of empty that didn't feel peaceful but just uncomfortably clean, like someone had wiped away every sign of life. I hadn't even put up a curtain yet. Light from the streetlamp outside bled across the floor and onto my legs.

It was almost six in the morning.

I hadn't slept. Not even for a minute.

Not with the anime. Not with him.

It started just after midnight. Loud and overly dramatic anime music from the unit next door. All power chords, sharp violins, and some singer shouting about fate and friendship. It wasn't even muffled. The drywall was so thin it might as well have been paper.

At first, I thought someone had just forgotten their TV was on. But the second night, it happened again. Same time, same chaos. And last night? It was even louder.

I turned my face into the pillow and groaned. "Why does it have to be anime?"

By 1:15 a.m., the screaming characters were locked in some climactic battle scenes. By 2:30, a guitar joined in which is his guitar and not the show's. It was out of tune. Imperfect.

He played the same riff over and over, fingers chasing something underneath all the static. I could hear when he messed up, could sense the frustration in the way he restarted, slower each time.

And I listened even when I didn't want to. Even when I told myself I was too tired to care.

The wall between us wasn't just thin, it was alive. It breathed when I didn't want it to. It sang when I needed silence. It reminded me, in the cruelest way, that I wasn't as alone as I'd hoped.

By the time sunlight pushed through the window, I'd maybe gotten forty minutes of shallow, miserable sleep. My eyes felt like sandpaper. My whole body is hummed with the kind of exhaustion that doesn't just sit in your muscles but it nests in your bones.

I dragged myself upright. My oversized shirt clung to my skin. I hadn't even changed clothes since yesterday. The fan overhead squeaked as it turned, cutting the air in lazy, uneven rotations.

I shuffled to the kitchen. It was really just a counter, a sink, and a single cabinet that squealed when I opened it. My coffee maker was still in a box somewhere, probably under the box labeled 'bathroom maybe?'

I stood at the sink with a spoon in one hand, letting the faucet run over the metal like it would somehow wake me up. The water was warm. A warmth that made me feel more tired.

My apartment smelled faintly of cardboard and cleaning supplies. Outside the window, the street was beginning to stir. Distant engines, the soft bark of a dog, someone rolling out trash bins.

I should've felt calm because this was what I'd wanted. Quiet. A space that was mine.

But there was still a hum beneath it all. Not from outside but from across the hallway.