No alarm went off.

  Alarms never went off — he'd cancelled them three years ago. His body had adjusted on its own. It knew the schedule better than any app.

  Six fifty-two.

  He lay still for a few seconds, staring at the ceiling. High, white. A thin crack in the corner — he noticed it every morning and every morning forgot to mention it to the building manager. Not because he was busy.

  He just didn't feel like talking.

  Beyond the panoramic windows, Geneva was in no hurry to wake up. The sky was grey with white along the edges, Mont Blanc barely visible through the morning haze on the horizon. Somewhere far below, twenty-two floors down, people were already moving — small, methodical, with coffee in paper cups and routes they walked every single day.

  He watched them for two seconds.

  Background characters, he thought, without malice. Just an observation. In every story he'd ever read, people like that filled the space between important scenes — walking somewhere, doing something, nameless. Existing so the world wouldn't look empty.

  He turned away from the window.

  Then got up.

  The penthouse woke up with him — not a metaphor, literally. The blinds rose on their own, the coffee machine in the kitchen started its cycle on a motion sensor, the heated floor had been warm since the night before. He walked to the bathroom without turning on the lights — what came through the windows was enough.

  In the mirror — a familiar face.

  His father had once said that appearance is an asset that needs to be managed.

  He looked at his reflection for exactly as long as practical purposes required. It was the only advice his father had ever given him directly — without an assistant, without an agenda, without a scheduled slot in a meeting. He'd remembered it. Not because it moved him.

  Just because it was rare.

  Shower, three minutes. Le Rosey winter uniform — dark navy blazer, white shirt, everything fitted perfectly. Not by him, but to his specifications. Money solved the problem of fit just as easily as any other problem.

  He took his coffee standing up, by the window.

  Lake Geneva in this weather was the colour of old silver. Beautiful and slightly dull — like a good textbook.

  About like my life, he thought. Noted that it was a clichéd thought. Discarded it. Picked up his phone.

  The novel was open at chapter seven hundred and forty-eight. The protagonist had just received a legendary artefact — by accidentally falling into a ravine. Classic genre move. Almost offensively predictable.

  He read anyway.

  Is it really that hard to build a world that doesn't revolve around one person.

  The readers in the comments were ecstatic. He understood why — the structure worked, the right buttons were being pressed — but he felt a mild fatigue at how obviously the whole thing was constructed. Every twist was telegraphed three chapters out. Every villain existed solely to be defeated.

  The protagonist never gets tired, he thought, scrolling further. Never gets bored. There's always a goal, always an enemy, always a reason to keep moving.

  Convenient.

  He finished the chapter. Opened the next one.

  Because it was better than standing at the window, looking out at someone else's neat, orderly country. Alone.

  The car was waiting at seven fifteen. Always.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  He stepped out of the lift into the underground garage — and Kenji was already standing at the open rear door, hands folded in front, gaze aimed slightly to the side. Black S-Class, tinted windows, engine warmed up. Kenji had worked for the family for nine years. Or eight. He never asked, Kenji never said.

  — Good morning, — Kenji said. Flat. Without inflection. Like a man who says the phrase because it's expected — not because he cares how the morning went.

  — Mm, — he replied. Not rudely. Just enough.

  They understood each other at exactly that level — and both of them were fine with it.

  The door closed. The car pulled out.

  He opened his phone.

  Forty minutes to Rolle — his private territory. Nobody called before nine. No fires so far.

  A notification slid in from the side — his mother's name in the banner. He glanced at it, didn't open it. A press release about a tour, most likely. Or an interview — she'd been giving a lot of those lately. He knew from the news.

  Not from phone calls.

  Kenji smoothly shifted to the left lane. Rolle was already beginning — a small town, the lake visible between the buildings, silver and still. Seven minutes or so.

  He turned the page.

  The car slowed slightly around a bend.

  He blinked.

  The first thing he felt was pressure.

  Not pain. Pressure. Even, dull, wrapping around his neck from all sides like a vice someone was tightening without rushing.

  Second — his feet couldn't find the floor.

  Third — he couldn't breathe.

  The panic didn't arrive as a thought. It came as a charge — from his throat to his heels, instant, animal, without permission. His body reacted before his mind could intervene. His hands jerked upward, fingers found the rope, gripped. His legs thrashed in the air — searching for something solid, found the wall, pushed off.

  Something cracked above him.

  Again.

  He fell.

  The floor.

  Knees, then elbows, then his temple — and for several seconds there was nothing at all except white noise and the fact that he couldn't inhale. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. His throat wouldn't cooperate — clenched, burning, foreign.

  Then the air broke through.

  And immediately — coughing. Long, tearing, the kind that darkened his vision a second time. He lay on his side and coughed and couldn't stop and somewhere at the edge of his consciousness something enormous was already rising — something the size of panic, something that wanted to fill every inch of space inside him and scream.

  He didn't give it room.

  Not because it was easy.

  Simply because he knew — if it rose now, he would see nothing. Understand nothing. Do nothing.

  Breathe.

  Inhale.

  Breathe.

  Exhale.

  His hands were shaking — finely, miserably, as if his body hadn't received the message that falling was over. He pulled the rope from his neck and threw it aside. Didn't look where. Sat up. Fixed his gaze on a single point on the floor — dark wood, a knot shaped like an irregular oval — and simply breathed.

  Didn't think. Only breathed.

  Waited for the noise to quiet.

  Gradually his hands steadied.

  Gradually the room stopped swimming.

  And only then — when breathing had become merely painful rather than impossible — did he allow himself to lift his head and look around.

  Alright, he said to himself. Without words, without sound. Just internally. What do I see.

  Small room. Wooden walls with dark moisture stains. One narrow window — wooden shutters ajar, daylight outside. Not morning light — which meant time had passed. How much — unclear.

  Low ceiling. From the ceiling beam hung a hook with a length of broken rope.

  Cheap rope, he noted. Didn't hold.

  A bed against the wall. A table. A bowl with something dried at the bottom. A wooden spoon beside it.

  On the walls — nothing. Not a single decorative object. Not a single personal item. A room belonging to someone who either had nothing to show, or no reason to.

  I was in the car.

  That much he remembered clearly. Morning, leather seat, phone in hand. Kenji up front. Familiar route. He'd been reading something — or scrolling — and blinked.

  And then — a rope around his neck and no floor beneath his feet.

  Nothing between those two moments. Nothing at all.

  He raised his hand and looked at it.

  A stranger's hand. Narrow, pale, with thin wrists he never would have chosen for himself. He carefully touched his neck — a stripe was already forming there. Hot, dense. It would leave a mark. For a while.

  A stranger's body.

  The thought was absurd. He knew that. He accepted it as fact and moved on — because there were no other facts available, and arguing with what his hands could feel was pointless.

  He stood up. Slowly. His legs weren't cooperating well — his knees ached from the fall, his head swayed on the way up. He waited for it to pass. It passed.

  He walked to the window.

  Outside was a world he didn't recognise. Wooden structures, packed dirt paths, people in clothing that had nothing in common with any modern style. In the distance — a large stone wall, clearly the perimeter of some territory. Trees beyond it. Mountains, possibly, on the horizon.

  He stood and looked.

  Something inside still wanted to rise — that same thing, panic-sized. He could feel it at the edges. He let it exist — but didn't let it speak.

  Assume, he told himself at last.

  Assume — didn't mean believe. It meant: accept as a working hypothesis and keep moving. Because standing at a window with panic inside was an activity with no exit. And he'd already had no floor beneath his feet once today.

  Enough.

  Assume — this is a cultivation world.

  He looked at the distant wall. At the people in old clothing. At the absence of everything he was used to seeing.

  Then I'm the protagonist.

  He almost smiled.

  Almost — because his neck burned with any movement of his face.