“No.” Natalie said firmly.

“No?” The woman asked. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Natalie repeated mockingly. “Because no program will ever make me get over the fact that my life was a lie.”

“I know this is all very hard to accept, but that is hardly the full picture-”

“Oh.” Natalie interrupted. “And also my fiancé was a lunatic who changed all of reality just so he could have a girlfriend. When he proposed to me, and I said yes, did that not even happen? Was that just a memory he implanted in my head? Did any of my memories happen?”

“You’re not alone. Many people have been in your position. It’s okay to be unsure.”

“Unsure!?” Natalie stood up and yelled. “Of course I’m unsure, I don’t even know who the hell I am!”

“Please try to calm down.”

“I want to go home! Right now!”

“Please, if you don’t calm down, we may need to cast a spell-”

“GET ME OUT OF HERE! NOW!”

Shocked by Natalie’s sudden outburst, the woman went silent. Internally she wished she hadn’t been assigned to her. She had so little experience with identity death victims. She had no idea if this behavior was normal or something she should report.

“Get me out.” Natalie repeated, softly.

“Okay.” The woman said. “Follow me.”

***

The empty, seemingly endless white void was a plague on Natalie’s senses. After two weeks of walking back and forth from building to building in the vacant space, she felt like she was about to go mad.

What the hell was she even walking on? There was no visible floor underneath her, just more white. Was there more under the floor? Did the area under the floor even exist? How far did this void go?

She was sure of one thing: she never wanted to see the color white ever again.

During her walk, Natalie learned the woman she was following was named Sara. She was a nice lady, all things considered, but Natalie was not in the mood for conversations. Sara didn’t quite get that message though, and tried to talk to her multiple times. It took a couple failed attempts before she finally stopped.

Sara opened the front door to the hotel Natalie had been staying in for the duration of the trial. Every day for the past two weeks, she had woken up in her bed, eaten breakfast, then walked down to the courthouse for most of the day. It was tiring, tedious, and she’d die before she did any of it again. Going back home felt like heaven at this point.

Sara approached the woman at the front desk.

“Natalie will be leaving today.” She told her. “But she might be coming back soon.”

Natalie glared at Sara as she walked up. Sara gave her a sympathetic look.

The woman at the front desk wrote something down on a booklet, then happily said “you’re all set, have a great day”.

With that, Natalie and Sara went to the elevator and hit the button to the fourteenth floor. Silence hung in the air as the elevator went up, soon broken by Sara opening her mouth.

“Hey…” She said hesitantly. “I know you said you didn’t want to enter our program, but I think you really should consider it. It’s helped a lot of people like you.”

“People like you,” Natalie thought with scorn. She said nothing back.

“Look… I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to. If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. But if you ever feel like changing your mind, send us a message. Just ask and we’ll come.”

Natalie, again, said nothing. And she continued to say nothing as the elevator door opened and she followed Sara down the hallways. The walk was short, but it felt like it went on for hours. The hallways here were long and maze-like, but not for any discernible reason. Some days Natalie had trouble finding her own room. It frustrated her to no end.

When Natalie finally did get to her room, she collapsed on her bed in exhaustion.

“I know you’re probably not thinking of this right now.” Sara said at the door. “But you won’t have to worry about Astian. He won’t wake up in your apartment. We have some amount of control over your reality and will create an explanation for his absence.”

“Leave me alone.” Natalie mumbled into her pillow.

Sara gave a silent nod and left the room, shutting the door on her way out.

Natalie didn’t even have the energy to groan as she lied there. It had been a long two weeks. Just thinking about it gave her a headache.

When she first woke up in this world, she was in this hotel room. And she freaked the fuck out. How else would you react after waking up in a different place? She thought she’d been kidnapped. But people soon came and tried to calm her down.

She did not make it easy for them.

It’s not like she could be calm anyway, as she just kept getting hit with bombshell after bombshell. They said magic was real. They said she was in this strange world consisting almost entirely of a white void. They said her fiancé was a lunatic criminal that used magic to change reality.

They said she wasn’t Natalie Parker.

No, she was actually a man named Nathan Parker. Astian had changed reality to make her his girlfriend. Her entire life, all her memories, all of it was fake. 

Well, that’s not how they explained it, but it’s how Natalie heard it.

All her life she had known who she was. It’s such an obvious fact of life. Everyone knows who they are. And she was Natalie Parker.

Except she wasn’t.

She might as well have been told she hallucinated her entire life and was in a mental asylum. Hell, that’d probably be better.

She rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. It was coated in the same bland white paint she’d seen so many times on Earth. She stifled a laugh. Shouldn’t a special, magic world have a special, magic looking hotel room? Replace the white void outside the window and this would pass perfectly for any other hotel room you’d find on Earth. 

Those were the sorts of dumb thoughts that mulled over in her head as she came closer and closer to sleep.

At least sleeping wasn’t impossible here. There was a day and night cycle… kind of. Every eleven hours there was a transition period where the world would change from a white void to a black void, or vice versa. The whole process took an hour. A full cycle took twenty-four hours to complete, just like a full day on Earth.

Natalie sighed. She could only hope what she’d been told for the past two weeks was true. That sleeping in this bed after the end of the trial would take her back to her apartment, just a day after she last slept there. She couldn’t imagine what she’d do if she was gone for two weeks on Earth too.

Slowly, Natalie began dozing off.

But just before she fell asleep, she swore she saw a man in her room, his back turned to her, looking out the window.

The last thing she remembered is her body freezing upon seeing him.