The woman stepped aside to let me enter the shop.
I hesitated for a moment before crossing the threshold. Even after accepting her offer, some part of me remained reluctant to follow a stranger into an unfamiliar place. The events of the afternoon had made it difficult to take anyone at their word, no matter how sincere they seemed.
Still, the warmth drifting from inside was difficult to resist.
The bakery smelled of freshly baked bread, flour, and woodsmoke. Shelves lined the walls, holding loaves of various shapes and sizes, while a broad wooden counter stood near the entrance. At the back of the shop, the oven glowed with a dull orange light, illuminating the flour scattered across the worktable beside it.
Compared with the cold, crowded streets outside, the place felt almost impossibly comfortable.
The woman closed the door behind me.
"Come along, dear. You must be freezing."
I followed her farther inside, keeping a little distance between us. She seemed not to notice, or perhaps she simply chose not to comment on it. Instead, she busied herself moving a few loaves from the counter to a wooden rack near the oven.
"What's your name, child?"
I stopped.
It was a simple question. An ordinary question that any adult might ask a child they had taken in for the night.
Yet I had no answer.
I knew my name. Alex. I had carried it through university, through graduation, and into the final moments of my previous life. It was the one thing about myself that remained familiar.
But that wasn't necessarily the name of the girl whose body I now inhabited.
I had no idea who she had been, where she had lived, or whether anyone in this city might recognize her. Giving the baker a name that belonged to someone else seemed like an easy way to create complications I wasn't prepared to deal with.
"I..." I hesitated. "I don't remember."
The woman paused in the middle of arranging the loaves.
"You don't remember your name?"
I lowered my eyes.
It wasn't entirely a lie. I remembered my own name, but I didn't know the name of the girl I had become. Explaining that distinction would have been difficult enough without trying to convince her that I had died in another world and awakened in someone else's body.
"No," I said quietly.
For a moment, she studied me.
Then she sighed.
"Poor thing. Well, we can worry about that tomorrow. There's no sense troubling yourself over it tonight."
I looked up at her.
She didn't seem particularly suspicious. If anything, she appeared concerned, though I couldn't tell whether it was genuine.
"Now, let's get you upstairs. I'll show you where you can sleep."
She picked up a small oil lamp from the counter and led me toward a narrow staircase at the back of the shop.
I followed.
The wooden steps creaked beneath our feet. As we climbed, the sounds of the street gradually faded, replaced by the soft crackling of the oven below and the occasional rustle of fabric as the woman walked ahead of me.
I couldn't remember the last time I had been inside a place like this.
In my old life, warmth and shelter had been things I rarely needed to think about. I had a home, a bed, and parents who would have welcomed me through the door without asking why I had spent the day wandering the streets.
Now, I was grateful for a stranger's spare room.
The thought left an unpleasant feeling in my chest.
I pushed it aside.
There was little point comparing my current circumstances with a life I might never see again. Whatever had happened to me, I needed to deal with the situation in front of me.
The staircase ended at a short landing with two doors. The woman opened the one on the left and stepped aside.
"Here we are."
I peered inside.
The room was small, furnished with a narrow bed, a wooden table, and a chair that looked as though it had seen better days. A basin stood in one corner, with a folded towel resting beside it. A small window overlooked the street, though the fading daylight made it difficult to see much beyond the rooftops opposite.
It wasn't much.
But it was clean.
And after spending most of the day on my feet, I was beginning to think that a mattress might be the greatest invention in the world.
"It's not much of a room," the woman said apologetically, "but it'll keep the cold out. The blankets are clean, and the bed is yours for the night."
"Thank you."
The words came out more quietly than I intended.
She smiled.
"There's no need to thank me. You can wash up if you'd like. I'll bring you something to eat shortly."
She pointed toward the basin.
"Water's in the jug. It's a little cold, I'm afraid."
"That's fine."
"Good. Take your time."
She turned to leave, then paused at the doorway.
"Oh, and don't worry about the door. It sticks sometimes, so you may have to give it a little push when you want to close it."
With that, she disappeared down the stairs.
I listened to her footsteps until they faded.
Then I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
For a few seconds, I simply stood in the middle of the room.
A bed. A basin. A roof over my head.
Nothing extraordinary by the standards of my old life. Yet, after everything I had experienced since waking in that alley, the sight of such ordinary things made me feel strangely overwhelmed.
I walked over to the basin and poured a little water over my hands.
It was cold enough to make me wince.
I splashed some onto my face, rubbing away the dirt that had accumulated throughout the day. The water turned cloudy as I washed, and I used the towel to wipe my skin dry.
Then I looked at the small mirror hanging above the basin.
The girl staring back at me still felt like a stranger.
Her dark hair was tangled, her cheeks were smudged with dirt, and her clothes were worn nearly to the point of falling apart. Even after washing, she looked far younger than I felt.
I touched my face.
The reflection did the same.
"I really am stuck like this," I murmured.
Hearing the childish voice in the quiet room made my stomach tighten.
I had spent much of the day trying to convince myself that there had to be a rational explanation for what had happened. Perhaps I was dreaming. Perhaps the accident had left me unconscious and this was some elaborate hallucination.
But the longer I remained awake, the harder those explanations became to believe.
The cold water was real. The aching in my legs was real. The strange body reflected in the mirror was real.
I didn't know what that meant for me.
I didn't know whether I could ever return to my old life, or whether the people I had left behind were still alive.
And I didn't know what would happen if someone discovered that I had no family, no home, and no idea how I had come to be here.
A knock at the open door interrupted my thoughts.
I turned.
The baker stood in the doorway, holding a wooden tray.
"Thought you might be hungry."
She set the tray on the table. It held a bowl of soup, a thick slice of bread, and a small cup of water.
The smell alone made my stomach ache.
"Thank you," I said again.
"Eat while it's warm."
She glanced around the room, apparently satisfied that I had settled in, then pulled the chair away from the table.
"Now, I won't keep you. You've had a long day, and I expect you'll want to get some rest."
I sat down.
The soup was simple, made from vegetables and a little broth, but it was warm and filling. I tore the bread into pieces and dipped them into the bowl, taking care not to burn my tongue.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
The baker busied herself folding the towel I had used, occasionally glancing in my direction. She didn't ask where I had come from or why I was alone. She didn't demand an explanation for my inability to remember my name.
It was a relief.
I had spent the day trying to make sense of an impossible situation. The last thing I wanted was to explain myself to someone who would almost certainly think I was mad.
When I finished eating, I set the spoon down.
The woman took the tray and glanced at the empty bowl with a satisfied nod.
"There we are. A little food does wonders, doesn't it?"
"I suppose it does."
She chuckled before collecting the dishes.
"Now, you should get some rest. You've had a long day, and I doubt you'll feel any better tomorrow if you spend the night tossing and turning."
She started toward the door, then paused as though she'd remembered something.
"Actually, wait a moment. I'll bring you something to drink before you settle in."
I watched her disappear downstairs.
A short while later, she returned carrying a small cup.
"Warm milk," she explained, setting it on the table beside me. "My mother used to say it helped children sleep. Whether there's any truth to that, I couldn't tell you, but it certainly can't hurt."
I looked at the cup.
The milk gave off a faint trail of steam.
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it, dear. Drink it while it's warm."
She gave me a reassuring smile before leaving me to finish my drink in peace.
I picked up the cup and took a cautious sip. The milk was pleasantly warm, with a faint sweetness that reminded me of the sort of thing my mother might have offered me when I was younger.
The thought caught me off guard.
For a moment, I could almost imagine myself back home, sitting at the kitchen table while my parents went about their evening routine.
I swallowed the rest of the milk and set the empty cup aside.
Perhaps I was simply tired, but the memory left me feeling strangely homesick.
I climbed back into bed and pulled the blanket over myself. The mattress was thin, and the room was modest, but it was warm and quiet.
For the first time since waking in that alley, I allowed myself to believe that tomorrow might be a little easier.
I had spent the entire day trying to find somewhere safe.
Perhaps, for once, I had managed to find it.
Tomorrow, I would need to learn more about this city. I needed to discover its name, understand its customs, and find out whether there was somewhere that took in children without families.
Perhaps an orphanage existed. Perhaps there were charitable institutions, or a temple that offered shelter to the poor.
Whatever the case, I couldn't remain dependent on the baker indefinitely.
I would have to find a way to support myself.
The thought of doing so in the body of an eight-year-old girl was almost laughable.
I closed my eyes.
For the first time since waking in this world, I had a chance to rest without worrying about someone grabbing my wrist or following me through the streets.
I was safe for tonight.
At least, that was what I believed.
I wasn't sure how long I had been asleep when I began to wake.
At first, I thought I was back in my old home.
I could hear voices coming from somewhere nearby, low and indistinct, accompanied by the familiar creaking of floorboards. For a brief moment, I lay still beneath the blanket, caught between sleep and consciousness, trying to place the sounds.
Then I remembered where I was.
The bakery.
The strange city.
The body that wasn't mine.
I opened my eyes.
The room was dark, illuminated only by a faint strip of light beneath the door. My limbs felt heavy, and my thoughts seemed to move through thick fog. I tried to shift onto my side, but even that simple movement required more effort than it should have.
I frowned.
Had I slept that deeply?
My head felt strangely light, yet at the same time, it seemed difficult to lift from the pillow. I blinked several times, trying to clear the haze from my vision.
The voices downstairs continued.
One belonged to the baker.
The other was male.
I didn't recognize it.
I lay still, listening.
"...told you I'd have it by the end of the week."
The man's voice was rough, carrying the impatient edge of someone who had heard too many excuses.
"And I told you I'd find a way to pay," the baker replied.
Her voice sounded different from the one she had used with me earlier. The warmth was gone, replaced by a tightness that made her words seem almost strained.
I frowned.
Perhaps it was a customer.
But what kind of customer visited a bakery this late at night?
I tried to sit up.
My arms trembled beneath me, and I barely managed to lift my shoulders before sinking back into the pillow.
What was wrong with me?
I had been exhausted earlier, certainly, but I had slept for some time. I should have felt better, not worse.
I swallowed.
My mouth was dry.
I tried to remember what I had done before going to sleep.
I had eaten the soup. Washed my face. Talked to the baker.
And then...
The milk.
My eyes opened a little wider.
She had brought me a cup of warm milk before I went to bed. I remembered drinking it while she stood beside the table, telling me to get some rest.
At the time, it had seemed like an ordinary gesture.
Now, lying in the darkness with my limbs refusing to cooperate, I wasn't so sure.
A cold feeling spread through my chest.
No.
I was probably overthinking it. I had been on my feet all day, eating very little and wandering through an unfamiliar city. It wasn't unreasonable that my body might simply be exhausted.
But the voices downstairs kept drawing my attention.
I forced myself to concentrate.
"You said you'd have the money," the man repeated. "The others are getting tired of waiting."
"I know what I said."
"Then perhaps you should have thought about that before borrowing from us."
There was a brief silence.
I heard something scrape against the floor, followed by the soft clink of what might have been a cup being placed on a table.
The baker sighed.
"I've found another way to settle the debt."
The man's tone changed.
"Oh?"
My heartbeat quickened.
I didn't know why, but something about the exchange made me uneasy. The way the man spoke, the way the baker hesitated before answering—it reminded me of the conversation I had overheard in the street earlier that day, when the man had tried to drag me away.
I tried to move again.
My fingers twitched against the blanket, but the rest of my body barely responded.
Panic began to creep into my thoughts.
I had to get up.
I had to find out what was happening.
I had to—
"The girl upstairs," the baker said.
Everything inside me went still.
For a moment, I couldn't make sense of the words.
The girl upstairs?
There was only one girl upstairs.
Me.
I stared at the ceiling, my mind struggling to keep pace with the conversation.
"What about her?" the man asked.
"She has no family. No money. Doesn't even remember her own name, by the sound of it."
The baker gave a short, humorless laugh.
"Poor little thing. Wandering around the streets with nowhere to go."
My stomach tightened.
She was talking about me.
There was no other explanation.
I tried to lift my head, but it felt as though someone had placed a heavy weight against my forehead. The room swam before my eyes, and I had to close them for a moment to keep from feeling sick.
When I opened them again, the voices were still there.
"And you think she's worth enough to cover what you owe?" the man asked.
"Have you seen her?" the baker replied. "A pretty little thing, even with those ragged clothes. Someone will pay for a child like that."
The words reached me one at a time.
Pretty.
Little.
Pay.
I didn't want to understand what they meant.
I wanted to believe I had misunderstood the conversation. That perhaps the baker was talking about another child, someone I hadn't met. That there was some reasonable explanation for what I was hearing.
But I knew better.
I remembered the way she had looked at me when I first entered the shop. The questions she had asked about my family. The way she had offered me a room without asking who might come looking for me.
At the time, I had taken those things as signs of concern.
Now, they seemed to mean something else entirely.
The woman hadn't helped me because she felt sorry for me.
She had helped me because I was alone.
Because nobody knew who I was.
Because, to her, I was an opportunity.
My chest tightened until it hurt.
I had been so careful.
After the man in the street, I had promised myself that I would watch the people around me, pay attention to their behavior, and avoid anyone who seemed too interested in me.
And yet, I had walked willingly into the bakery.
I had accepted the food.
I had followed the woman upstairs.
I had drunk the milk.
What had I been thinking?
The question was cruel and useless, but I couldn't stop asking it.
I had known better than to trust strangers. I had known that something could be wrong even when everything appeared perfectly ordinary.
And still, I had allowed myself to believe that I might finally be safe.
I swallowed against the dryness in my throat.
"How much?" the man asked.
The baker answered.
I couldn't make out the number. The voices seemed to drift farther away, becoming muffled and indistinct. I concentrated as hard as I could, desperate to hear what they were saying, but the effort made my head ache.
The man let out a quiet whistle.
"That much?"
"More than enough to clear what I owe you," she said. "And perhaps leave a little over."
"And what happens if the girl wakes up before we collect her?"
"She won't."
The certainty in the baker's voice sent a chill through me.
I tried to move my legs.
Nothing.
I pressed my fingers against the blanket, willing them to grip the fabric. They barely responded.
The realization struck me with sudden, sickening clarity.
The milk.
It had to be the milk.
The woman had drugged me.
I didn't know what she had put into it, and I didn't have the strength to think through the possibilities. I only knew that I had been perfectly capable of moving around earlier that evening, and now I could barely lift my head.
She had planned this.
Perhaps from the moment she called me back from the street.
Perhaps from the moment she saw a hungry child standing outside her bakery.
I didn't know which possibility was worse.
"Tomorrow morning, then?" the man asked.
"Yes. She'll be asleep by then."
"Good."
I heard the scrape of a chair.
"Make sure she's ready when I arrive. I don't want any trouble."
The baker gave a small, impatient sigh.
"You'll have your girl. You have my word."
There was a pause.
Then the man spoke again, his voice lower than before.
"See that you do. The others won't be so understanding if this arrangement falls through."
Footsteps crossed the floor.
A door opened and closed.
For a moment, the bakery fell quiet.
I lay motionless, staring into the darkness.
The silence should have been reassuring.
Instead, it was worse than the conversation itself.
The baker had just agreed to sell me.
Not send me to an orphanage. Not arrange for someone to take me somewhere safe.
Sell me.
As though I were an object she could trade to settle a debt.
I wanted to get up.
I wanted to run.
I wanted to go downstairs, look her in the eye, and demand to know how she could possibly have done something like this after offering me kindness.
But the thought of moving was almost laughable now.
My arms felt numb. My legs were heavy and unresponsive, and my thoughts were growing increasingly difficult to organize.
I had to force myself to focus on a single idea at a time.
Get up.
Just get up.
I pushed my palms against the mattress.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then my upper body lifted a few inches.
Hope flared in my chest.
I tried to swing my legs over the side of the bed, but my balance failed me. I slipped back against the pillow, breathing hard from the effort.
It had taken almost everything I had just to sit halfway upright.
How was I supposed to escape?
I could barely move.
The room seemed to tilt.
I closed my eyes, counted to three, and tried again.
This time, I managed to turn onto my side. My hand found the edge of the mattress, and I gripped it tightly enough to feel the rough fabric beneath my fingers.
I couldn't stay here.
If I remained in this room until morning, the man would return, and the baker would hand me over.
I had no idea where they would take me or what they intended to do with me.
But I had heard enough to know that I couldn't let it happen.
I dragged one leg toward the edge of the bed.
It moved only a little.
My breathing became uneven.
"Come on," I whispered.
The childish voice sounded faint in the darkness.
"Come on..."
I had survived the crash. I had awakened in another world, somehow occupying a body that wasn't mine. I had spent an entire day trying to understand my surroundings, escaped a man who had tried to abduct me, and found my way to a place where I could rest.
I had done all of that.
Surely I could manage to get out of a room.
But my body wouldn't listen.
My thoughts slipped away from me, blurring at the edges. I tried to remember what I knew about drugs, about how long their effects might last, about whether forcing myself to stay awake would make any difference.
Nothing useful came to mind.
I wasn't a doctor.
I wasn't a chemist.
I was a university graduate who had spent the last several years following a predictable routine, and I was now trapped in the body of a little girl who couldn't even stand.
The irony would have been funny if I hadn't been so frightened.
A floorboard creaked outside my room.
I froze.
Footsteps approached, slow and unhurried.
Someone stopped on the other side of the door.
I held my breath.
For a few seconds, there was no sound at all.
Then the handle moved.
The door opened slightly, and a thin line of lamplight stretched across the floor.
I couldn't see the person standing in the doorway.
But I knew who it was.
"Still sleeping, are you, dear?" the baker murmured.
Her voice was gentle again.
The same voice she had used when offering me bread. The same voice she had used when telling me that I could stay the night.
I wanted to scream at her.
I wanted to tell her that I had heard everything.
Instead, I lay as still as I could manage, struggling to keep my breathing even.
The woman stepped into the room.
The floorboards creaked beneath her weight.
She approached the bed, and I felt the mattress dip slightly as she leaned over me.
For one terrible moment, I thought she might know I was awake.
Then she reached down and adjusted the blanket around my shoulders.
"There," she whispered. "Get some rest."
Her hand lingered briefly against the fabric before she straightened.
I could hear her breathing.
I could smell flour and woodsmoke clinging to her clothes.
She stood beside the bed for another moment, watching me.
Then she turned and walked toward the door.
"Tomorrow will be a busy day," she said softly.
The door closed.
Her footsteps receded down the stairs.
I remained motionless until I could no longer hear her.
Only then did I allow myself to breathe.
A tear slipped from the corner of my eye and disappeared into the pillow.
I hated that I was crying.
I hated that I was frightened.
Most of all, I hated the helplessness that came with knowing exactly what was happening and being unable to stop it.
In my previous life, I had worried about the future because I didn't know what I wanted to do with it.
I had thought uncertainty was a problem to be solved, something that would eventually disappear once I made the right decisions.
Now, someone else had decided my future for me.
And I was too weak to fight back.
My eyelids grew heavier.
I tried to hold them open, but the darkness seemed to press in from every side. The voices downstairs had faded, and the bakery had grown quiet.
I thought of my parents.
My mother's excited smile at graduation.
My father's hand resting on my shoulder.
His voice telling me that I didn't need to have my entire future figured out that night.
I wondered whether they had survived the crash.
Whether they had searched for me.
Whether they were grieving for a son they would never see again.
I would never know.
And now, in this strange world, I might not even survive long enough to discover what had happened to the girl whose body I inhabited.
I wanted to believe there was still a way out.
Some chance that I could escape before morning, find help, and put this behind me.
But the thought grew more distant with every passing moment.
My fingers loosened their grip on the blanket.
The ceiling blurred.
I had spent the entire day trying to find somewhere safe.
I had thought I had finally succeeded.
Instead, I had walked straight into another trap.
The last thing I heard before consciousness slipped away was the faint crackling of the oven downstairs.
Then the darkness took me.