Mr Alex, I'm sorry to say this, but as we feared, there's no easy way to say it: you have stage four cancer."

Alex Carter sat across from the doctor. The doctor was a man in his mid-forties, with black hair, though some gray strands were beginning to creep into his hair despite his young age.

Dark circles surrounded his blue eyes, his skin was pale, and he was suffering from weight loss. He wore a striped blue shirt, black pants, and shoes of the same color.

Had the man been in better shape, he would have been handsome despite his age. It was a shame that what the doctor said explained his miserable state.

A sad look appeared in Alex's eyes, yet a bitter smile crept onto his face.

The doctor saw this and decided to continue. Although he felt sympathy for the man in front of him, the doctor lived this every day, so he decided to just carry on.

"As I said, you have cancer, specifically stomach cancer. The tests indicated that the cause of your illness is alcohol. You've been addicted to alcohol for the past ten years, and that's what's caused it."

"Normally, people don't get cancer just because they've been addicted to alcohol for ten years, but your case is special, Mr. Alex."

Alex looked at the doctor with no emotion on his face, not allowing him to continue even with his words. He stood up and headed toward the door.

He could hear the doctor calling out to him from behind, mentioning something about palliative treatments or targeted treatments or something like that.

But despite all that, Alex wasn't paying attention to any of it, still walking with that vacant and weak expression, as if the world around him had stopped.

Alex walked out of the hospital to the sidewalk, staring at the cloudless sky. The air was cold, but he didn't feel it. He smiled bitterly, as if fate were mocking him in return.

"Failure... failure... and I'll die a failure..." he muttered in a voice barely audible even to himself.

He replayed his life, back to the days when he thought success was just a matter of time. He had plans, dreams, ambitions... but he achieved none of them. Instead, he gave in to alcohol, drowning his failure in bottles, thinking he was escaping, but in reality, he was slowly digging his grave.

He unconsciously stepped into the street, his eyes still staring at the blue sky, as if it represented the emptiness he had become. He didn't notice the red lights, nor the speeding cars. He was lost in his thoughts, in his dark cynicism.

"At least I won't have to endure the pain of cancer..."

A scream... the sound of brakes screeching through the air... then a violent impact.

His body flew for a moment before crashing into the ground with force. He felt his warm blood spill onto the asphalt, but strangely, he didn't feel much pain. There were whispers, voices of people running towards him, but he barely heard them.

He looked at the sky again, and the smile was still there, but this time it wasn't bitter. It was... resigned.

Then, darkness fell.

"Ringing, ringing"

The alarm clock rang with an annoying sound, piercing the heavy silence. Alex jolted up in bed, gasping as if someone had pulled his head from underwater just before he drowned. His heart was pounding in his chest like crazy, and his hands were trembling as he ran them over his body, feeling his skin, his ribs, his stomach... everything.

There was no pain. No blood. No broken bones. Nothing to suggest he had just been hit by a car.

He raised his hands in front of his eyes. They were still there, perfectly intact. In fact, even more than that, his skin wasn't as pale as he had gotten used to seeing in the mirror over the last few years.

He froze for a moment, then slowly looked around. The room was strangely familiar... a small bed, an old wooden desk, a pile of clothes carelessly thrown on a chair. His mind began to reel, trying to piece together the scattered fragments of this distorted reality.

"What's this? Was it a nightmare?"

He tried to reassure himself as he got out of bed, but his feet barely carried him. His body felt strangely light, as if it had lost years of exhaustion and weakness in an instant.

He headed for the bathroom, his breath still unstable. He turned on the tap and let cold water run over his hands, then cupped some and splashed it on his face, hoping the cold sensation would wake him from his disorientation.

Finally, he lifted his head to look in the mirror.

He froze.

He stared at his reflection, his eyes widening slowly.

The man staring back at him from the glass wasn't him... or rather, wasn't him as he knew himself.

He was younger. At least ten years younger. No gray hair, no deep dark circles under his eyes, no signs of sagging skin. It was the face he hadn't seen in over a decade, the face he had before alcohol and disappointments ruined it.

He gasped and took a step back, as if the mirror had suddenly become a monster staring at him.

"Impossible..." he whispered in a voice barely escaping his throat.

The room spun around him. He felt a sudden dizziness, and a thick fog clouded his consciousness.

Then... he fell.

And sank into the darkness once more.

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