Chapter Text
The school claimed the uniform was designed for summer weather, or at least the entire school year.
The school administration had clearly never stood in the middle of Budapest in late June while wrapped in three layers of dark fabric and the fury of several hundred overheated teenagers.
Runa tugged at the collar of her white blouse again, trying unsuccessfully to let air into the suffocating space beneath the dark gray pullover stitched neatly with the school crest. The wool blend was thick enough to survive winter. Which would have been useful if the city wasn’t currently simmering beneath thirty-degree heat and direct sunlight.
Her skirt brushed against her thighs as the tram rattled forward, heavy fabric shifting in stiff pleats every time the rails jolted beneath them. Dark red and black checkered pattern. “Elegant.” “Traditional.” “Appropriate presentation.”
Hell.
Actual hell.
Especially with tights.
Whoever invented tights deserved prison time.
Runa slouched farther down into the cracked tram seat with all the exhausted grace of someone one inconvenience away from dissolving into dust. The old yellow tram creaked around a turn, sunlight flashing through the windows in sharp golden stripes that slid across scratched plastic seats and metal poles polished smooth by years of hands.
Outside, Budapest moved past in pieces.
Sunlit apartment windows.
Faded graffiti beneath bridges.
Tourists clustering near intersections with maps and confusion written equally across their faces.
The Danube glittered silver-blue between buildings whenever the tram climbed high enough for her to catch glimpses of it.
The city looked soft in summer.
Warm.
Alive.
A little tired around the edges, maybe, but beautiful anyway.
Runa loved Budapest in the way people loved things they grew up beside without realizing it at first. It wasn’t dramatic affection. Not the kind people wrote poetry about.
It was knowing which tram lines smelled faintly cursed in the summer heat.
It was recognizing the sound of street musicians beneath underpasses before you even turned the corner.
It was late-night convenience stores and old buildings that looked permanently annoyed and the way the city glowed gold after rain.
Home.
Her phone buzzed against her palm.
Nóri:
if you die before the festival i’m taking your ticket
Runa snorted quietly.
The woman sitting across from her glanced up from her newspaper with mild suspicion. Runa immediately looked back down at her phone with the innocence of someone who had definitely not just laughed at private threats of theft.
Runa:
if i die tell the school administration i cursed them personally
Three dots appeared instantly.
Nóri:
dramatic
Runa:
i’m cooking alive
Another vibration before she could even lock the screen.
Nóri:
you’re literally going to a music festival tonight stop complaining
That did make her smile.
Barely.
But enough.
The festival had been planned for months. One of those smaller summer ones near the lake where people sat on blankets in oversized hoodies after sunset listening to indie bands and terrible local rock groups trying very hard to become famous.
Nothing huge.
Nothing world-changing.
Just music and freedom and a few days where nobody expected anything from them.
God, she needed that.
Final exams had wrung the life out of everyone this year. The past month had become a blur of caffeine, notes, sleep deprivation, and teachers assigning “one final important project” every three days like they were coordinating psychological warfare.
Runa tilted her head back against the tram window with a sigh.
Warm glass pressed against her temple.
The vibration of the rails hummed through the seat beneath her.
Around her, conversations blurred together into soft background noise.
Someone near the doors was talking loudly about university entrance exams.
A little kid farther down was trying to convince his exhausted mother that ice cream counted as hydration.
Honestly, valid argument.
The tram lurched slightly over uneven rails.
Runa shifted her backpack higher on one shoulder with a grimace.
God, why was it so heavy?
Books.
Empty notebooks she refused to throw away because “I might need them later.”
Pencil case.
Tablet.
Power bank.
Chargers.
Her PE clothes shoved carelessly into one compartment.
A hoodie.
Festival clothes.
Spare shoes.
And somewhere at the bottom, crushed beneath absolutely everything else, were the snacks her mother insisted she bring because:
“Festival food is overpriced.”
Which was true.
Unfortunately.
The dark green duffel bag at her feet held the rest of her things. Mostly clothes. Her favorite oversized black hoodie was stuffed in there too, along with a faded band shirt and loose gray shorts she planned on changing into the second she got on the train later.
Freedom was taking off the uniform after ten straight months.
Actually transcendental experience.
Runa loosened her grip slightly on the phone in her hand and let her gaze drift back toward the city outside.
The late afternoon sunlight painted everything gold.
Heat shimmered above roads.
People moved slower in weather like this. The entire city looked softened by summer exhaustion. Café terraces overflowed with people drinking iced coffee and pretending they weren’t melting alive. Open windows spilled music and cooking smells into the streets.
Budapest in June always felt strangely temporary to her.
Like everyone collectively decided to become a little less real during summer.
Her phone buzzed again.
This time it was a notification from a One Piece discussion forum.
Runa immediately opened it without hesitation.
A terrible decision.
Someone had apparently written a seven-page theory connecting the Void Century to inherited memory and sea currents and moon cycles.
Absolutely unhinged behavior.
She read the entire thing anyway.
Halfway through a paragraph aggressively insisting that Devil Fruits contained fragments of previous users’ wills, Runa found herself grinning despite herself.
People online were insane.
Affectionately.
Honestly, she respected the commitment.
A sharp turn pulled the tram around another corner, sunlight strobing briefly through the windows.
Runa locked her phone and shoved it into her lap before she disappeared fully into internet nonsense and missed her stop again.
Which had happened before.
Multiple times.
Unfortunately.
The automated tram voice crackled overhead through old speakers.
Her stop.
Finally.
Runa pushed herself upright with the exhausted determination of someone approaching the final stage of a survival trial. Her knees cracked ominously. She grabbed her bags, nearly strangled herself with one of the straps, recovered with dignity she absolutely did not possess, and shuffled toward the tram doors.
The second they opened, heat crashed into her.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she muttered in Hungarian under her breath.
The city outside felt louder immediately.
Cars.
Conversations.
The distant screech of rails.
Music echoing faintly from somewhere farther down the street.
The smell of warm concrete and street food and summer air pressed around her all at once.
Runa adjusted her bags again and stepped out into the crowd.
Sweat immediately started gathering uncomfortably beneath the collar of her blouse.
Disgusting.
The white fabric clung slightly to her skin beneath the pullover, and the tights trapped heat like punishment invented personally by Satan.
At least the boots were comfortable.
Mostly.
Dark brown leather, worn soft with use, thick enough soles to survive city streets and whatever else she accidentally dragged them through. They looked vaguely like hiking boots trying very hard to pretend they belonged in a school uniform.
Which they didn’t.
But Runa had refused to wear dress shoes after developing blisters bad enough to make walking feel like warfare sometime around ninth grade.
The school administration could survive the scandal.
She crossed the street slowly with the crowd, phone back in hand already.
Notifications stacked across the screen.
Group chat chaos.
Pictures.
Memes.
Someone complaining about train delays.
Normal things.
Comfortably normal things.
And somewhere beneath all the noise in her head, underneath the exhaustion and heat and relief of school finally ending, there was that strange feeling again.
That restlessness.
Like standing at the edge of something invisible.
Runa frowned slightly.
Weird.
Probably just burnout.
People weren’t supposed to feel existential after exams.
Probably.
A warm breeze pushed through the street suddenly, lifting strands of reddish-brown hair from the back of her neck. The sunlight caught copper tones hidden beneath the darker brown for a brief moment before they disappeared again.
She should cut it soon.
It had gotten too long again.
Her mother kept threatening to braid it herself if Runa continued “forgetting” to do anything with it besides shoving it into lazy ponytails.
The idea alone was horrifying.
Her phone buzzed again.
Mom:
Did you remember your medicine?
Runa rolled her eyes affectionately.
Runa:
yes mom
A pause.
Then another message.
Mom:
And the charger?
Runa:
yes mom
Mom:
And—
Runa:
yes mom!!!
A laughing emoji appeared.
Runa smiled despite herself.
The pedestrian light shifted green.
People began crossing around her.
Runa followed automatically, still half-looking at her phone while trying to untangle one bag strap from another.
The festival ticket was tucked carefully inside her wallet.
Train at seven.
Two hours.
Enough time to get home, throw half her belongings into another bag, maybe collapse dramatically on the floor for ten minutes, then leave again.
Manageable.
Somewhere nearby, a tram bell rang sharply.
Close.
Too close.
Runa looked up.
Light flooded her vision.
Cold.
Not winter cold.
Not the damp, miserable kind that seeped through jackets while waiting for late buses in December.
This was sharper.
Crueler.
The kind of cold that dug its claws into skin and bone and lungs all at once.
Runa woke with a violent gasp, her entire body jerking upward so suddenly that snow scattered around her hands.
For one horrible second, she couldn’t breathe.
The air burned.
Every inhale stabbed down her throat like ice.
She scrambled backward instinctively, boots slipping against packed snow beneath her, and nearly fell again immediately. Her pulse hammered wildly in her ears. Her fingers felt numb already, clumsy and stiff and wrong as they dug into freezing white powder.
Snow.
There was snow.
Everywhere.
Runa froze.
The world around her was white and gray and dark pine towering endlessly upward into a sky she didn’t recognize. Snow covered the ground in uneven drifts, clinging thickly to roots and rocks and branches heavy enough to sag beneath the weight.
Wind hissed through the trees.
Not loudly.
Just enough to make the entire forest sound alive.
Runa’s breath escaped in shaking clouds.
No.
No, no, no.
Her head snapped around wildly.
There were no buildings.
No roads.
No people.
No distant city noise humming beneath everything like there should have been.
Nothing.
Only trees.
Only snow.
Only silence so complete it pressed painfully against her ears.
“What the fuck—”
Her own voice sounded too loud.
Too small.
The panic hit all at once.
Runa shoved herself upright too quickly, nearly slipping again as dizziness crashed through her head. Her school bag nearly slid off her shoulder before she caught it automatically.
The bag.
Her things.
They were here.
Her duffel bag lay half-buried nearby beneath a thin layer of snow. One strap twisted awkwardly against the ice. Her coat was still looped through the handles.
Her phone.
Hands shaking violently now, Runa fumbled through her pocket and dragged it out.
Cracked screen.
Still on.
No signal.
No service.
No internet.
Battery: 62%.
A hysterical laugh almost clawed its way out of her throat before dying immediately.
This wasn’t possible.
People did not wake up in frozen forests after getting hit by trams.
That was not a thing.
The wind cut through her uniform sharply enough to make her whole body shake.
Her tights were useless against this cold. The thin blouse beneath her pullover trapped almost no heat at all. Even her fingers hurt.
Move.
The thought surfaced sluggishly through panic.
Move before you freeze.
Runa lunged for the coat almost desperately, yanking it free from the bags with numb hands. The fabric felt stiff and cold against her fingers as she shoved herself into it as quickly as possible, nearly getting tangled in one sleeve in the process.
Better.
Not warm.
Not even close.
But enough to stop the cold from biting directly through her skin.
For now.
Runa pulled the coat tighter around herself and looked up again.
The forest stretched endlessly between the trees.
Dark trunks disappearing into white.
Snow drifting silently from branches overhead.
And somewhere far deeper in the woods—
something moved.