Chapter 3: The Physics of Pretend

Chapter 3: The Physics of Pretend

The performance was over. The war had just begun.

Leo didn't hear Sarah's panicked calls or Mark's angry shouts. Their voices were part of a different world, a world of logic and grief and moving on. He was sprinting through the manicured park, his lungs burning, his mind a singular, blazing point of focus. The Mime’s mocking, painted smile was seared onto the inside of his eyelids. The shimmering, captive image of Lily was the only thing that mattered.

He ran. He ran through streets he didn't recognize, propelled by an instinct that was four years old. Away from the pity, away from the well-meaning delusion that Lily was a memory to be cherished. She was a prisoner to be rescued.

Twenty minutes later, he skidded to a halt at the mouth of the alley.

It was shabbier, grimier. A new layer of graffiti was sprayed over the old brickwork. The dumpsters had been replaced with newer, larger ones that smelled even worse. But it was the same place. The stage.

His heart hammered against his ribs as he scanned the cracked pavement. He was terrified that it would be gone, that the city would have repaved this stretch of forgotten asphalt and erased the last vestiges of his kingdom. But no. There, faded by four years of sun and rain and scuffed by countless indifferent shoes, was a ghostly blue-white rectangle.

DON'T LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN.

The letters were barely legible, a whisper of their former authority. But they were there. He knelt, his fingers tracing the faint lines, the concrete cold and rough beneath his touch. This was the lock. He just had to find the key.

He stood up, facing the spot where the chalk 'door' was drawn. For four years, he had replayed the moment of his failure in his mind, a self-flagellating ritual of guilt. But the Mime's appearance had changed everything. It hadn't just appeared out of thin air; it had retreated into a shadow, a deliberate exit. It used a door. Now, standing here, Leo felt it for the first time.

His perception had been scoured clean by the horror in the park. The air in the space defined by the chalk rectangle was… different. Thicker. When he stared at it, the grimy brick wall on the far side seemed to waver slightly, like a reflection on disturbed water. A low hum, so subtle it was more of a pressure in his ears than a sound, emanated from the spot. It was the silence of a stage waiting for an actor.

"Okay," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Okay, Lily. I'm coming."

Driven by a raw, desperate hope, he took a running start and charged directly at the shimmering air. He didn’t know what he expected—to break through like glass, to find himself in that other place.

Instead, he hit a wall.

It wasn’t a wall of brick or stone. It was a wall of pure rejection. The impact was total, a full-body concussion that sent a sickening jolt through his bones and slammed the air from his lungs. He was thrown backward, landing hard on the pavement with a grunt of pain. The world swam in a dizzying haze.

He lay there, gasping, the coppery taste of blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his tongue. Failure. The brief, exhilarating hope curdled into familiar, crushing despair. Had he imagined it? Had the Mime been a grief-induced hallucination after all? Was this just an alley, and was he just a madman throwing himself at empty air?

No. The memory of Lily’s terrified face was too real, too vivid. He had not imagined that.

He pushed himself up, his shoulder aching from the fall. Brute force was wrong. That wasn't the rule. His mind, frantic, snagged on a detail. The Mime. It hadn't smashed its way out of the park. It had performed. It had bowed. Its every move was deliberate, theatrical.

And Lily… Lily’s rule hadn't been about a physical barrier. It was about a game.

”You have to pretend to close it every time.”

He could hear her five-year-old voice, ringing with that strange, solemn gravity. The key wasn’t force. It was pretend. It was acting. The physics of this place weren’t governed by mass and velocity, but by belief and performance.

A new, terrifying thought took shape in his mind. He was on a stage. The Mime was an actor. And four years ago, he had missed his cue.

He took a deep breath, trying to still the frantic tremor in his hands. He couldn’t be the desperate, broken man who had just run here from the park. That man had no power here. He had to be the person who had played in this kingdom, the one who knew its rules. He had to be Sir Leo the Brave again.

He closed his eyes, forcing the image of Lily’s smile—the one from before—into his mind. He pictured her on her throne of sun-warmed concrete, her dandelion crown held high. He wasn’t trying to break into a hostile dimension. He was coming home to their castle.

He walked calmly to the faded chalk line. He stopped. He reached out his hand, not to push, but to find the handle. He curled his fingers around a phantom knob, feeling the imagined cold iron in his palm. He focused all his will, all his memory, all his desperate love for Lily into that single, simple motion. He turned his wrist. He mimed the click of a latch.

He pushed.

And the world gave.

It wasn’t a door swinging open. It was more like pushing his hand into thick, freezing water. The resistance was immense, a heavy, syrupy pressure against his palm and forearm. The air in front of him shimmered violently, the image of the brick wall dissolving into a swirling grey mist. A profound cold seeped into his skin, a chill that had nothing to do with the autumn air.

He stared, breathless, at his hand. It was submerged up to the wrist in a shimmering, unstable field of energy. He could feel the wrongness of the place on the other side, a silent, desolate emptiness that seemed to suck the very warmth and life from him.

He pulled his hand back with a gasp, stumbling away from the portal. His hand was freezing, the skin numb and tingling as if he’d plunged it into a snowbank. He stared at it, then back at the shimmering patch of air, which was already stabilizing, the image of the wall behind it becoming clear again.

It was real.

He hadn't broken through, not completely. But he had touched it. He had found the keyhole. The despair that had been his constant companion for four years was burned away, replaced by a terrifying, exhilarating clarity. The rules were bizarre, the physics were insane, but they were rules nonetheless. And if there were rules, he could learn them. He could master them.

He could break them.

He looked at his tingling hand, a frantic, wild grin spreading across his face. He wasn't a victim anymore. He wasn't grieving. He was studying.