The Year I Stopped Being His novel Chapter 422

In the sushi restaurant off-campus.

Ever since Piper found out Sloane had been in a coma for a decade, she had been possessed by an overwhelming, protective mission to 'feed the poor, suffering girl.'

She pushed her own eel bowl aside, rolled up her sleeves, snapped on a pair of plastic gloves, and aggressively started peeling shrimp.

One, two, three—she moved with terrifying efficiency, removing the veins and tails before meticulously stacking them onto a small plate in front of Sloane until it looked like a small mountain of seafood.

"Eat up! You need the protein!"

She nudged the plate closer, her eyes practically sparkling with the pride of a golden retriever showing off a stick.

"So wait, if you were asleep for ten years... doesn't that make you thirty-one? But..."

She ripped the gloves off, resting her chin in her hands as she aggressively scanned Sloane from head to toe, looking more baffled by the second.

"You don't look it at all! Your skin, your figure—you look exactly my age! You look twenty-one! Okay, seriously, tell me right now, what kind of anti-aging witchcraft are you hiding?"

Sloane: ...

Overwhelmed by the aggressive compliments, she quickly shoved a piece of shrimp into her mouth, mumbling, "I used to be a competitive swimmer, so I was really strict about my fitness."

She swallowed, looking down at her hands. They were still slender, but they had lost the defined, athletic strength they once had. Her voice remained calm, though a thread of disappointment bled through. "When I woke up and the nurse told me ten years had passed, I didn't believe it either. But when I looked in the mirror, I could tell I'd changed... The weird part is, mentally, I still feel twenty-one."

Outwardly, he was the picture of perfect calm. Neither Piper nor Sloane noticed anything off about him, but internally?

His heart was hammering violently against his ribs. Thump. Thump. It felt like a wild animal that had been locked in a cage for years and finally saw an open door.

He had pieced the puzzle together.

Garrison Foster must have hidden her away after the incident in Antarctica.

Sloane thought she was in a coma for ten years, but it had only been five years since the expedition. That meant she hadn't been asleep for ten years—only five.

The tumor had compressed her brain, wiping out her memories from the age of twenty-one right up until she fell into the coma.