The asylum: Patient 5 notes

I originally left notes in the asylum for the patient's five-story line. I am unsure if they have ever been found. I don't remember how much of what I wrote made it on the two pages because there was a cut-off limit. 

Tea Sweet was known not by name but by silence. While others clanged through corridors like broken bells, Tea drifted like steam, soft, barely seen, never heard. She wasn’t forgotten exactly. The staff said she was “temperamentally silent,” a label pinned like a moth to her file. But the silence was her sanctuary. 

Words had betrayed her before—they were too sharp, too loud, too often rearranged without permission. Tea lived in the attic wing, in a room with cracked porcelain tiles and one window glazed with ivy. She brewed invisible cups of comfort from scraps: a shard of lavender soap, rainwater from the gutter, warmth stolen from forgotten laundry. The ritual was sacred: stir once for memory, twice for mercy, and sip slowly so the ghosts wouldn’t jolt. 

The asylum itself had moods. Floors groaned without pressure. Paint peeled in shapes that whispered names. Tea listened. That was her gift—sensing what others avoided. She wasn't lonely. She had silence. And silence, in the asylum, was louder than anyone realized.

Tea spoke once, when she was five. Just one word: "Stay." She said it to a bird trapped behind a cracked attic window. It left anyway. She stopped speaking after that.

She was diagnosed with “a sensitivity to overstimulation,” which meant she could hear arguments muffled behind walls, feel the sorrow etched into wallpaper patterns, and taste the metallic swirl of distant grief. Her school called her a distraction; her parents called her “peculiar.” Eventually, when their silence outweighed hers, they faded from her life entirely. 

The asylum accepted her without ceremony. She was placed in the "Observation Ward for Low Impact Cases." Staff noticed she didn’t cause trouble. She didn’t scream, bite, or break things. She just brewed her phantom tea, stared at dust motes like they were old friends, and knew instinctively which rooms were safest during storms.

She became part of the asylum's rhythm. One nurse swore that her presence kept the hallway clocks synchronized. Another believed that mold retreated from her footsteps. Tea was never confirmed or denied. She simply existed—like the hush before snow.