The journal sat open on my lap, pages fluttering as if the words inside were trying to escape. My dorm room was quiet, save for the ticking clock and the low hum of the system still reverberating in my mind.
"Someone else is watching."
I couldn't shake those words. Not even as I curled beneath the blanket or stared up at the ceiling, waiting for sleep that never came.
The next morning, Rin passed me again in the corridor,shoulders squared, eyes blank. It was like she'd rehearsed being a stranger. I watched her disappear into the classroom, heart sinking a little deeper into the hollow part of my chest.
She had to remember something. Even if it was just the weight of my gaze on her.
At lunch, I sat alone. I opened the journal again, skimming pages filled with memories that didn't belong to this life but felt achingly mine.
October 14th.
You said stars don't lie. You looked at me like you knew mine before I was even born. I think I loved you in that moment.
The handwriting was loopy, elegant. Definitely not mine. But I could feel the emotion in it,raw, pure, honest. As if some part of me had written it before this life.
My fingers brushed over the ink, hoping the words would speak louder than the silence Rin offered.
That evening, I passed her outside the library.
"Rin," I said, before I could talk myself out of it.
She paused. Slowly turned.
Her face was unreadable. "Yes?"
There it was again. That cool tone. Like we hadn't once clung to each other beneath falling stars. Like she hadn't handed me that journal just days ago.
"I… just wanted to thank you," I said. "For the book."
A flicker. Barely a twitch in her brow. "Book?"
"The journal you gave me. That day in the garden?"
Silence stretched between us like a fraying wire.
"Again and for the last time i hope. I think you have me confused with someone else," she said.
Then she walked away.
Later that night, I stood at the mirror brushing my teeth, trying to rationalize her coldness. Maybe she really didn't remember. Or maybe… she was pretending not to.
"You must find her before the interference grows,"the system had warned.
But how?
I glanced at my reflection. For a second, it shimmered. My features blurred—two overlapping images, two versions of me. I blinked, and it was gone.
Was I losing it?
No. I knew what I felt.
And the bond between us wasn't gone,it was buried.
The next day, Rin sat in the back row in class. Our professor droned on about interdimensional shifts and quantum anchoring,ironic, given my current life.
Halfway through the lecture, a paper slid onto my desk.
No name. Just two words in neat cursive:
"Don't push."
My chest tightened. I looked back, but Rin didn't meet my gaze.
It was her.
She remembered something.
That night, I found another note in the journal. One I hadn't written.
"They'll erase me again if you're not careful."
I stared at it, blood draining from my face.
Erase?
My fingers trembled as I wrote beneath it: Who?
No reply came.
"Your bond is strong, but fragile," the system whispered later. "It's built across timelines, but each one changes her,shapes her memory. The more you push, the deeper she hides."
"Why only her?" I asked aloud. "Why not me?"
A pause. Then:
"Because you were always the one who remembered first."
I pressed the journal to my chest.
I didn't know how, or why, or *who* wanted us apart,but I knew one thing for sure.
This wasn't the end.
Not in this universe.
Not in any.