Loop 31 – 11:07 p.m.
The studio was the only place in Bangkok that still kept a working 24-track analog tape machine. Lingling had the keys because she was the only engineer who still knew how to thread it without swearing. Tonight she had bribed the night guard with two bottles of Leo beer and a promise that they would be gone before sunrise.
The three of them slipped inside like teenagers breaking into an abandoned temple.
The control room smelled of warm capacitors, old carpet, and the ghost of every song ever recorded there. The VU meters glowed soft orange, the only light they allowed themselves. Outside the glass, the live room was dark except for the red EXIT sign that painted everything the colour of a developing darkroom.
Lingling locked the door behind them and leaned against it.
"Welcome to my real home," she said, voice low, almost shy.
Orm spun in a slow circle, arms out, sunflower dress flaring. "It's like being inside a giant Walkman."
Miu lifted her Super 8 to her eye, filming the way the orange light caught in Orm's hair. "Permission?" she asked.
"Always," Orm answered.
Lingling watched them and felt the tape in her pocket stay cool for once. The curse seemed to respect sacred spaces.
They had come here for one reason: to record something that would survive the next reset.
Not voices. Not music. The sound of them existing together.
Lingling sat at the console and patched the most sensitive condenser mics she owned (Neumann U87s that cost more than most people's motorbikes) into the quietest pre-amps. She rolled the input gain until the meters barely flickered.
"Lie down on the couch," she told them. "Don't talk. Just breathe."
Orm and Miu obeyed, curling together on the long leather couch that had cradled drunk musicians and crying singers for thirty years. Orm tucked herself under Miu's arm, head on Miu's chest, one hand reaching back to find Lingling's ankle.
Lingling dimmed the lights until only the meters glowed, then lay on the floor beside the couch, cheek against Orm's dangling fingers.
Silence. Not the absence of sound; the presence of everything.
The room's air-conditioner hummed at 63 Hz. The tape reels turned with a soft mechanical sigh. Three separate heartbeats slowly found the same tempo.
Lingling closed her eyes and listened the way only a sound engineer can: separating layers, hearing the rustle of Orm's dress when she shifted, the tiny click in-breath Miu made every time Orm's thumb stroked her collarbone, the wet click of someone swallowing nerves.
After twenty minutes the breathing synchronised completely.
Lingling opened her eyes and mouthed: Ready?
Orm and Miu nodded.
Lingling reached up without looking and pressed RECORD.
For the next forty-three remaining minutes of the reel, none of them moved.
They just breathed.
In, out. In, out. Three sets of lungs learning how to be one organism.
At 12:17 a.m. the tape ran out with a soft clack. Lingling let it keep spinning on leader for another thirty seconds, capturing the silence after the breathing, the way love sounds when it doesn't need words.
She pressed STOP, rewound, and played it back through the massive monitors at whisper volume.
The room filled with the soft rush of their own lungs, the tiny creak of leather, the almost subsonic thump of three hearts refusing to be separate.
Orm started crying first, quiet, happy tears that soaked Miu's shirt.
Miu's hand found Lingling's hair, fingers threading through it like she was afraid Lingling might vanish if she let go.
Lingling crawled up onto the couch, fitting herself behind Orm so the three of them formed a tangled comma on the leather. She buried her face in Orm's neck and inhaled coconut shampoo and warm skin.
They stayed like that until the EXIT sign felt too bright.
Orm whispered into the dark, "If we escape tomorrow, this tape comes with us, right?"
"It's the first thing I'm saving," Lingling promised.
Miu's voice was thick. "I want to fall asleep to it every night for the rest of my life."
They dozed, uncomfortable and perfect, limbs numb, hearts loud.
At 3:42 a.m. Orm woke with a small gasp.
"The tape," she said. "In my pocket. It's warm."
They sat up slowly.
Orm pulled out her cassette. The plastic shell was hot to the touch, label beginning to bubble.
Miu's followed seconds later.
Lingling's stayed cool.
"That's new," Lingling said, fear sharp in her throat.
Miu stared at the two warming tapes. "It knows we're getting close. It's trying to separate us again."
Orm's eyes filled. "I'm not letting it."
She stood, walked to the tape machine, and without asking permission threaded her own cursed cassette into the 2-inch reel deck like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"What are you doing?" Lingling asked.
"Giving it something louder than fear."
Orm pressed RECORD on the master machine.
The cursed cassette began to play through the monitors (hiss, then the old voices: Orm's laugh, Lingling's "Drive safe, little one).
Orm leaned into the talk-back mic and spoke over both of them, voice steady and fierce.
"Listen carefully, you stupid curse. These are our wives. We are keeping them. You don't get to burn anything anymore."
She pressed STOP, rewound the 2-inch tape, and played the new recording back.
Her declaration sat on top of the old voices like a shield.
The plastic cassettes cooled instantly.
Miu laughed once, shocked and wet. "Did you just… tell off a time loop?"
"Worked, didn't it?" Orm said, chin high, but her hands were shaking.
Lingling pulled her back down into the tangle. "Remind me never to make you angry."
They laughed until they cried again, the way only people standing on the edge of forever can.
At 5:11 a.m. the sky outside the studio window began to pale.
They had one loop left after this one.
Lingling kissed Orm's temple, then Miu's. "Let's go watch our last trapped sunrise."
They left the master tape spinning leader, the breathing track looping endlessly in the dark studio, a heartbeat the building would keep even after they were gone.
As they walked out into the pre-dawn humidity, Miu lifted the Super 8 and filmed them from behind: three silhouettes against the coming light, holding hands, unafraid.
The red tally light blinked once, twice, then stayed steady.
In the distance, thunder rolled (not weather, but tomorrow trying to scare them.
They didn't flinch.
They had the sound of each other's breathing now.
It was louder than any storm.