"Have you ever tried writing something down?" he asked.
The girl looked at him across the room. She was sitting on the desk now, legs crossed, hands folded. Still. Distant. A fixture of the white.
He stood by the far wall, where a crack in the surface pulsed with faint light. A window, but not quite. It had no frame. No ledge. Just an opening that felt like a cut in the world.
"Writing?" she echoed.
He nodded. "A message. Something I could carry with me. Something that… might come back. If I forget."
Her eyes didn't move from his.
"You'll forget you wrote it," she said gently.
"Maybe. But if the letter stays—"
"You won't trust it."
He flinched at how quickly she said it.
"I don't need to trust it," he said, quieter now. "I just need to know something made it through."
He crossed the room.
There was a pen beside the desk. There hadn't been before.
He didn't question it.
The paper was yellowed. Slightly torn at the corner.
He bent down, rested one knee on the ground, and began to write.
My name is—He stopped.He didn't know.
He tried again.
If you're reading this, you've already forgotten why.But you wrote this. You. Remember that.
His handwriting trembled.
Look for the girl. She knows something.Look for the tree.Look for the key.Don't stay too long in any room. They forget you back.
He underlined the last part twice.
Then he folded the page and placed it on the desk.
The girl was still watching.
He turned toward the window.
It wasn't open.
It wasn't closed.
It just… was.
A seam between stories.
A place outside the page.
He stepped toward it.
The girl stood suddenly. "You don't have to go like this."
He didn't look back. "I think I do."
The light beyond the window pulsed. Soft, and then sharp.
"I just want it to make it through," he whispered.
And then he jumped.