Akash no longer trusted the feeling of "first time."
Every morning in the newborn universe claimed freshness, yet something in him resisted that claim. The sky looked newly painted, but the colors felt remembered. People spoke as if discovering thoughts, but their words landed like echoes.
He began keeping track of small things. How many times the sun hesitated before rising. How often a stranger's sentence ended exactly where Akash expected it to. Patterns appeared, delicate but undeniable.
His third eye reacted to familiarity. A dull pressure, not pain—recognition. It pulsed whenever someone insisted the world was original. That insistence itself felt rehearsed.
One afternoon, while watching children play on a planet made from laughter, Akash realized the most unsettling truth: joy repeated too perfectly. Even happiness had grooves.
He asked an old storyteller if stories ever ended here.
The storyteller smiled. "They conclude."
That answer bothered him. Ending and concluding were not the same.
That night, Akash dreamed of a book with no page numbers. Every time he turned a page, he found himself reading a passage he half-remembered, written in a handwriting that looked disturbingly close to his own.
When he woke, the dream did not fade.
It stayed, like a watermark beneath reality.
And for the first time, Akash wondered if forgetting was not a failure of memory—but a requirement.