The air around us still hummed with his last sentence, a lingering mystery I couldn't shake.
The one piece that doesn't fit your puzzle. But the one you need to finish it. The words replayed in my mind, not as a threat, but as a promise.
He had spoken so simply, yet in doing so, he had already shattered my world. My heart pounded with a new, insistent rhythm—the beat of a life I could not remember, a pulse that felt more real than anything I had known before. In that one conversation, he had already changed everything.
He finally turned to me, a gentle smile back on his face. "We should probably get going before the line gets too long," he said, his voice easy and calm, as if he hadn't just handed me the key to my own soul.
I managed a single nod, my mind still reeling. I rose to my feet, my muscles feeling strangely heavy, as if my body were a puppet and my mind had cut the strings. I pulled away, a conscious effort to restore the physical distance my mind desperately craved. But my body, that traitor, had other plans. With a will of its own, it slowed my pace, allowing my shoulder to brush against his again as we walked, a ghost of a touch that sent a familiar jolt up my arm. It was a warmth I knew from a memory I didn't possess, a comfort that felt as old and as deep as the earth itself. The walls I had so carefully built were crumbling, and I had no idea how to stop it.
My thoughts were a frantic storm. How can I act normal? How do I pretend this didn't happen when my own body is betraying me? A part of me screamed for a return to the predictable quiet of my old routine. But there was a new truth now, an unexplainable pull I couldn't deny. It wasn't a sudden romantic spark, but a profound feeling of knowing a complete stranger. It was a terrifying feeling of coming home to a place I had never been.
I glanced at the students ahead, their laughter and casual chatter feeling a million miles away. They were just kids, living in a world of simple puzzles. My puzzle, it seemed, had just been turned on its head, and I was holding the missing piece. It was him, this quiet boy walking silently beside me. And I was terrified.
The final stretch of hallway leading to the dining hall was a blur of noise and color. I spotted my own friends in the distant queue of students from my class, 10-A, a familiar oasis in the chaos. As we reached the entrance, he slowed, allowing me to take the lead. He gave me a single, quiet nod, a silent message that said, Go. I'm here.
I walked toward my friends, my legs feeling heavy and my movements uncoordinated. As I did, I saw him turn and walk toward a different group of students, with June, his boisterous energy a beacon for his friends.
My friends greeted me with casual chatter, talking about their group earlier and planning what to do for the rest of the day. Their world was a world of simple truths and easy answers.
"Where have you been, Vye? We thought you got lost," one of my friends asked, her voice light and teasing.
"I guess I got a little lost," I said, the words a lie and a painful truth all at once. I continued without any interest to explain much.
The routine of getting a meal was a blur I barely registered. I sat down at our usual table, tucked into the quiet shadow of a pillar, surrounded by the familiar hum of conversation. I tried to force myself to listen, to engage, to be the girl they expected me to be. "Are we... still planning on trying to join the literature club?" I asked, my voice sounding strained even to my own ears.
My friends looked at me, their smiles faltering for a moment. "Yeah, but you told us before this morning you were having second thoughts. You said you might try the photography club instead," my other friend replied, a hint of confusion in her tone.
I stared at her, a blank space where a memory should have been. I had no recollection of making that decision, of having a conversation about photography. The girl who was supposed to be me just this morning felt like a complete stranger. The noise of the dining hall became a dull, buzzing drone. I was a ghost at my own table, listening to conversations I couldn't connect with. I found myself trying to reconstruct my old self, to find the girl who would have been fully present, laughing along with them. But she was gone, lost somewhere in the park with a boy I couldn't place.
My eyes, however, kept drifting to a distant table in the center on the far side of the hall. He was sitting there with his friends, a book in his hands, separate from the rest of the group. He never looked up. He never glanced in my direction. But I felt his presence as keenly as if he were sitting right next to me. I found myself trying to categorize him, to put him in a mental box I could understand. Was he a stranger? That was the biggest lie of all. Was he a friend? Yes, my body and soul screamed the word with a profound, unearned certainty, even though my mind had no record of him.
I even tried to search for a single, logical reason for our connection. I combed through my memories of the past school year, of the names on my class roster, of the faces in the hallways. I searched for a single moment, a shared class, a passing glance that could explain the profound, bone-deep certainty that he was not a stranger. But the timeline was a blank slate. He simply wasn't there.
The life I had built on logic was now turning to dust, and the only thing I could think of was the quiet, confident boy who had casually walked in and started picking up the pieces. My old peace was gone forever, replaced by a profound and unsettling hum. It was the sound of a new, frightening kind of melody, a song I didn't know the words to, but one my soul had already started to sing.