The next morning, the world looked… wrong.
Not broken. Not sinister. Just off — like a photograph ever so slightly out of focus. Ruhan noticed it first in the way the news anchor on TV mispronounced a city name. Then in how his bus reached the stop three minutes early when it never did. Or how Diya wore the same yellow scarf she swore she lost two weeks ago — in another life.
All little things. All easy to dismiss.
But to someone who remembered another timeline, they were cracks in the shell.
And Ruhan had begun to see the cracks everywhere.
"You're staring again," Ira said, sliding next to him at lunch.
"I don't think this version of the world was copied right," Ruhan muttered.
Ira raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Like… it's a replica. Close, but not perfect. A shade off."
She paused, then quietly said, "Maybe we're not in the past anymore. Maybe this is a splinter — one made just for us."
Ruhan didn't want to consider that. Didn't want to believe they were in some parallel echo of the life they once had. But everything pointed that way.
Even the school felt different. The staffroom door now had a dent that hadn't existed before. His math teacher wore glasses instead of contacts. Tiny things. But enough.
That evening, they decided to test it.
Ira led him to the old photo room. In the previous life, the door had been locked for years — condemned after a fire. But today? It stood slightly open.
Inside, dust motes danced like restless spirits in the golden light. Broken chairs, an overturned tripod, boxes of negatives, and one thing Ruhan hadn't expected to see:
A photograph pinned to the wall.
Black-and-white. Blurred.
But in it, unmistakably, were two figures standing at a bench.
His throat dried. "That's us."
"I thought so too."
"But this place burned down before we even became friends."
Ira turned toward him, voice low:
"Maybe we're remembering things that haven't happened yet."
They left the room shaken. And something else followed them out — the creeping feeling that this world was watching. That whatever force had let them remember… was now rearranging reality to either contain them, or erase them.
As they crossed the threshold back into the hallway, Ruhan stopped.
"I need to know something."
"Yeah?"
"If I vanish tomorrow," he said, "will you remember me again?"
Ira didn't hesitate.
"I remembered you before I ever met you."
"Try me."
And that was the first time he felt truly terrified — not of dying again, but of never being real to anyone but her.