Curate, connect, and discover
Content Warning: This chapter contains mentions of death, health-related distress (migraines/passing out), themes of isolation, and discussions about mortality. Reader discretion is advised.
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I woke to the sterile scent of bleach and the muted hum of fluorescent lights, the weight of my own skull pressing down like stone. My limbs felt waterlogged, heavy as if the bed beneath me was slowly pulling me into its core.
Hanari's voice reached me before my vision fully returned, muffled and sharp at the edges, her tone caught somewhere between anger and fear. "You should've told me."
I blinked against the ceiling, pale and cracked, a spiderweb fissure directly above me that seemed to throb in time with my pulse. "Are you done moping?" My voice came out raspier than expected, irritation curling through my words—not because I was angry at her, but because I needed something to feel other than dread.
Hanari folded her arms, her posture defensive, but her eyes too wide, too soft. The mask didn't fit today. "Dramatic sigh" barely covered the shaky breath she let out as her shoulders rose and fell. "You're such a dick."
The glass door creaked open, and Ms. Renée stepped inside, her reflection warping in the glass like something unreal. The setting sun behind her fractured into shards of light, cutting her figure into pieces. In her hand was a mug—coffee, dark and bitter from the scent that followed her in.
"I'm glad to see you awake," she said, but her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "How are you feeling?"
"Headache's gone..." I answered, but the relief felt fake. "What did you do?"
Her face flickered with something unreadable before she folded her arms, considering her words too carefully. "Focus on resting first. Your health comes first."
"Don't patronize me. I want answers." The words ripped out of me before I could soften them, sharp and uneven. Something burned inside my chest, a simmering panic I couldn't name.
Renée sighed, long and tired. "Kids these days. Always so hungry for ruin."
Beside me, Hanari leaned in, whispering through a half-smirk, "You're stubborn too."
"Listen closely." Renée's voice lowered into something quieter, colder, like she was telling us a ghost story we were already trapped inside. "Hanari, when you found Hagarin, I mentioned the headaches. They aren't migraines. They're symptoms."
"Symptoms of what?" Hanari's voice broke slightly. The cracks were showing.
"Time travel."
The word alone made my stomach twist. Time was no longer a concept or a lesson or even a power. It was inside me. A disease eating through the walls of my skull.
"The headaches, the blackouts, the visions—they're your brain trying to reconcile past, present, and future all at once. Your mind wasn't made to hold infinity." Renée paused, letting the silence soak in. "If you don't learn control, time itself will drown you."
That's when the word hit me like a knife to the chest: Death.
It was no longer a distant concept. It was here, sitting beside me, breathing on my neck. I had always wondered—would it be a void? Would it hurt? Would I even notice when I crossed the line between existing and not?
My head spun, nausea curling deep inside me.
"Can you..." My voice barely worked. "Can you explain what happens? From experience?"
Renée's smile was brittle. "Of course."
She leaned back, eyes drifting to the ceiling, where memories seemed to stain the tiles like watermarks.
"The visions never stop. Past, future, alternate versions of now—they whisper constantly. You'll hear things that haven't happened yet and things that already did but differently. You'll see your own death a thousand times over in a hundred different ways. Your brain will try to split itself into pieces just to make room." Her fingers traced the edge of her chair like she was touching a grave marker.
"When I first realized what I was, my parents locked me in a room for months. I was dangerous, even to myself. They thought isolation would save me—but it just made me a prison of my own mind."
I could see her now, a younger version, curled up in a corner, knuckles white, vision flickering between every timeline where she lived, died, ran, stayed. A thousand lifetimes trapped inside one skull.
"So how did you survive?" My voice sounded small. Fragile.
"I ran." She didn't sugarcoat it. "I ran until I couldn't hear them screaming my name anymore."
Hanari and I exchanged a glance, that unspoken what the hell? hanging between us.
"It's survival," Renée said with a shrug. "Messy, desperate, survival."
Golden light sliced across her face, painting her like a portrait half-burned at the edges.
"I was thirteen when I learned to lock most of it away. I got into this school. They transferred me to the time traveler department, and I stayed hidden there until I understood how to breathe without choking on centuries."
She stood abruptly, shaking off the weight of her own story. "Anyway, I run a library five blocks from here. Visit sometime."
"Will you actually be there?" I asked, half hopeful.
Her smile was half a ghost. "No. I'm a history teacher, not a prophet."
She left before I could answer, the door swinging shut behind her.
Hanari's shoulder pressed into mine, warm and real in the empty room. "Woah...quite the announcement."
I stared at the tiled floor, letting the information sink in like water through cracks. "Yeah."
"It'll be fun," Hanari said, too bright, too forced. "You'll have a hell of a story to tell."
"Consent would've been nice," I muttered. "Ms. Renée never even asked."
"Maybe the admins will do an official talk. They have to, right?"
I didn't answer.
"Have you decided?" Her voice softened.
I stared at my hands, at the faint tremble I couldn't hide. "Dunno."
Hanari leaned her head against my shoulder. "You have a death wish."
The words should've been funny, but they weren't.
We sat there, shoulder to shoulder, while the room darkened around us. Just two silhouettes against the fading light, floating somewhere between fate and fear.
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The air inside the counselor's office clung to my skin like cold sweat. The silence had weight—like the room itself knew secrets it couldn't say aloud. The printer groaned in the corner, coughing up a consent form, each page landing like a death sentence.
"You're early," Maria Tess said, voice mildly surprised. "I haven't even prepped the files yet."
I glanced at her nameplate, gold edges catching the flickering fluorescent light: Maria Tess. Funny how official names always felt like gravestones.
"Wanted to get this over with," I said. "So I can sleep after."
"Even Ms. Renée isn't here yet. Relax."
Relax. In a room where my fate hung from a single sheet of paper.
The doorbell chimed, and Ms. Renée stepped inside, her coffee steaming, her smile distant. Maria Tess handed me the form, paper still warm, ink still drying.
"We're all aware of your situation," Maria Tess began, words too rehearsed. "When students discover dangerous powers, we relocate them. For safety. For survival."
Time travelers didn't get to choose. Time itself chose them, and all they could do was keep breathing until it didn't want them anymore.
"Without control," she said, "your mind will fracture under the weight of the past and future. And it will kill you."
The word wasn't metaphorical. It was bone-deep, absolute.
"Sign here."
"This is how you stay alive." "Hagarin." Ms. Renée's voice cut cleanly through the silence, slicing apart the fog of my thoughts. "This will benefit you — if you want to keep living."Maybe I needed that bluntness. A reminder that this wasn't just a choice between two doors, but between survival and collapse.
I blinked, my gaze still locked on the consent form. My hand hovered near the pen, fingers curling and uncurling like they couldn't decide if they belonged to me.
"...Would this damage me financially?" The question tumbled out before I could think it through, my voice quieter than I meant."Not at all," Ms. Tess replied, her tone brisk and assured — at the exact same moment Ms. Renée answered too, her voice overlapping in a soft echo. For some reason, that made me smile. Just a little.
I exhaled slowly, letting the air drag out all my hesitations with it.
"Alright."
The pen felt heavier than it should as I picked it up. With each stroke of ink, the page drank my consent, sealing my fate in writing.My name rested there, small and sharp in the sea of legal language, and though my heart felt like it was trying to claw its way out of my chest, the signature was already drying.
It was done.
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1,512 words.
Hi guys, I plan to write more than 1k words. Every chapter gets worse and worse, hang in there, Hagarin will be insane soon.
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