K-City. Why am I back here?Of everything that has ever happened to me, this place—this time—was the only good thing I ever knew.
I thought I was holding his hand. I could almost feel the phantom warmth of his palm against mine.
"Where are you?"
I called out, my voice thick with desperation. I called for him again and again, my eyes searching the emptiness, but he was nowhere to be found. He wouldn't respond. He wouldn't come for me.I stopped, my breath catching as I surveyed my surroundings.
"This is my apartment,"
"I used to live here with my best friend and her sisters."
I had prepared myself to relive a traumatic memory, but I hadn't expected this. I hadn't expected to be thrust back into the one year of my life that felt more like a lifetime than all the others combined.
Questions swarmed my mind like a hive of disturbed bees.
Why am I alone?
Where is my best friend?
Where are her sisters?
I tried to move, but my limbs felt as though they were fused to something solid. My body refused to listen. It was a prison of flesh and bone. Then, a voice echoed from deep within me—not a sound, but a certainty.
"You cannot move by your own will. This is your body, yet it is not yours. This is your memory... remember? This is Elena from the past. You are here only to witness. You cannot move, nor can you speak with your own voice. Stay with me, Elena. I am within you, and you are within your own past.
"What did that even mean?
Panic flared in my chest, and I felt the phantom sting of tears I couldn't wipe away. I fought against the paralysis, struggling to scream, to bolt, to do anything—but the body remained still. It sat there, frozen in a moment I had already lived.
What was I doing back then?
Why was I just sitting here?
The questions remained, unanswered and haunting.