I woke up to rain. Real rain. Cold, sharp, unfiltered.
The world was loud. Not in sound—but in memory.
It crashed in like a wave breaking inside my skull.
Laughter. Pain. Birthdays. Fights. That one night in the desert under shooting stars. His face.
His name.
Sam.
The moment I remembered it, it felt like someone had turned the sky back on.
Kas didn’t make it.
The overload fried half the tower’s core. She stayed behind, re-routing power so I could get out. Her voice over comms was the last steady thing I had left:
“Don’t waste it. Don’t forget her again.”
She didn’t say who her was. I think it was herself.
The world didn’t shatter when the signal dropped—it fractured.
People staggered into the streets like sleepwalkers after a nightmare. Some screamed. Some collapsed. Some clawed at the air, trying to grab pieces of themselves they didn’t recognize anymore.
I walked through it in silence.
Everyone looked afraid of each other. Of what we might remember.
Of what we might have done.
But I had only one place I wanted to go.
There was a café in the South Quarter. On the edge of the old library district. It used to be ours. The kind of place where the windows fogged up in winter and the coffee tasted like burnt hope.
If he remembered anything, he’d be there.
I found him two days later.
Sitting at our old table. Hair longer. Eyes older. Hands shaking just enough to make the spoon in his coffee clink against the cup.
I didn’t say anything at first. I just sat down.
He looked at me slowly.
And blinked.
“Do I… know you?”
A whisper. Soft. Scared.
I felt my throat close up.
I wanted to lie. Say no. Say I was just someone passing through.
But I didn’t.
“You did,” I said. “You still do. You just forgot.”
His hand moved halfway across the table. Stopped.
And then—
“I dreamed of you last night.”
I smiled. “Tell me about it.”
The world is waking up, one dream at a time.
And maybe that's enough for now.
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