It almost always rained on the days he remembered her.
The memory wasn't always voluntary — in fact, it almost never was. But it came. Like a silent notification in the mind. Like a scent that fills the air, even when nothing is there.
The end of the relationship wasn't dramatic. There were no shouting matches. No betrayals. No one slamming the door or swearing they'd never return.
There was only an "I can't do this anymore," and then silence.
And that silence stayed with him.
Living had become an automatic mechanism.
Get out of bed, black coffee, bathroom, any clothes, and off to work — a place where no one asked too many questions, where he could pretend he existed.
But his mind...
Ah, his mind was too loud.
Every morning, before leaving, he'd sit for five minutes at the edge of the bed. That's when the guilt settled in the strongest.
— Maybe I was too cold.
— Maybe I didn't listen enough.
— Maybe... maybe...
It was an internal litany repeated with surgical precision. Part of the ritual. Almost a prayer.
Except instead of asking for something, he punished himself.
Guilt had become the most familiar pillow of his nights.
He spoke to no one about it.
Because no one knew how he truly felt.
It wasn't easy to explain that he didn't want to "move on." He wanted to understand.
He wanted to find the exact moment when everything started to fall apart.
As if it were possible to go back and stop the first crack.
Then, on what seemed like a regular morning, he woke up somewhere else.
But not a strange place. Not just any dream.
It was exactly the place where he had met her for the first time.
The same late afternoon light. The same muffled sound of the city in the distance. The same wooden bench with chipped paint on the right armrest.
And for a moment, he thought:
"I died."
But it wasn't death. It was something else.
A second chance? A cruel trick of a tired mind?
Before he could stand up, a figure appeared in front of him.
It was like a stain in the air. It had no face. No body.
But he felt it watching him.
The entity — if that's what it could be called — spoke without a mouth, but with a voice he heard deep in his skull.
— You're in your past. You may live it however you like, but nothing will change.
— What do you mean? — he asked, confused, trying to stand.
— When that day ends, you will return to your life.
— But why? Why am I here?
— There is no why. And there will be no answers.
— Is this punishment?
Silence.
The entity vanished as if it had never existed.
And he was left there. Alone on the most important day of his life. The day it all began.
A strange chill ran through him — not from the weather, but from awareness.
He would have to relive it all.
And for the first time in a long while, he wanted to do things differently.