The moon spilled silver light across the wooden floor of Koyi's room. Everything looked softer in the dark — the framed photos on her wall, the notebooks stacked like secrets on her desk, even the letter, now lying folded in her lap. She'd read it five times, and it still hadn't changed. Or maybe she had.
She leaned her back against the wall beside her bed, hugging her knees to her chest. "Why now?" she whispered into the quiet. "Why me?"
The letter had come like a whisper from a world that wasn't supposed to exist — a world of impossibilities. A letter from tomorrow.
As the minutes crept past midnight, the walls of her room felt less like boundaries and more like gentle arms. The soft ticking of her clock was the only sound, and yet her heart beat louder.
She stood. Restless. Drawn by an invisible thread. Her fingers trailed along the edge of her bookshelf — a place she hadn't touched in months. The dust on the covers didn't stop her. Something pulled her toward a worn, navy-blue spine: Moments Before Dawn — a book her father had given her when she turned ten. He had written something on the inside cover, though she barely remembered it.
She opened the book.
And there it was.
Tucked between the last pages was another envelope. Smaller. More fragile. A little yellow with age. Her fingers trembled as she pulled it out, a gasp catching in her throat. This one had no name. Just a silver wax seal, cracked at the edges.
She didn't hesitate.
She broke the seal and unfolded the parchment.
---
**"Koyi,
This isn't the first time you've stood here — though it may feel like it. Memory can be a cruel keeper of truth.
You're not losing your mind. You're awakening.
Go to the place where time once stopped for you. The place where you cried your first goodbye. What waits there isn't just a memory — it's a piece of your beginning.
Come before the sun touches the hill.
– A Friend from the Edge of Time."**
---
Her breath hitched.
Goosebumps prickled her skin. "The place where time once stopped…"
Only one place came to mind.
The old train station.
It had been shut down for years, overgrown with weeds and ivy. Her father had taken her there before he died. That was the last day they'd shared before the sickness took him.
She'd never returned.
Koyi gripped the letter. She felt the floor beneath her shift — not literally, but emotionally, spiritually. Like the universe had nudged her.
This wasn't random.
Two letters. Two voices. Two days.
Who was sending them? How were they arriving?
She didn't know. But she was done waiting for answers to find her. She was going to find them herself.
---
☁️ Scene Change: Early Morning — Just Before Dawn
Wrapped in her jacket and scarf, Koyi stepped out into the early morning mist. The town was still asleep. No cars, no footsteps, just the hush of leaves and the soft wind pressing against her cheeks.
She took the long road, past the bakery, past the park swings that still creaked when the wind was strong. She didn't need directions. Her feet remembered what her mind had buried.
The train station stood like a forgotten monument — ivy crawling over its brick face, windows smudged with dirt and memory.
She stepped through the rusted gate. The silence inside was heavier here.
Then she saw it.
A single white rose. Lying on the bench where she and her father once sat.
Attached to the rose was a third letter.
---
**"You came.
Grief does not make you weak, Koyi. It makes you human.
What your father left behind wasn't just love — it was a key.
Look beneath the bench.
There, you'll find your next beginning."**
---
With trembling fingers, she reached under the bench. Her fingertips brushed something cold — a small wooden box, locked shut with a heart-shaped clasp.
She sat slowly, the rose in her lap, the box in her hands. The weight of it made her chest ache.
It smelled like cedarwood and old pages.
There was a folded note beneath the clasp.
---
"When you're ready to remember,
open me."
---
She didn't open it. Not yet.
Her eyes welled with tears as she looked around the station. Morning light had begun to bleed across the sky, casting gold across the tracks that led to nowhere.
She hadn't just come for answers — she'd come home to a memory. To a version of herself she'd locked away.
The letters weren't random.
They were breadcrumbs.
Leading her back… or maybe forward.
---
☀️ Scene Change: Later That Morning — Back in Her Room
Koyi stared at the box resting on her desk. The sunlight touched its edges gently, almost reverently.
She didn't know who the friend from "the edge of time" was. She didn't know what she'd find next. But something told her — this wasn't the end of the mystery.
It was only the beginning.
She sat beside the box and reached for her pen, writing in her journal:
"There's a thread connecting the impossible to the forgotten. I think I'm following it now. And for once, I'm not afraid."