There was no grand stage.
No dramatic spotlight.
No flash photography.
Just a cramped bookstore on a rainy Tuesday, the kind of day that smelled like old paper and new beginnings.
Anne Seong sat behind a table with a sharpie, a crooked nameplate, and a stack of freshly printed books.
On the cover:
A girl with long wavy hair.
A cracked garden path.
And a single black ant walking toward a crooked flowerpot.
The title?
I Told You Not to Fall for Me
By Anne Seong (with emotional damage co-sponsored by Javier Park)
She signed the 11th copy with a tired but satisfied smirk.
"Next," she called out.
The girl in line looked about nineteen. Oversized hoodie. Nervous fingers. Hope in her eyes like it was a foreign language she was still learning to speak.
"I just finished your book," the girl whispered. "I… think I remembered things I forgot I was allowed to feel."
Anne paused.
Then smiled.
"Yeah. That tends to happen when people read about my love life. Trauma and sarcasm—nature's deadliest combo."
The girl laughed. "But seriously, how much of it was real?"
Anne leaned forward and signed the book with a flourish.
Then tapped the ant on the cover with her pen.
"Let's just say... memory's a weird place. But the ant was definitely real."
The girl blinked. "What?"
Anne winked. "Ask Javier. He's somewhere between the cookie aisle and the existential crisis shelf."
Just then, the bell over the bookstore door jingled.
Javier walked in with a coffee in one hand and a suspicious amount of snacks in the other.
He spotted Anne, raised his brow. "You tell them the ant story again?"
Anne grinned. "I told them not to fall for me."
Javier plopped down beside her and muttered, "Yeah, and look where that got us. A book deal and a joint therapy subscription."
She nudged him. "Still better than dying inside a corrupted memory network."
"True. At least now I get snacks."
They sat in silence for a moment, watching the people move through the store, some holding her book, some holding hands, all of them quietly orbiting their own small universes.
Anne turned to him.
"You really did fall for me, huh?"
Javier sipped his coffee. "Technically, I fell into your neural trauma simulation first."
"Romantic."
"Runs in the family."
She laughed. Not because the joke was good—it really wasn't—but because it was theirs. Every memory. Every scar. Every glitch. All of it, real and rewritten in the only way that mattered:
> Together.
And somewhere outside that little bookstore, beneath a tree growing in a stubborn crack of the city sidewalk—
> An ant walked its path.
Still moving.
Still remembering.
Still proving that love, no matter how fractured or forgotten, always finds a way back.
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THE END