Morning came wrong.
The sunlight didn't spill through the dorm windows — it leaked, like light behind a torn curtain. Dust floated too slowly, as if time had thickened overnight.
He blinked. His body ached. His lip was split, cheek swollen, ribs tight with every breath. But when he touched his skin, there was nothing — no bruise, no blood. Just smooth, unbroken flesh.
The mirror above the sink reflected a face that looked rested. Too rested.
He gripped the edge of the basin.
> "No…"
He remembered the fight. The pain. The blood on the stairs. The way the Silent One had watched him after, wordless, like he had seen a ghost claw its way out of a grave.
But now — it was gone.
Everything was gone.
---
The bell rang for morning assembly.
He stepped into the corridor, his heart hammering. The same smell of chalk and old wood. The same posters curling off the walls. The same footsteps echoing in rhythm — the sound of a day repeating itself.
And there they were.
The three boys, at the far end of the hall. Laughing. Whispering. Their faces untouched, like the night before never happened.
His chest tightened.
> "No, no, no, this isn't right," he muttered.
But as he passed, one of them glanced at him — and smirked.
> "Morning, writer boy."
The same line. The exact same tone.
Like a script.
His hand trembled. He wanted to shout, to demand what was happening — but the words stuck. The world around him felt like glass, and he was afraid to breathe too hard, in case it shattered completely.
---
Classes passed like static.
The teacher's words looped — the same phrases, the same chalk squeaks.
His notebook lay open before him, blank. No matter how hard he pressed the pen, no ink came out. The page simply reset, pure and white.
By lunch, he felt dizzy. The sound of spoons clinking, laughter echoing — it all warped, bending inward, like echoes trapped inside his skull.
And then he saw him.
The Silent One, sitting alone at the corner table, untouched by the noise.
Eyes still dark, still unblinking. Watching him. Again.
He walked over, the tray trembling in his hands.
> "You remember it, don't you?" the MC whispered.
"The fight. Last night. You saw it."
The Silent One said nothing. But a faint twitch crossed his jaw — the smallest flicker of recognition.
That was enough.
> "It happened," the MC said, voice breaking. "I fought them. I changed it. So why… why is it all the same again?"
A pause. Then the Silent One lifted his head slightly, eyes meeting his — and whispered, voice barely audible:
> "Because you weren't supposed to."
---
The cafeteria lights flickered. The air shimmered, like heat rising from asphalt.
He stumbled back, clutching the table. His tray fell, clattering — but the sound didn't echo. It simply stopped.
The world froze. Every student mid-motion. Every blink suspended.
He was the only one moving.
His breath rasped. The Silent One stood up slowly, movements smooth, deliberate — as if he existed on a different layer of reality.
> "You broke the memory," the Silent One said. "And now it's fixing itself."
> "Fixing?"
"Resetting."
He felt the ground shift beneath his feet. The walls stretched, twisted. Voices reversed, like a tape rewinding.
> "What happens if it resets?"
"You forget."
The words landed like a blade.
> "Forget what?"
"That you ever fought back."
---
He screamed — a sound swallowed by collapsing time. The air split, light bleeding through the cracks. Everything warped and folded inward until he was standing once again at the bottom of the staircase.
The bell rang.
The footsteps came.
The same three boys.
> "Oi, writer boy."
He didn't move. Couldn't. His limbs were lead. His mind buzzed with a static that erased thought.
The shove came. The fall. The silence.
And as his notebook hit the floor, he caught a glimpse of something written on the final page — a sentence that hadn't been there before:
> Break it again.
Then the page turned white.
---
That night, as the reset took hold, the Silent One watched him from across the dorm — expression unreadable.
And somewhere in the distance, beneath the looping layers of time, the walls whispered —
> The memory is learning too.