The city had changed.
But the seasons in her heart had not.
Spring laughter spilled from children racing down cobbled alleys. The air was warm, fragrant with lilacs, and the calls of merchants rose like overlapping hymns.
A younger girl might have smiled at such brightness, but she walked through it all as if striding through a dream.
Her umbrella cast a shade over her pale features, her gaze lowered, her steps quiet. To the world, she looked like a goddess, a model student—tidy, gentle, well-kept. But inside, she carried twenty years of ruin.
Her heart remembered betrayal.
It remembered laughter that turned to knives, family that turned away, and friends who abandoned her as though her existence was a disease. Her body might be seventeen again, but her heart had endured too much.
She had promised herself: No one will clip my wings this time. No one will decide who I am meant to be.
But promises didn't silence the hollow ache.
It was in that hollow moment, walking through the press of the crowd, that her life collided with his.
He had been riding quickly, too quickly, through streets slick from last night's rain. The bicycle rattled beneath him, tires bouncing over stones, wind stinging his eyes.
To anyone watching, he was just another reckless, yet handsome boy. But within him swirled the weight of storms.
For weeks now—ever since his eyes opened to this second chance—he had felt the rain follow him. Every day, the skies wept with him, clouds thick with grief, drizzle on his shoulders like the hands of ghosts.
Twenty years of devotion wasted, a life spent on someone who discarded him, the stain of blood and blame that marked his end—he remembered it all.
But this morning was different. The sky broke open, letting light spill across the city in fractured beams. For the first time, the rain had stopped. For the first time, the world seemed to beckon.
Why today? he wondered, as he pedaled faster. What am I supposed to find?
The answer came swiftly.
His wheel struck a loose stone. His balance faltered. His body pitched forward—straight toward her.
Books fell, her umbrella slipped, and her breath caught as she braced for the blow. She was too terrified... scared.
She could never even climb up a ladder or stairs that was more than 3 inches above.
She suffered trauma from the height she fell in her past life. But now, she closed her eyed and awaited the crash.
But the crash never came.
A hand—strong, desperate, trembling—seized her wrist.
She lifted her eyes.
And time stopped.
He saw her.
Not her face, not her uniform, not the startled drop of her lips—but her.
The heart that had reached for him in the last moments of his storm. The hand that had clung to his as blood soaked metal. The gaze that reflected his despair so perfectly, so achingly, as if they had been two mirrors leaning into each other.
It was her.
Not the girl standing in front of him. Not a stranger on the street. No—the one who had met his dying eyes with her own, the one who had reached out in the silence of death.
Her.
Her chest burned. Her knees weakened.
Because she knew him too.
Not his name, not his voice, not the boy scrambling to steady his bicycle—but the storm behind his eyes.
She had seen those eyes before. At the edge of death, in the moment when life itself was slipping from her grip. Eyes that matched her own—shattered, hollow, yet yearning for something, anything, to anchor them.
She had touched them once.
And here they were again.
The city blurred.
Noise dulled. The market shouts melted into nothing. The carriages, the laughter, the rustle of skirts and the clink of coins—all faded.
There was only his hand on her wrist. Her gaze locked in his.
A silence so profound it pressed against their ribs, stealing breath.
A silence that was not empty—no, it was filled with recognition. With grief. With a promise neither had spoken yet both understood.
It's you.
The words did not leave their lips, but their souls screamed them.
Then the world shattered back into motion.
The bicycle toppled, his knees scraping against stone, her books scattered into puddles. Gasps rose from the passersby as if the moment had been nothing but an accident.
He scrambled up, fumbling, clumsy, cheeks burning red. "I—I'm sorry. I didn't mean—" His words faltered. His throat closed. He couldn't bring himself to say it, not with that ache in his chest.
She clutched her wrist where his warmth still lingered, though her face betrayed nothing. "You should be more careful." Her voice was calm, but her hands trembled as she bent to gather her books.
He knelt beside her, silently helping. Their fingers brushed as he handed one back, and the jolt nearly stopped his heart.
Neither spoke of it.
Neither dared to.
But as they parted—her walking swiftly away, him pushing his bicycle in the opposite direction—they both carried the same haunting echo, the same tremor in their chest:
I've met you before.
The butterfly did not yet realize the storm had returned.
The storm did not yet understand the butterfly had survived.
But fate knew.
And fate had only just begun.