I asked him what he was doing in my apartment and how he had even found the address, but he only gave me that mischievous smile and answered with a single word...
"Guess?"
He never explained further. Before I could press him, he announced that he was only dropping by. He had to head back home to deal with family matters. I didn't dare ask questions. I knew enough to realize his parents' separation was a sensitive subject, and the heaviness in his voice warned me not to prod.
By the time he left, the sun was high, and it was almost lunchtime. The apartment fell into silence again, until the doorbell rang.
My parcel had arrived.
Four sets of tarot cards, a velvet cloth, and a collection of candles in different colors, tools of a life I had long buried.
I carried the box inside, closed and locked the door, and let the familiar ritual claim me.
I changed into plain white clothes, tied my hair back, and cleared the small table in my living room. Carefully, I spread the cloth across its surface, then arranged three white candles at equal points, their flames steadying the air around me. I lit three sticks of incense, letting the smoke curl like whispered prayers rising to the unseen.
The cards were waiting.
When I was in college, I had suffered in silence. Anxiety. Depression. Loneliness. Back then, tarot and Feng Shui had not been just hobbies, they were my lifelines. A bridge to understanding what words and logic could not explain. And it wasn't just a study.
My family carried gifts, small psychic talents that surfaced in every generation. I had inherited one of those gifts. The cards weren't just ink and cardboard to me. They opened doors. They spoke.
I unboxed the first deck, feeling the crisp edges of the cards against my skin. I whispered a short invocation, asking for divine guidance, then began to shuffle.
The question pressed against my chest like a weight I had carried too long.
Why did I forget my memories after the breakup with Patrick?
I laid out ten cards in a spread.
One by one, the images faced me, towers falling, cups overturned, a hermit walking away, swords piercing hearts. The language of the cards was unmistakable.
The answer wasn't chance.
It wasn't a coincidence.
It was a choice.
The cards told me that my forgetting had not been an accident, not a cruel twist of fate. It had been a deliberate act, an offering. A prayer I had made in desperation. I had asked for the pain to be taken away, and in exchange, something, someone, had been taken from me, along with every memory of them.
I had chosen it.
The realization struck me like lightning. My throat tightened. My hands trembled above the spread.
So… I asked for this? I asked to forget?
Faces blurred in my mind. Laughter, I couldn't remember, hands I couldn't hold. Entire chapters of my life, gone because I had begged for the pain to be erased.
And the cards, patient and merciless, confirmed it.
I sat frozen, shocked at the truth the divine had revealed.
I shuffled the cards again, my fingers moving almost on their own, the incense smoke curling like restless spirits around me. This time, the question in my heart was sharper, heavier...
Who is Richard Jing in my life?
The cards slid into place, each one landing with a quiet finality that made my pulse quicken.
The Tower... destruction, upheaval, the tearing down of illusions. A life dismantled.
The Ten of Cups... fulfillment, family, the elusive dream of happiness.
The Lovers... choice, passion, two souls intertwined.
The Empress... creation, nurturing, the heart of abundance.
The Emperor... stability, order, protection.
The spread stared back at me, radiant and terrifying. Together, the cards whispered a truth I couldn't deny.
Richard was not a stranger. He was a mirror of my own growth, the reflection of who I had been and who I was meant to become. He was the person my path kept circling back to, the one destiny kept tying me with, no matter how tangled the threads became.
Time slipped away as I laid more spreads, asking the same question in different ways, hoping for a different answer. But each set only reinforced the same truth.
A separation had been necessary. A heartbreak, inevitable. Without the destruction of the Tower, there could have been no rebuilding. Without pain, there would have been no alignment.
The cards promised he was more than just a fleeting figure in my life. They painted him as a partner, a counterpart, a destiny written in symbols older than myself.
And yet…
I sat back, staring at the flames dancing low on the candles. Doubt coiled in my chest, cold and unrelenting.
But was he truly the man destined for me in this lifetime? Or was destiny simply another word for the choices we trap ourselves in?
The cards could speak, but they could not feel. They could not carry the burden of memory I had lost, or the fear of opening my heart again to someone I could not fully remember.
The incense burned lower, and still I sat before the spread, torn between belief and disbelief, between fate and free will.
Darkness swallowed the room, and only the silver glow of the moon slipping through the curtains gave me sight. The incense had long died out, the smoke vanished, leaving only a faint trace of something otherworldly. The melted candles stood like twisted remnants of time, the cards scattered in front of me like fallen leaves after a storm.
I felt weak.
Drained.
As though the cards had taken more than answers, they had taken a part of me.
"Richard… why did I need to forget you? Why us?" I whispered into the stillness, my voice trembling.
And then, two strong arms wrapped around me from behind.
My body stiffened instantly.
"Are you okay?" His voice was low, ragged with worry.
My breath caught. "How did you enter?"
"I asked the landlady for a spare key." His breath ghosted against my ear, uneven.
"You did?"
"I couldn't contact you… since lunch. I came here, knocked and knocked, but you didn't answer. I searched the whole building, even asked the neighbors. They said you hadn't stepped out all day." His grip on me tightened, as if the thought alone burned him alive. "I was so worried something might have happened."
Slowly, I turned my head, and our faces hovered only inches apart. My heart raced, too fast, too heavy, when I met his gaze.
But what I saw froze me.