By the time he reached his classroom the next morning, the hallways had already filled with the usual tide of chatter. Sunlight spilled through tall windows, slicing the hall in long white stripes — too bright, too clean, like the world was pretending to be normal.
But Leo could feel it: something had shifted.
Leo slid into his seat, dropped his bag on the floor, and started pulling out his books. Something white and folded sat tucked under his notebook — not there yesterday.
He frowned, glancing around. Nobody was looking his way. The teacher wasn't in yet. Students leaned over desks trading jokes and snacks, the room alive with laughter that seemed to come from a world just outside his reach.
He picked up the paper.
The fold was sharp and deliberate, corners perfectly aligned. Not a doodle or a prank note — someone had taken their time.
He unfolded it carefully.
I know your grandfather. Meet me at the school basement tomorrow evening.
No name. No signature. Just those two lines in neat, slanted handwriting.
Leo's pulse stumbled. He stared at the words until they blurred.
His grandfather.
The word alone scraped something raw inside him. The memory of that funeral flashed back — lilies, rain, his mother's tears, and his father's whisper: It started.
His chest gave a faint throb, the strange offbeat pulse he'd been trying to ignore for days.
He looked up again. The classroom hadn't changed. Betty was laughing with a girl near the windows. Liam had his chair tipped back, balancing dangerously as he tossed a pencil between his hands. Everything looked normal, painfully normal.
But someone in this room had left that note.
He folded the paper again, slow, precise, the way it had been before, and slipped it into his pocket.
The bell rang. The teacher entered, clapping once for attention. Chairs scraped, voices dimmed, and the rhythm of a normal school day began again.
Leo tried to follow. Tried to listen. Tried to focus on what was written on the board. But the words of the note repeated like an echo against the inside of his skull.
I know your grandfather.
He had so few memories of him left—his laugh, his smell of oil and books, the gentle pat on his shoulder whenever he lost a game. And then the funeral, and his father's pale face.
Who would know anything about him now? Seven years had passed. Everyone else had moved on.
Leo's fingers brushed his pocket again, feeling the faint crease of the folded note. The paper seemed to burn there, heavy as a secret.
For the rest of the period, he didn't write a single word.
The hours crawled.
Each class blurred into the next, the teachers' voices reduced to distant murmurs that barely touched him. Leo's notebook stayed mostly blank. The only thing he could think about was the folded piece of paper burning in his pocket.
He checked it more than once — between lessons, between breaths — unfolding it just enough to see the words again.
I know your grandfather. Meet me at the school basement tomorrow evening.
Every time, his heartbeat stumbled, skipping a rhythm.
Who could have written it? No one at school even knew about his grandfather. He'd never mentioned him. Not to his teachers. Not even to Betty or Liam. The thought twisted uneasily in his gut.
The hum of the classroom felt different now — not background noise, but something alive, pressing in from all sides. When he looked up, the rows of faces seemed sharper, more focused. He couldn't tell who might be glancing his way and who was just bored.
Once, he caught a reflection in the window — someone behind him looking his way — but when he turned, there was no one. Only Liam yawning, Betty bent over her notes.
Still, the feeling lingered: eyes somewhere, watching.
At lunch, he sat with Liam and Betty, but their laughter came to him as if from underwater. He nodded when they spoke, forced a smile at the right moments, but his mind was somewhere else — in that cold basement he hadn't seen yet, at the bottom of the school stairs, where the air would smell like rust and dust and secrets.
The pulse in his chest flared again.
It came without warning, a sharp jolt under his ribs that made him wince and press his hand there before he could stop himself.
Betty glanced up from her tray. "You okay?"
Leo forced a nod, tried to smile. "Just tired."
It was true, in a way. He felt tired in places he didn't even understand.
As the afternoon dragged on, the unease only grew heavier. By the final bell, his hands were clammy, his shirt clinging slightly to his back. The words from the note had taken root in him, and each step he took out of the classroom felt like walking deeper into someone else's plan.
At the gate, the sunlight had already started to fade, washing the buildings in gold and shadow. He waited for his mother, his bag hanging loose from one shoulder. The world looked the same — laughing students, the smell of bread from the nearby kiosk — yet none of it reached him.
All he could feel was that faint, irregular rhythm beneath his skin and the folded paper in his pocket, whispering a promise he didn't understand.
Betty caught up to him just outside the school gate. The crowd of students spilled onto the street, their laughter echoing off the stone walls, but she slipped through them easily, light on her feet.
"Leo!"
He turned, startled. She jogged the last few steps, her bag bouncing against her hip. The late afternoon light caught in her hair, turning the brown strands almost gold.
"You walk like you're being chased," she said, half teasing, half breathless.
Leo tried a laugh, but it came out thin. "Just heading home."
"Uh-huh." She squinted at him. "You barely said three words all day. Liam thought maybe you were sick."
"I'm fine."
"You don't look fine."
Her tone was gentle, but her gaze didn't let him slip away. Leo looked down, shuffling his feet against the pavement. The folded note in his pocket felt heavier by the second.
"Betty, I'm just… tired," he said finally. "Therapy, classes—it's a lot."
She crossed her arms, tilting her head in that way she used to when she didn't believe him. "Tired doesn't make people flinch every time someone walks behind them."
He blinked, caught off guard. "What?"
"You kept turning around in class," she said quietly. "Like you thought someone was watching you."
The words landed too close. He glanced away, toward the busy street, where students were laughing and shoving each other, alive and normal. "I guess I'm just jumpy. Still adjusting, I guess."
"Adjusting," she echoed softly, like she was testing the word. Then, lowering her arms, she stepped closer. "You can tell me, you know. Whatever it is."
Her voice was careful—no pressure, just sincerity. The same tone she'd used when he first admitted he didn't remember much of their past.
Leo opened his mouth, the truth teetering on the edge. He wanted to tell her. About the note, the words that had followed him all day, the strange thrum in his chest that refused to settle. But if he did, she'd worry. And maybe she'd try to stop him from finding out what it meant.
So he smiled instead, small and forced. "Thanks, Betty. Really. But I'm okay."
She studied him for a long moment, as if trying to see through the smile. Then she sighed, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "If you say so."
"I do."
Betty nodded slowly. "Alright. But if you collapse again, I'm not carrying you."
Leo chuckled weakly. "Fair."
She grinned, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. "See you tomorrow, Leo."
"Yeah. Tomorrow."
He watched her walk away, the crowd folding around her until she disappeared into it.
For a moment, he stood alone at the gate, his hand in his pocket, feeling the faint crinkle of the folded note beneath his fingers.
He exhaled slowly, but the air caught halfway, sharp against his ribs.
Tomorrow.
The word felt heavier than it should.
The house was quiet. Too quiet.
Leo lay on his back, staring at the faint glow of his ceiling light. It buzzed with a low hum, steady enough that it blended with the faint rhythm of his heartbeat. Or what he thought was his heartbeat.
That strange pulse had returned again—an offbeat throb under his ribs, faint but insistent, like a whisper he couldn't quite catch. He pressed his palm against his chest. The warmth there seemed unnatural, almost alive.
His eyes slid toward the desk beside his bed. The folded paper sat there under the lamplight, the white edges glowing faintly yellow.
He'd read it so many times that the words were burned into his mind:
I know your grandfather. Meet me at the school basement tomorrow evening.
No name. No explanation. Just that one claim.
He thought about the funeral again—his father's voice saying, It started. His mother whispering, I'm sorry. The strangers at the back of the church.
He hadn't thought much of those things before—just pieces of a memory softened by time. But now, the note had tied them all together like invisible threads pulling tight around him.
Leo sat up slowly, his breath catching as the bedsprings creaked. The air in his room felt different now—thicker, like the night was holding its breath.
On the shelf, a picture frame caught his eye: his family, years ago, taken just before the funeral. His grandfather's smile stood out—steady, kind, with a glint of something secret behind it.
Leo swallowed hard.
If someone really knew him—knew what had happened—then maybe they knew why Leo had collapsed that day. Why his chest sometimes burned without reason. Why he'd slept for seven years and woken up with a body that didn't feel entirely like his own.
He reached for the note, his fingers brushing the paper. It felt colder than it should.
Fear pressed close, whispering that he should tell someone—Betty, Liam, maybe even his parents. But the thought of explaining the note, of seeing disbelief in their faces, made his throat close up.
He unfolded the paper again. The handwriting looked precise, almost formal. Whoever wrote it hadn't been careless.
"Tomorrow," he murmured under his breath.
The sound of the word filled the quiet room like a small promise.
He folded the note back neatly, slid it into the drawer beside his bed, and turned off the lamp. Darkness gathered in corners, thick and humming.
The pulse in his chest beat once, hard enough to make the sheets tremble.
Then again — in perfect rhythm with the ticking clock beside his bed.
Tick. Throb. Tick. Throb.
Until he couldn't tell which sound came from the world, and which came from him.