"Twenty chapters…" I muttered. "Great. A deadline for my own existence.
By the time I looked up, Maya was gone, vanishing right after dropping the world's most depressing truth bomb.
I leaned back on the couch and stared at the ceiling, trying to count imaginary pages. Twenty chapters. What even was that supposed to mean? How long before the next one flipped, before I…
I groaned, dragging a pillow over my face. "Nope. Not thinking about that."
Still, my brain refused to cooperate. It kept spinning, pulling at the idea like a loose thread.
"Chapters," I mumbled into the pillow. "Not days, not weeks… chapters."
If this world ran on narrative logic, then that meant the chapters didn't move because of time they moved because of events. The big ones. The dramatic ones. The kind that only happened when the main characters were involved.
I slowly lowered the pillow and stared up at the ceiling again. "Oh no," I whispered. "Every time something happens between them… it counts."
