I used to believe the sky was our sanctuary,until it betrayed us.
The air was thin. My ears popped as the plane groaned through turbulence. I clutched Mira's hand,tight, like always. She didn't flinch, just turned to me with that crooked smile that had once made my whole world tilt. "If this thing goes down," she said, her voice light, teasing, "I hope I reincarnate with better legroom."
I laughed. Maybe a little too hard. We were both nervous, but we pretended we weren't. That was our thing. Pretend the world wasn't ending,until it did.
Minutes later, the oxygen masks dropped.
Alarms screamed.
People screamed.
The lights flickered out, and all I remember is her fingers tightening in mine, nails digging into my skin as the world spun and cracked open.
Then everything went black.
But death wasn't the end.
It was only the beginning.
I woke up choking.
Not from pain, not from fear,but from information. It poured into me like electricity through a shattered wire. Names. Coordinates. Timelines. Histories I hadn't lived but now somehow knew. A voice hummed low in the back of my skull.
System Initiated: Welcome, User Eliah.
Eliah.
I wasn't Eliah.
I was Aster. Or I used to be. But the mirror staring back at me showed a girl I didn't recognize. Dark curls. Freckles. A different face, a smaller body. A new life.
Objective: Locate soul-bound counterpart from previous cycle.
Status: Not yet awakened.
Reminder: You must earn her love again,under new constraints.
My chest ached in a way that had nothing to do with grief or the weight of reincarnation. Mira. My Mira. She was here. Somewhere in this strange world—this different *universe*—reincarnated like me, but not remembering… not yet.
And there was a catch.
She was no longer the Mira i knew. And she doesn't know that i still exist... not yet. And worse of all now i exist as a lady.
We had died lovers,man and woman.
Now, we were both girls.
Teenagers again.
High school uniforms, strict dormitory rules, a prestigious all-girls academy surrounded by fog-laced woods.
I was a transfer student. She was the golden one.
And I recognized her the second I saw her across the courtyard,laughing with friends, her voice like a forgotten melody waking in my chest. Her name was Rin now. Rin Valemont. She didn't remember me. Not yet.
But my soul remembered everything.
The system chirped in my head as I stared at her from across the field.
Progress: 1%
Tip: You cannot force memory. You must reforge connection through emotion.
Reforge. Rebuild. Relove.
I sucked in a breath, adjusted the collar of my uniform, and stepped forward.
Meeting her again was like watching a sunrise with bruised eyes. Painful, beautiful, blinding.
"Hey," I said, my voice foreign in my ears. "You dropped your book."
She looked at me, and for a split second, the world shimmered. Just a flicker, like déjà vu.
"Thanks," she said, taking the book from my hand, brushing fingers like sparks. "You're the new transfer?"
I nodded.
She smiled politely. "I'm Rin."
I almost said, I know. Instead: "Eliah."
She raised an eyebrow. "Unusual name."
"You'll get used to it," I replied, and her laugh,it was the same.
Not Mira's voice, but the soul behind it.
I knew it.
Later that night, the system chimed again.
Emotional Resonance Detected. Bond Awakening: 2%
Warning: Interference is coming.
I frowned. "What do you mean, interference?"
The system didn't respond.
Instead, I dreamed of the crash again.
But this time, we never held hands.
And Rin wasn't beside me.
Someone else was.
A shadowed figure, eyes like broken galaxies, whispering: "You don't belong here, Eliah."
I woke with sweat slicking my skin,and a strange mark glowing faintly on my wrist. A small symbol: an infinity loop wrapped around a star.
The next morning, Rin walked past me without a glance.
Like I'd never handed her that book.
Like we'd never spoken.
But my wrist still burned. And deep inside me, the system whispered:
In every universe… you loved her first."
And now?
Now, you must fight to be remembered.