Miu Natasha had not slept in real, linear days for seventy-nine loops.
She measured time now in sunrises that never aged, in the exact second the After You playlist switched to "Plastic Love," in the way Lingling's shoulders softened the moment Orm walked through the door wearing that ridiculous sunflower dress.
Seventy-nine times she had watched them meet. Seventy-nine times she had watched them fall a little further. Seventy-nine times she had watched the city forget them both at 11:59 p.m. and reset to December 2 like a song skipping back to the intro.
Miu sat on the low concrete wall outside Siam Paragon, Super 8 camera resting on her knees, lens pointed at the café's second-floor window. From this angle she could see both of them perfectly: Lingling in black like a shadow that had learned to sit upright, Orm glowing like someone had turned the saturation up too high.
They were sharing honey toast again. Orm was feeding Lingling a piece of mango with her fingers. Lingling was blushing the colour of traffic lights at dusk.
Miu's chest hurt in a way that had nothing to do with the Bangkok heat.
She pressed record.
The camera whirred, a sound like an old cat purring. Sixteen millimetres of film slid past the gate at twenty-four frames per second, capturing the exact moment Orm laughed and Lingling forgot how to breathe.
Miu whispered to the lens, voice hoarse from disuse, "Loop 79, take 112. They're so close this time."
She had started talking to the camera on loop 12, when loneliness became a living thing sitting on her sternum. Now it was habit. The footage was the only proof she existed.
She looked like any other Japanese tourist: oversized denim jacket covered in enamel pins from defunct film festivals, round glasses fogging slightly in the humidity, hair in a low ponytail threaded with premature silver. Only the dark circles under her eyes and the way she flinched at sudden loud noises betrayed that she had been awake since 1989.
Well. Awake since 2043, technically.
But that was a longer story.
Miu stopped recording, let the camera hang against her chest, and opened the small leather notebook she carried everywhere. Page after page of tiny, precise handwriting:
Loop 3 – Orm arrives 10:17, Lingling 10:09. First eye contact 10:21:34. Loop 17 – First hand-hold, 15:42 under escalator. Lingling cried after reset. Loop 44 – They kissed on the Skywalk at sunset. Tape began smoking at 11:47. Had to separate them manually. Loop 63 – Orm asked Lingling to run away together. Lingling said "There's no away." Orm didn't speak for three resets.
Today's page was almost full.
Loop 79 – 10:44 a.m. – Orm fed Lingling mango. Lingling let her. 10:51 – Lingling laughed out loud for the first time. Sounded like the master tape. Prediction: They will kiss before 6 p.m. Risk: Tape will burn early. One of them dies tonight.
Miu closed the notebook and pressed it against her heart.
She had tried everything.
Tried warning them on loop 9 (they thought she was a stalker). Tried stealing both cassettes on loop 22 (the tapes reappeared in Uncle Somchai's box the next morning). Tried burning one copy on loop 37 (woke up with blisters shaped like red lips on her palms). Tried confessing her own feelings on loop 55 (Orm kissed her back, Lingling walked away, and the reset hurt worse than dying).
Nothing broke the rules except one thing: all three of them falling in love at the same moment, with the same intensity, before the thirty-third shared loop ended.
Thirty-three. The number was burned into Miu's mind like a frame counter. She had thirty-three minus whatever loop they were actually on now (she had lost count of whose loop was whose around loop 60).
Today felt different, though.
Today Lingling had looked straight at the window (straight at Miu) for three full seconds while Orm was in the bathroom. Not through her. At her.
Miu's heart had stuttered like a jammed gate.
She stood up, legs numb from sitting too long in the same position for seventy-nine Decembers.
It was time.
She crossed the street, climbed the escalator, pushed through the glass doors of After You. The air-conditioning hit her like cold water. The smell of butter and sugar made her stomach clench with hunger she hadn't felt in months.
Lingling saw her first.
The sound engineer's eyes widened, recognition and fear mixing in equal measure. She stood slowly, knocking her knee against the table. Orm turned, mouth full of honey toast, and froze.
Miu stopped three steps away. The camera hung heavy against her chest, a talisman and a curse.
"P'Ling," she said in Thai, soft, careful. "Orm."
Orm swallowed. "Do we… know you?"
Lingling's voice was barely a breath. "You've been filming us."
Miu nodded. "Every day. For seventy-nine days."
Orm laughed, nervous. "That's… a really committed thesis project."
"It's not a thesis," Miu said. "It's a love letter from the future. And we're almost out of film."
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her own cassette. Same purple handwriting. Same bleeding hearts. Same red lips sticker, only older, edges curled.
She placed it on the table between them like a loaded gun.
Lingling stared at it. "There are three tapes."
"There were always three," Miu said. "One for you. One for Orm. One for the space between you where I was supposed to stand."
Orm's voice cracked. "Supposed to?"
Miu looked at her (really looked) for the first time in seventy-nine loops without hiding behind glass or a lens.
"I've watched you fall in love almost eighty times," she said. "I've watched you lose each other almost eighty times. And every time the tape burns, one of you dies at midnight."
Lingling's hand found Orm's under the table. Their fingers laced like they'd done it a thousand years.
Orm whispered, "Which one of us?"
Miu's eyes filled. "It changes. Sometimes you, Orm. Sometimes P'Ling. Once it was both of you, and I had to watch the news report on loop for three days before I broke."
She laughed, wet and broken.
"I'm tired," she said. "I'm so tired of being the only one who remembers."
Lingling stood. Walked around the table. Stopped in front of Miu like she was approaching a wounded animal.
"You're looping too," she said. Not a question.
Miu nodded.
"How long?"
"Since September. Real time. Seventy-nine resets for me. I don't know how many for you."
Orm joined them, close enough that Miu could smell mango on her breath.
"So what happens now?" Orm asked.
Miu looked at their joined hands, then up at their faces she had memorized better than her own.
"Now," she said, "we break the rules together. Or we all burn tonight."
She reached out, slow, giving them time to pull away.
They didn't.
Her fingers found theirs. Three hands, three cassettes, one heartbeat skipping in terrible, perfect sync.
Outside the window, "Plastic Love" ended and began again, because some songs were never meant to finish.
Inside, three women stood in the middle of a dessert café that would forget them in thirteen hours, holding on like the world depended on it.
Because it did.
Miu closed her eyes and, for the first time in seventy-nine loops, let herself hope the next take would be the last.
The camera on her chest kept running, red light steady, capturing the exact moment the space between them finally had a name.