Chapter 2
544words
I stared at him like he was a clown who’d just botched a magic trick.
“The world ten years from now?”
I nearly laughed out loud.
“What, flying cars and personal robot servants?”
Probably the most creative pickup line I’d ever heard, though wasted on a classmate who smelled like mildew.
He didn’t laugh or counter my sarcasm.
Those calm eyes just looked at me, seeing through my layers of thorns straight to the soft, vulnerable core I tried so hard to protect.
Evening wind gusted through the door, stirring the corners of his clean shirt.
The warehouse’s rust and dust smell seemed to retreat before the faint scent coming from him—like soap dried in sunshine.
“Next year in March. On a rainy Tuesday.”
He spoke softly.
“Your father will leave the house with a black suitcase. He won’t look back.”
My breath caught.
“He’ll move to the east side of the city and rent an apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows. Not big, but quiet.”
“Your mother will stay in this house. She’ll lock your room and won’t open it for a long time.”
I clenched my fists, clinging to my last shred of composure.
That divorce agreement they’d hidden under the mattress, ink barely dry, had a date on it—next March.
My parents’ separation was their silent secret, a truth I’d accidentally discovered while searching for something after one of their fights.
Neither had bothered to tell me.
Like an idiot, I kept their secret, pretending I knew nothing.
“How did you…”
My voice trembled, my throat clogged with invisible cotton.
He looked at me, his eyes revealing a trace of compassion.
Not pity—more like the resignation of someone who’d been through it all before.
“Three months from now.”
He paused, as if carefully choosing his words, but ultimately went for the most direct approach.
“A car accident. You’ll die instantly.”
The world fell silent.
All I could hear was my own heartbeat drumming against my eardrums. One beat. Another. Another.
All those thoughts about the meaning of existence, family breakdown, uncertain futures—in the face of “death,” they all became weightless. Insignificant.
An absurd idea sprouted in my mind like a desperate lifeline.
“You came back to save me?”
I looked up, a ridiculous glimmer of hope lighting my eyes.
He was silent for a moment, then gently shook his head.
“I have no power to change the established timeline.”
His gaze shifted to the distance, as if seeing through the warehouse walls to a time and place I couldn’t reach.
“Ever seen ‘Back to the Future’? Any small change could trigger an unpredictable butterfly effect.”
The flame of hope extinguished under his calm words.
Only cold ashes remained.
I collapsed back into my “throne,” the shabby armchair groaning beneath me.
So he was just here to be a prophet.
A cold messenger, responsible only for announcing my death, not preventing it.
I looked at him, this youth who claimed to be from the future—clean, gentle, yet bringing the cruelest verdict imaginable.
My secret base, my only sanctuary, in that moment finally became exactly what I’d feared—a literal tomb.
And I’d already been sentenced to death in advance.
