You Will Forget This Story

He stood in front of the red door for a long time.

Long enough that the shadows from the window began to stretch in directions that made no sense. Long enough that the red shoe on the floor began to feel more like a warning than a breadcrumb.

He picked it up.

It was warm.

Soft.

Small.

His breath hitched.

He didn't remember why.

He opened the door.

Beyond it was a library.

But not The Archivist's library.

This one was smaller. Messier.

Stacks of paper lay in uneven towers. Some collapsed into chairs. A teacup sat on a stack of blank envelopes, still steaming. Walls leaned slightly inward, as if the room were bowing under pressure.

The air smelled like ink. And smoke. Not the dangerous kind. The kind that lingers in old wood. Familiar.

A desk sat in the middle of the room.

Someone was sitting behind it.

Reading.

He stepped closer.

The person was hunched slightly. Their face hidden behind the pages of a book with no title. The sound of a page turning—slow, deliberate.

He stopped just short of the desk.

He could see the open pages now.

His name.

His words.

A sentence he remembered thinking but never speaking:

"If I keep forgetting, maybe none of it will have to be real."

He reached for the book.

The person behind it lowered it just enough to show their eyes.

They were his eyes.

"Am I supposed to be you?" he asked quietly.

The version of him behind the desk smiled faintly.

"No," he said. "You're supposed to be me."

There was a mirror on the wall.

He hadn't seen it when he entered.

Now it stretched across the entire back of the room.

But the reflection wasn't right.

In it, the two of them were still facing each other—but something was behind them.

A figure.

A girl.

Hair dark.

Dress burnt at the hem.

She wasn't there in the room.Only in the reflection.

She raised her hand in the mirror.

And pointed at him.

He turned.

Nothing.

Just the shelves.

When he turned back, the desk was empty.

So was the book.

The pages were scattered now, floating gently through the air like leaves caught in a draft he couldn't feel.

One landed at his feet.

He knelt.

Picked it up.

A sentence he didn't remember writing.

"Don't follow her this time."