Chapter 3 - A night, a call

David watched as the younger version of himself stepped out the front door, locking it with the urgency of someone chasing time. That same odd rush in his limbs, that same glance at a wristwatch like it held his fate.

But there was no job. Not yet. No deadlines. No demanding boss breathing down his neck. At nineteen, he hadn't even decided who he was supposed to become. Still, he moved like someone already running behind on a life he hadn't lived.

Some things, it seemed, were embedded too deep to ever leave you.

David crossed the street, slow and careful. The cicadas buzzed louder now, like a slow tremor behind the world. He followed himself at a distance, half-expecting the version ahead to turn around and catch him, like some cosmic loop closing on itself.

But the boy didn't turn. He just kept walking, bag slung low on one shoulder, head tilted down with that quiet weight David remembered too well.

Eventually, the buildings shifted around them. Less residential now. More square-faced and institutional. Concrete courtyards. Bulletin boards with faded paper. A vending machine that still had the same crack across its glass—he had kicked it once, in anger, when it stole his change.

David stopped just outside the gate.

David stayed outside.

He didn't need to go in. The halls were already printed into his bones.

Instead, he let his eyes drift. Over the benches. The cracked stone fountain that never quite worked right. The canteen smell—a strange blend of chalk, coffee, and someone's too-strong perfume—drifted out like a forgotten perfume bottle uncorked.

He found a bench—the same one, he thought, where he'd once sat chain-smoking half a pack of cheap cigarettes after failing an exam. The wood was older now, rougher, or maybe it was exactly the same. He sat down slowly, like one does in a church pew, half-expecting something sacred to happen.

The view hadn't changed. The bell tower still loomed in the distance, crooked and oddly regal. That tower had never rung in time.

That was where he first skipped a class. That hallway there, where Ellie had first told him she wasn't going to wait forever. That patch of lawn—he had once lain there after failing his philosophy midterm, staring up at the clouds until he could no longer remember what failure felt like.

The memories didn't trickle in. They arrived all at once.

Overlapping. Layered.

As if the very air was stitched together with old afternoons, too faint to hold but too sharp to ignore.

He leaned back, hands in his pockets. A soft breeze carried the scent of something impossibly familiar. Like rain on sun-warmed brick.

And for the first time in years, David felt something stir inside him.

Not sorrow. Not regret.

David leaned back against the bench, the wood warm beneath him, the wind brushing against his face like a hand from a memory. The hum of the world was soft, familiar. Everything felt dipped in sunlight. He blinked slowly, let his shoulders sag, and for the first time in what felt like days, he allowed his eyes to close.

He hadn't meant to fall asleep.

But the body, even in strange timelines, still remembers exhaustion.

And this place—this pocket of memory made real—offered a strange kind of peace.

The kind that lulls a man to sleep even when everything around him defies logic.

The noise came like a ripple through water.

Voices. Footsteps. Laughter. A door slamming somewhere behind the wall of time.

David stirred.

His neck ached.

For a moment, he forgot where he was.

Then he saw the brick wall. The trees. The courtyard. The fountain still stubbornly dry.

He looked at his watch.

11:45 a.m.

He had no idea how long he'd been out. It felt like an hour. Maybe two. Maybe a blink. In this place, time had its own dialect.

He ran a hand through his hair. A faint headache hummed behind his eyes.

The campus had woken up.

Students milled out of the building, pouring into the sunlight like a memory come alive. Their clothes, their hairstyles, their voices—all painted in the hues of the late 70s. Brown satchels, collared shirts, skirts with prints like old wallpaper. They didn't just look like the past.

They were the past.

And then he saw him.

His younger self.

Walking briskly down the steps, hand in his pocket, hair a little longer than David remembered. His shirt slightly untucked. A bag slung over one shoulder. Moving fast. Always moving fast, even when there wasn't any need to.

Even now, at nineteen—when office hours weren't even a part of his life yet—he carried that same anxious rhythm in his walk.

David didn't move.

He just watched.

And then he noticed—his younger self was not alone.

A figure followed beside him, steps light, laughter like a thread winding through the space between them.

Her face came into view slowly, like something drawn from a faded photograph, and when it did, something stirred inside David. Something tender. Unreasonably fragile.

It was her.

The same face, the same soft tilt of her head, the way she held her books as if they held her, too.

His first love.

For a moment, time folded in on itself, collapsing years into seconds. The sensation wasn't sharp—it was slow, blooming. He felt it in the chest, in the throat, in the hands. The warmth, the ache, the dizzy surprise of it.

That same quiet thrill he'd once felt the first time their eyes had met.

Every detail of their relationship filled his mind. One after another—

The small, awkward notes passed during lectures. The way she smiled when she thought he wasn't looking. The long walks, the silent agreements, the laughter echoing in forgotten corners of the campus. The warmth of her hand, the closeness, the hours that slipped by unnoticed.

But then, the bitter part.

The loss.

A night, a call.

It was a phone call he never answered. A call that came in the dead of night, the one he'd missed. A missed chance, buried deep in his mind, but it surfaced now, impossible to ignore. He had been asleep, or maybe just ignoring the world, and when he woke, the message was there—a single ring, unanswered.

If he had heard it, maybe things would have been different. Maybe he would have answered, heard her voice, felt the warmth of her words spill through the phone. Maybe that night would have turned out to be the first of many more, and not the last.

But he didn't pick up.

And then she vanished.

Just like that.

No explanation. No goodbyes. She was gone. No one knew where. Not her family. Not her friends. Not even her closest confidants. It was as if she had slipped through the cracks of time, leaving no trace behind, no reason, no clue.

The memories that had long since faded in the back of his mind started to fill him again, in strange flashes—her laugh, her shy smile, the way she'd look at him from beneath the dim lights of the college courtyard. But they weren't just memories. They felt like something more. Something unfinished. Like the missing piece of a puzzle that could still be found, if only he knew where to look.

And so, as his younger self walked away with her, something twisted inside him. A flicker of hope. He realized this could be the only chance he'd ever have to uncover it—to fix it, to understand.

To go back, to see the pieces before they scattered too far.

Maybe, just maybe, he could find her again. Find the truth of what happened.

David's eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in a quiet determination. Something that had been dormant for years stirred inside him. He wasn't just a passerby in this moment. He was here to solve it, to confront what had been left behind.

The unanswered call. The silence that followed.

And her absence.

All of it.

It had been waiting for him, patiently, in the folds of his memory. And now, it was waiting again, as if this second chance was the only one he had.