He had lived this morning before. That was the first unsettling realization.
Same bedsheet ruffled at the edge. Same sunlight filtering through the rusting curtain rod. Same parched feeling at the back of his throat. Yet, as Ruhan sat up in bed, everything felt different — like a play where the actors were replaced with lookalikes. Every detail was present… and yet hollow.
He checked his phone.
June 14.
Not June 15. Not the day that broke everything. This was the day before everything unraveled.
Had he been given another chance?
Or was he trapped in a loop of regret?
Downstairs, Ma was humming.
That broke him.
She was slicing onions with the radio playing in the background — a song from the 90s. Her shoulders moved rhythmically. There was peace in her movement. Peace he hadn't seen in what felt like a lifetime.
He just stood there. Watching.
She turned. "You okay? You look pale. Nightmares again?"
Ruhan opened his mouth. Closed it.
How was he supposed to explain that he had watched her cry in a hospital hallway just a few days ago? That in another life, he never got to say goodbye properly?
"…I'm just… hungry," he lied.
She smiled, completely unaware that to him, she had already died once.
At school, it got worse.
He passed Arav, who clapped him on the back. "Let's win today, man. Midfielders never die."
Ruhan flinched.
In another life, Arav had confessed the pain he carried for years. The loneliness. The things he never told his parents. They'd cried under the bleachers together. Arav had told him he felt like a mistake.
Now? He was just a boy with a soccer ball and a bright grin.
"Midfielders never die," Ruhan muttered, stunned.
"Huh?"
"Nothing."
By lunch, he'd confirmed it: they didn't remember.
Not Diya. Not Arav. Not the old man who sold mango juice by the corner shop. The people who had changed him… had been reset.
But he hadn't.
He remembered every word, every failure, every time he let someone down.
He carried the grief, but the world had wiped its slate clean.
He wondered if that was a gift — or a curse.
After school, something strange happened.
As he opened his locker, a folded piece of paper fell out. It looked like it had been torn from a notebook in a rush.
One sentence.
Scrawled in the kind of handwriting that doesn't expect to be read by strangers:
"I remember too."
No name. No date. No other clues.
Ruhan stood frozen, his heart in his throat.
It wasn't just him.
Someone else had carried their soul across the divide.
But who?
A flicker of hope stirred — sharp, dangerous, but alive.
He folded the note carefully, slid it into his pocket, and walked out of school with a weight on his shoulders…
…but this time, he wasn't carrying it alone.