It was not a dream.
Aarav could feel the faint pressure of air around him… hear the soft echo of his own breath… but the world around him stood still. Everything was white. Endless. Textureless. Like floating in the blank space between memory and madness. No ground. No sky. No walls. Only silence. Heavy, waiting.
He stood there—barefoot, breath held—until the silence cracked like thunder.
[Echo System Booting…]
User: Aarav
Emotional Sync: 81%
Cognitive Lock: Broken
Regrets: 12 Detected
Beginning Playback: Regret 1…
His heart jolted. A strange warmth lit up his chest, like a candle flickering inside a frozen cave.
"Playback…?"
Before he could move, a whisper slid into his mind—
not a voice through ears… but straight into his thoughts.
"You still remember her, don't you?"
It wasn't a question.
It was a blade—sharp and familiar.
A wound he thought had closed long ago.
He didn't reply. He didn't have to.
Her name echoed without permission.
Liva…
And with that… the void shattered.
The white peeled away like torn pages revealing walls painted in a fading blue… a buzzing tube light above… a broken window blind tapping softly in the wind.
Chalk dust floated mid-air, frozen in sunlight.
The classroom.
Aarav blinked.
And there he was—sixteen again.
Sitting on the last bench. Same chewed pen in hand. Same scratch on his old watch. No scars. No burdens. Just… potential.
And there she was.
Liva.
Not perfect. Not posing. Just herself.
Her hair tied up the way she did when she didn't care to impress anyone. Her laugh—small, awkward, real—filling a gap he didn't know existed until she left.
Aarav stared, heart clenching.
[Objective: Understand the moment you broke.]
[You cannot interfere. Only witness.]
She was talking to someone else.
Not him.
He remembered this day. The silence. The chance.
He had seen the crack in her smile. The stiffness in her voice.
And he had done nothing.
Not asked. Not sat beside her. Not said a word.
She had looked at him. Just once.
Her eyes carried a storm. A quiet scream.
He had looked away.
Three months later, she vanished. No goodbye.
He convinced himself she never wanted him to stop her.
But now, watching it again—
He knew.
She waited.
And he never came.
"Why didn't I say something?"
No answer.
Just the echo of that old, aching truth.
Silence wasn't safety. It was surrender.
The bell rang.
The memory snapped like a mousetrap.
[Regret 1: Incomplete]
[Emotion Captured: 92%]
[Next Attempt Unlocked After System Sync]
The classroom dissolved. The white void returned. But now it was colder. Sharper.
Aarav fell to his knees.
"Why… show me this?" he whispered. "What does it change?"
"Nothing changes," the voice answered, "until you do."
It wasn't an AI. Not a stranger.
It was him.
A version buried under years of numbness and guilt.
The voice of the self he abandoned.
"Your regrets are echoes. Each one is a death you lived but never buried. This system won't let you go forward until you return… to every version of yourself that died inside."
Tears welled up in Aarav's eyes.
Not because of Liva.
But because he had forgotten how it felt to care.
And now…
He remembered everything.
"I was just a scared kid…"
"So was she."
That line.
It broke him. Clean and deep.
He had always thought she was stronger. That she didn't need him. That maybe he was replaceable.
But now he knew…
She was just waiting.
He stood.
Shoulders heavy. Chest raw. But eyes alive.
"If this system wants me to relive my pain…"
He clenched his fists.
"Fine. Let it."
"But I won't let it define me."
One regret at a time…
He'd remember.
He'd face it.
Even if it destroyed him again.