Perfect, Gourav — we're entering the
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Chapter 5 — The Distance Between Then and Now
By Wednesday, the edges of reality had begun to feel soft, as if the days were leaking into one another.
I tried to convince myself that the photographs were tricks of light—coincidences, digital manipulation, anything.
But the ink on the back of that picture, You'll know when to come back, kept whispering to me.
The words didn't feel like a message from someone else.
They felt like a reminder I had left for myself.
---
That afternoon, I found myself scrolling through old messages from Mira—years' worth of texts we'd exchanged since college.
Photos, jokes, song lyrics, half-finished arguments.
And then one thread stopped me cold.
May 12, 2019.
> Mira: "You should perform that new song at Blue Note someday."
Me: "Maybe when the sky turns red."
Mira: "What does that mean?"
Me: "You'll know when to come back."
The exact same words written on the photo.
For a long moment, I couldn't breathe.
Either the universe had started recycling my own sentences, or something much stranger was unfolding.
I took the photo and held it against the window.
The light outside was fading into that familiar golden red, the same shade I'd seen in the picture.
My reflection in the glass stared back at me like a stranger who already knew how this story ended.
---
I decided to go to Blue Note Café.
The café was still there—barely.
The old signboard hung crooked above a peeling blue door. Inside, the walls were covered with Polaroids from hundreds of artists who'd played there over the years.
The owner, a wiry man in his sixties named Rafiq, was behind the counter.
He looked up when I walked in.
"Arjun Malhotra," he said, squinting as if trying to place me. "You used to play here, right?"
"Years ago," I said. "You still remember?"
He smiled faintly. "Hard to forget the ones who sang like they meant it."
I nodded toward the photo wall. "Do you keep all those from past performances?"
"Every single one," he said. "People like you leave pieces of time here. I just keep them safe."
I walked along the wall, scanning the photos.
Old faces. Faded laughter.
And then—half-hidden near the corner—there it was.
A Polaroid of me and Mira.
Exactly the same as the one from the Shimla roll.
Except this one had a date scrawled at the bottom: August 12, 2035.
I turned to Rafiq, my pulse hammering. "Where did this one come from?"
He frowned. "That? You gave it to me yourself. Years ago."
"That's impossible."
He shrugged. "Maybe for you. But you were older then. Grey streak in your hair. You told me to keep it on the wall 'until the song found its way home.'"
---
My knees felt weak. I sat down at the nearest table.
The same table from the photo.
The same chair.
The same faint scratch on the wood in the shape of a music note.
I pulled out my phone and checked the timestamp on the picture again—same as the draft email, same as the poster date.
It was all converging on one day ten years away.
Something was waiting for me there.
Rafiq poured me a cup of tea, unasked. "You look like you've seen a ghost," he said.
"Maybe I have."
He smiled gently. "Time does strange things to people who dream too much. But maybe that's what songs are for—to keep the ghosts busy."
I didn't know how to answer.
---
That night, back home, I recorded another tape:
> "There's a photograph at Blue Note. It shouldn't exist, but it does.
I think I've been here before—years from now.
And the emails, the messages, the warnings—they all lead to that date.
August 12, 2035.
Maybe that's when it ends. Or begins again."
When I stopped recording, I noticed something else—my laptop was already on.
No one had touched it.
The inbox glowed with another new message.
> From: You (2035)
Subject: "She Knows."
"Mira's pictures aren't random. She's been capturing echoes of timelines we've already lived.
Each roll of film is a fragment of a loop.
Don't tell her yet. She must remember on her own.
And when she does—you'll have to choose whether to stay."
I closed the laptop, heart pounding.
For the first time, I realized I might not be the only one receiving these messages.
---
The next morning, I found Mira standing outside my door.
She looked pale, unsettled, her camera hanging from her neck like an anchor.
"Arjun," she said quietly, "can we talk?"
I stepped aside. "Of course. What happened?"
She took a deep breath.
"I developed another roll last night. The one I shot after Shimla.
And there's something wrong with it."
She handed me a photograph.
It showed my apartment. The same view from the window.
Except I wasn't in it—someone else was.
An older version of me, sitting by the desk, writing.
The caption written below read:
> "You'll forget this once. Don't forget again."
I looked up at her. "Mira… when did you take this?"
"I didn't," she whispered. "But somehow—it's from my camera."
We stood there in silence, the world narrowing to the space between us.
The hum in the air grew louder, a pulse that neither of us could ignore anymore.
And for the first time, I saw it reflected in her eyes—the same quiet terror, the same unspoken question that had been haunting me for weeks.
What if we weren't living forward anymore?
What if we were caught inside a story already written—one we were both trying to rewrite from different sides of time?