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Chapter 8 – The Price of Change
The melody wound tighter, each note bright and trembling, as if the strings themselves were afraid of what came next.
Rain pressed against the café windows, a whispering audience. Mira stood near the camera tripod, her outline haloed by the neon sign outside—Blue Note pulsing through her like breath.
Time felt wrong.
Every downstroke lingered too long; every inhale seemed to arrive twice.
Don't play it before then.
The sentence from the last email ran through my head. I'd tried to silence it, but it threaded through the music like static.
Mira whispered something I didn't catch. Her lips moved, her expression half awe, half fear.
"What did you say?" I asked.
But her voice didn't reach me. The air between us shimmered, bending light like heat. She stepped forward and left a trail of after-images—one, two, three versions of herself dissolving into the next.
"Mira?"
She blinked, startled, as if waking. "Arjun, stop—something's wrong."
"I can't," I said. "If I stop, it all resets."
Every time you do, the loop resets.
The line from the message replayed, now sounding like my own voice. I felt dizzy; my reflection in the guitar's lacquered body wasn't matching the rhythm of my hands. It was a half-second ahead, eyes hollow, already knowing how this ends.
The lights flickered. For a heartbeat the café was full—patrons laughing, glasses clinking, music swelling from an unseen band. Then darkness swallowed them again, leaving dust and silence.
Mira clutched her camera. "It's happening again."
"What is?"
"The overlap. The same moment folding on itself."
Her image flickered, transparency washing through her like smoke. I strummed harder, trying to anchor us, the chords cracking under the weight of panic.
"You'll want to finish the song—don't."
"You can't save her if the melody completes too early."
The echoes layered over the notes until I couldn't tell which sound came from the guitar and which from memory.
Mira reached for me, but her hand passed through the strap of the guitar. Her eyes widened in terror. "Arjun!"
I stopped playing.
The last chord rang out, sustained, shimmering. The sound hung in the room far too long, and with each fading vibration, Mira grew lighter—edges dissolving, colors bleeding into the air.
"No—no, stay with me!"
She smiled through the shimmer, tears caught in the light. "You already wrote this, remember? Every version ends here."
"I can change it!"
She shook her head. "You already did. Over and over. That's why the emails exist."
Her words cracked something open inside me. The truth slid into place like a final chord:
I wasn't trying to save her. I was the echo trying to remind myself what I'd lost.
"Mira, please—"
She lifted the camera, trembling. "One last picture."
The flash burst—white, infinite—and when my vision cleared, she was gone. Only the camera remained, lens pointed at the stage, shutter still humming like a low note.
Outside, the storm stopped.
I was alone with the echo of the song, still vibrating in the strings, waiting for the next loop to begin.
Silence.
The kind that hums after music stops—thick, charged, breathing.
I kept waiting for the next sound: the camera click, Mira's laugh, the rain. But nothing came. Only the low hiss of the amplifier and the faint ring of strings slowly dying.
The photograph lay on the floor near my shoe. I bent down to pick it up, but the image had changed. Where there should have been two figures, there was only one. The empty chair beside me seemed to glow faintly, as though the memory of her light refused to leave.
I whispered, "Mira?"
The café answered with echoes.
> You already wrote this, remember?
Her voice slid through my thoughts, thin and bright, not quite sound—more like a remnant of sound.
I stumbled to the counter where the tape deck sat. The cassette inside had ejected itself. The label now read: AUG 12 2035 — AGAIN.
I pressed play, though I already knew what I would hear.
> Future Arjun: "You'll never stop until she's gone for good. That's the truth you keep rewriting."
I slammed the stop button, but the tape kept spinning, the reels turning against silence. The air shimmered with faint whispers.
> If you love her enough to let her go… maybe the future changes.
> Every time you finish the melody too soon, she fades.
Each fragment layered over the next until they became a single voice—a chorus of my own ghosts, trapped in magnetic tape.
I backed away, covering my ears, but the words pressed through my hands, vibrating in my skull. The room folded in on itself: tables warping, walls bending, the neon sign outside pulsing like a heartbeat.
When I looked up, the stage had changed.
I was standing there again—older, greyer, eyes hollow, guitar in hand—playing the same song to the same empty room.
And sitting at the front table was me, younger, watching.
The loop was feeding itself, devouring its own tail.
I shouted, "Stop!"
The sound fractured. My older self looked up, startled, and in that instant the two versions of me overlapped—past, future, present—one body flickering through decades of regret. The photograph burst into light, scattering fragments of us through the air.
When the world steadied, I was back on the stage alone. My hands trembled around the neck of the guitar. The instrument buzzed faintly; the final note still hadn't resolved.
I whispered, "Mira, if you're anywhere in this—if you can hear me—please answer."
The camera flashed once, on its own.
A click, soft as breath.
On the table beside it, a new photograph slid out. My fingers shook as I lifted it. The image showed the café, empty, except for the faint blur of two silhouettes—mine and hers—caught mid-motion, fading together.
I pressed the picture to my chest.
"Mira," I breathed, "I'll keep writing until you come back."
But another voice—my own, distant—whispered from the tape deck:
> "That's how the loop begins again."
The lights dimmed. The hum of the guitar merged with the rain returning outside. Somewhere beyond the walls, a train passed, its whistle long and mournful—the same one from the night of the first email.
I realized then that I had never escaped that night. Every version of me was still walking toward this same stage, still trying to play the song differently, still watching her fade.
And somewhere ahead, another me was already opening the next email.
The hum from the amp dimmed until it was only a vibration in the bones of the room.
I set the guitar down, afraid to breathe too loudly in case the sound began again.
The rain had stopped, but the puddles outside still rippled, though there was no wind. Every movement made a faint after-image, a copy of itself that refused to fade. I stepped closer to the window and caught my reflection multiplying, faces of me at different ages staring back—twenty, thirty, forty—all of them carrying the same tired grief.
> You can't save her if the melody completes too early.
The echo flickered again, not as a voice this time but as handwriting traced in fog across the glass. It dissolved before I could reach for it.
The café clock clicked forward once. 8:14 PM.
The same time stamped on every photograph, every tape, every memory.
I turned back to the stage. The camera was still there, its red light blinking like a pulse. I picked it up and pressed the playback button. The tiny screen glowed blue, showing nothing but static—until a single frame appeared: Mira, smiling through tears, whispering something I couldn't hear. Then the screen went black.
I whispered, "I remember."
The amplifier answered with a low hum that might have been her laugh—or just feedback looping forever.
The air smelled of rain and burnt wires. I sat at the table where she had stood, opened the notebook from my bag, and began to write.
Each word felt heavier than sound, as if I were carving them into the moment itself.
> Dear future me…
The pen hesitated.
The lights flickered once more, and the city outside dissolved into white.