LARA's POV
I've always been good at remembering things… little things people forget.
That was my pride. My little superpower. Names, faces, dates, random conversations most people needed a phone to remember. Until that night. Until him.
The rain had been falling softly all evening, the kind of gentle drizzle that left the city lights blurred like watercolors smeared on glass. I walked down the narrow streets of Los Angeles, the sound of my heels clicking against the wet pavement the only rhythm I felt in my chest. My bag swung lightly at my side, heavy with the notebooks I always carried, my little archives of life.
I wasn't expecting anything unusual. Just a regular Thursday night, the sort of night I would spend curled up with tea and the dim glow of my desk lamp. But life, as I would soon learn, doesn't follow schedules.
Here I was, walking down to the bookstore to get a copy of the literature text we were going to be reading in class the next day, no tea today and certainly no curling up. But I was still happy to be out and breathe in the rain, counting my footsteps nonchalantly.
That's when I saw him.
He was standing under the flickering streetlamp outside the small bookstore, hands tucked into the pockets of his tailored coat. Dark hair slightly damp from the rain, sharp jawline, eyes that seemed too steady, too knowing. I caught myself staring. Not in admiration, not in lust, though there was something magnetic about him, but in a curious unease. He looked… familiar, somehow.
I shook my head. No, that's impossible.
People can't look familiar when you've never met them before.
Yet I approached him, almost unconsciously. Maybe it was the rain, maybe it was something else I couldn't name. He smiled the tiniest fraction, the kind of smile that makes you pause, makes you forget what you were about to say.
"Rainy nights," he said softly. "They make you think."
I blinked. "I… guess so."
He didn't move closer, didn't step back. He simply studied me as though he had been expecting me all along. And for reasons I could not explain, I felt like I should tell him everything about myself and yet keep nothing.
"Do I… know you?" I asked, forcing a casual tone, though my chest had tightened.
"No," he replied simply, his voice smooth and low. "But I've been hoping we'd meet."
Something in the way he said it made the words stick in my mind. Hop… hoping… we'd meet.
I laughed nervously. "That's… oddly specific for a stranger."
He shrugged. "Maybe not so strange."
And just like that, he offered his hand. I hesitated, staring at it as though it were the most important question I'd ever been asked. Then I shook it.
Electricity, or something very like it, surged through me. My heart stuttered. Not with fear. Not with desire. Something else. Something I could not name.
"I'm Adrian," he said.
I almost laughed again at the perfect, effortless sound of his name. Adrian. It fit him. Too perfectly.
"I'm Lara."
The world didn't tilt, but my mind did. Every detail around me seemed to fade; traffic lights, puddles, the neon of the café across the street, everything except him.
I glanced at the door knob of the bookstore, locked!
"Oh, I see the bookstore isn't opened " I said sharply, as if trying to wave off the moment, and I think he caught it
He smiled " Yea, came here for a cool down evening book? "
"Yes, I...I needed a text, " I replied " I'd just have to share with someone tomorrow"
He didn't say anything to my response, just watched me like he was studying a book, and then he offered that we walk out of the place., which I accepted.
We walked together along the street, talking about mundane things at first, the rain, the bookstore, favorite novels. But there was an undercurrent, something dangerous, something that made the edges of the night sharper. I didn't know it then, but I would never forget this walk. Not exactly.
When he paused to look at me under the light of a closed shop, I felt it, a magnetic pull I didn't want to resist.
"You shouldn't stay out too late," he said suddenly, his eyes narrowing slightly.
I laughed, unsure how to respond. "Why? Are you going to stop me?"
"I could try," he said. His voice dropped, low and almost warning. "But I don't think you'd let me."
Something about his words made my stomach twist. But I ignored it. I wanted to.
Then he did something I never expected. He reached out, and for a moment, our hands brushed. The world slowed. My notebook felt heavier in my bag; my shoes heavier on the pavement. All I could feel was the warmth of his hand.
"I should go," he whispered.
"Wait—" My voice trailed off.
And then it happened.
He kissed me.
Not like the kisses you read about in romance novels, soft and tender. This was slow. Deliberate. Like time itself had stopped and left only the two of us suspended in it. I felt the rain against my skin, the cold breeze, the distant traffic, and yet none of it mattered. I only felt him.
And then it was over.
He pulled back abruptly, eyes wide, not with regret but… something else. Fear, maybe?
"I...I should go," he stammered. And before I could ask him what he meant, he was gone.
I stood there for a long time, trying to catch my breath. The city was alive, moving around me, but it felt unreal. My mind swirled with confusion and something else, a tiny, almost imperceptible emptiness.
I reached for my bag and opened it. My notebook. My pen. My keys. All where I had left them. And yet… I couldn't remember why I had come here in the first place.
I frowned. "Why am I standing here?" I muttered to myself.
Something was missing. Something small, but crucial. I tried to think back to the beginning of the evening… to why I had left the my home… to what I was planning to do. And yet… my mind drew a blank.
I shook my head. No. It's nothing. Just a fleeting moment of distraction.
I told myself that. I repeated it. I even laughed at the absurdity of it. Lara, the girl who never forgot, had… forgotten something.
I didn't know it then, but that was the first time.
The first time Adrian's presence had taken something from me, something so small I barely noticed. But it would grow. It would snowball. And it would never stop.
I took a deep breath and started walking back home, shaking off the feeling, trying to convince myself it was nothing.
But the streetlights seemed dimmer now, the rain colder, the city quieter. Every shadow felt sharper, every passing stranger too close. I felt eyes on me, though when I looked, no one was there. Just empty streets and puddles reflecting neon like broken glass.
By the time I reached my apartment, I tried to write in my diary to remember the night. Every detail I could recall, every thought, every word. But when I flipped back to the first page… I couldn't find the memory of the kiss. I remembered walking, talking, and meeting him, but not the part that mattered most.
I stared at the empty lines, my hand frozen over the pen. My chest tightened. That subtle emptiness had not gone away.
And I knew, deep down, that something had changed. Something had shifted.
I wasn't just a girl walking home in the rain anymore. I was a girl who had touched something dangerous, something beyond comprehension.
I didn't know it yet, but Adrian was not just a man. He was the beginning of a chain of events I could not stop, a chain that would take pieces of me I didn't even know I could lose.
And the worst part? I had let him.
I sat by the window that night, staring out at the city, listening to the rain, trying to hold onto every memory I still had. I wrote down what I could remember, desperately hoping I could keep track of myself.
But the more I wrote, the more I realized how fragile it all was.
I didn't know who he was, his life, or the danger he carried. But I knew one thing:
Something in me had changed. And it had started with a kiss.
I turned off the light, clutching my diary to my chest. Sleep was impossible. Thoughts tumbled in my head like storm clouds.
Was it just a kiss?Or had something… taken root inside me?
I didn't know.
But I would find out.
And when I did, nothing would ever be the same.
Yet for the first time in my life… I couldn't remember what it was I had forgotten.