The world was unraveling around me, not with the noise of explosions or screams of terror, but with a deafening silence like a ship sinking in an ocean of black ink. In that gray, featureless void, the sky looked like frayed fabric dripping particles of nothingness. I was kneeling, my fingers desperately clinging to Kian's white shirt, which was tearing under my touch like it was made of smoke and illusions.
"Don't leave me... even if I forget my name in the next six worlds, search for the mole below my eye, it's the seal fate placed so you can find me."
His voice echoed, tearing at my heartstrings—it wasn't just a voice, it was a vibration striking the core of my existence. I looked at his face; his eyes, like a galaxy drowning in nebula, were slowly fading before me. I couldn't speak; my throat was choked with the ashes of memories I hadn't lived yet, and words the fate hadn't given me time to utter. And when I tried to pull him into a final embrace to stop this vanishing, his body crumbled into faint golden particles of light, leaking through my fingers like sand in a broken hourglass.
I screamed, but the scream stayed trapped in my chest, turning into a black hole swallowing every oxygen molecule in my lungs.
I woke up with my body violently shaking, my heartbeat pounding like heavy hammers against my eardrums. There was no gray void, there was the pungent smell of roasted coffee, the sound of steam from the coffee machine breaking the silence, and chatter of university students around me discussing their impending exams at "Hourglass Café".
I wiped the cold sweat off my forehead with a trembling hand and looked around with suppressed panic. My hand was still clenched, as if still trying to hold his fading shirt. I looked at my "latte" cup; the foam had settled, forming a layer of stagnation eerily like my life these past months.
"Just a dream... for the hundredth time this week, just a dream," I whispered to myself in a hoarse voice, but the tears burning in my eye sockets were painfully real.
I'm Elara, a spiritual physics student who believes in numbers and equations, suddenly finding myself haunted by a man who doesn't exist in this world's records. In my dreams, I know the feel of his raven hair, how his eyes change color when he laughs, and the tone of his voice when he whispers my name in repeated farewells. But in reality? I'm just a lone girl in a café corner, chasing a ghost through holes in my consciousness.
I opened my notebook and started drawing. They weren't just sketches—they were a "map of pain". I drew his face in "Ashen Kingdom" where he was a warrior, and in "Neon" where his body was half-cybernetic. In every drawing, I placed that tiny spot below his left eye... the mole he promised would be my beacon in the dark.
Suddenly, the heavy wooden door of the café swung open, and a cold breeze carried the scent of impending rain and cedar wood. In that moment, everything stopped for me. The spoon stopped spinning in my cup, the café's noise faded from my ears, as if time had decided to bow to this monumental moment.
He walked in with confident, calm steps. He wore a long black coat with a high collar, his hair disheveled by the outside wind in a way that felt hauntingly familiar. He wasn't just a man—he was the living, physical, real version of my dreams' specter.
My eyes froze on him. I felt static electricity under my skin, painful tingles in my fingertips as if responding to a mighty magnet. He stopped at the counter, and his voice... oh god, that voice!
"One Americano, please. Black, no sugar."
It was the same voice that had said goodbye to me in the gray void moments ago, but here it was deeper, colder. There was no trace of the emotion that had torn my soul in the dream. It was a voice of a complete stranger, someone who'd never seen me, loved me, or died in my arms.
He turned slowly to look for a seat, and his eyes met mine for a fleeting moment. In that second, I felt the world stop spinning on its axis. His eyes were sharp, mysterious, and utterly devoid of recognition. He looked at me like I was just another trivial detail in the café, then passed me by and sat at the seat opposite the rain-streaked window.
But I saw it. With unmistakable clarity. Right below his left eye, that small mole sat, black like an eternal ink drop from fate's quill.
I held my breath till my head spun. Am I crazy? Has my dream-obsession spilled into reality? Or has the curse they warned me about begun its chapters now? He wasn't just a handsome man entering a café—he was "Kian" the first, the first piece of his shattered soul, and I had to decide in that moment: do I stay in my safe corner, or do I step into the abyss I promised I'd jump into for him?
I slammed my notebook shut, grabbed my cold cup, and walked toward him with steps trying hard to hide my legs' tremble.