The note was still there…
Taped to the wall above my bed, exactly where I'd put it the night I moved in.
Do not fall in love again.
I didn't remember writing it.
That was the thing. I woke up this morning, looked at it the same way I'd looked at it every morning for the past three weeks, and felt nothing familiar. No memory of the pen in my hand. No memory of the feeling that made me write it.
Just the words.
And the knowledge, somewhere deep and wordless, that I'd meant everyone.
I sat up slowly.
Gloves first… Always.
I kept them on the nightstand — thin, dark, worn at the right thumb from habit. I pulled them on before my feet touched the floor. Before I was fully awake.
Some things you don't have to remember to know.
The room was small. A boarding house on the edge of Oakhaven Bay, third floor, its window facing the harbour. I'd chosen it for practical reasons… it was cheap, quiet, and close enough to the water that I could hear it at night.
I hadn't chosen it because it felt like somewhere I'd been before.
But it did.
That was the part I couldn't explain.
My journals were stacked on the desk.
Six of them. Different colours, different sizes. I'd numbered the edges in black marker so I always knew the order. I kept a token system too, a small coded object in a tin beside the stack… a language I'd built for myself when words alone stopped being reliable.
I reached for the tin.
Counted the tokens without looking.
Seven.
Right.
I breathed out.
Seven means I was still me. Or close enough.
My name is Lena Vale.
I write that down every morning. Not because I've forgotten it. But because I've learned not to assume.
I'm twenty-four. I have a curse I didn't ask for, a town I don't fully remember, and a wall above my bed that tells me I've been through something I apparently don't trust myself to repeat.
That's what I know.
The rest I'm still reconstructing.
I made it to the bathroom, washed my face, and avoided the mirror the way I always did first thing.
Not because I didn't recognise myself.
Because sometimes I did, and the recognition felt wrong… like seeing someone else's name written in your own handwriting.
I looked anyway.
Dark circles. Gloves. Hair that needed attention.
Fine, I told myself.
Fine was enough.
I was out the door by seven.
The harbour was grey, cold, and smelled like salt and engine oil. I liked it. It didn't ask anything of me. It just moved.
I walked the same route I'd walked every morning since I arrived. Same turns, same timing. Routine was armour. I'd learned that young and I'd never stopped believing it.
Left at the bottom of the hill.
Past the fish market.
Past the…
I stopped.
There was a man outside the salvage shop.
Standing on the steps like he was waiting for something.
No.
Like he was waiting for me.
I didn't know his face.
That wasn't unusual. I didn't know most faces here, even the ones that looked back at me like they knew mine.
But this was different.
He was looking at me the way people looked at someone they'd been worried about.
Relief. And something underneath the relief that I couldn't name.
He held something in his hand.
A photograph.
"Lena."
My name. From a stranger.
I didn't move.
He came down the steps slowly, like he was being careful not to spook me. Like he'd been told to be careful. Like someone had warned him.
"You don't know who I am," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"No," I said.
He nodded. Something in his expression shifted… not surprise. Confirmation.
"I was afraid of that." He held out the photograph. "My name is Theo Arin. And I think I can help you."
I looked at the photograph.
A woman standing at this harbour. Smiling at whoever was holding the camera.
My face.
My gloves.
My smile… but wider than I ever felt, and aimed at someone I couldn't see.
When was this taken?
Who was I looking at like that?
"You said you'd kept things," he said quietly. "In case you forgot. You asked me to hold them for you."
I looked up from the photograph.
His eyes were steady. Patient. Like a man who had been waiting a long time and had made his peace with waiting.
I should have walked away.
I know that now.
But I looked at that photograph and I looked at him and I thought:
He knows who I was.
And that was enough.
That was exactly enough.
I followed him inside.