Red Strings of Destiny

Chapter 8

Even after Ysabel was discharged from the hospital, Kaizer never left her side.

Day after day, he visited her home, bringing her favorite snacks, telling her stories of their childhood—their memories.

He would sit beside her on the couch, an old photo album in his lap.

“This,” Kaizer pointed at a picture of two messy-haired kids sitting on a sidewalk, eating ice cream, “was the day you cried because I dropped my ice cream cone. So, you gave me yours and told me that best friends share everything.”

Ysabel stared at the photo.

The little girl in the picture had her face, but the memory was absent from her mind.

Still—something inside her believed him.

She glanced at Kaizer. His eyes never lied.

She flipped another page, stopping at a picture of them in middle school—Kaizer scowling at the camera while she flashed a mischievous grin, holding up rabbit ears behind his head.

“You were annoying,” he muttered with a small smile, “but I still couldn’t get rid of you.”

Ysabel chuckled lightly. She didn’t remember, but somehow… it felt right.

She trusted him.

And even if her memories were gone, deep down—she wanted to remember.

Ysabel never remembered him.

Not fully, at least.

For a while after being discharged from the hospital, Kaizer was there. He visited her every day, showing her pictures, telling her stories, trying to bring back something—anything.

And she had trusted him.

She believed his stories. Believed in the warmth in his voice, the sadness in his eyes when she failed to recall the things he so desperately wanted her to remember.

But then—one day, he stopped coming.

No calls. No texts. No knocks on her door.

At first, she thought maybe he was busy. Maybe he had exams, or maybe something urgent came up. He would come back.

But days passed. Then weeks. Then months.

And eventually, Ysabel stopped expecting him.

Just like that—Kaizer faded from her life, like a whisper in the wind, like a dream that slipped through her fingers the moment she woke up.

And eventually, she forgot him.

She moved forward. She had to.

She studied relentlessly to make up for the time she had lost, poured herself into books and late-night writing sessions, driven by an unfamiliar, unshakable determination.

And before she knew it, she had become an author.

Her words—once just scribbles in the margins of notebooks—became something more. They turned into stories that touched hearts, that made people feel.

One of her biggest hits was a novel that had taken years to write. It was her most ambitious project yet, a story about childhood friends, love lost and found.

But something was strange.

There were moments when she was writing—late at night, when the only light came from her laptop screen—where she would stop, heart aching for no reason.

Like something was missing.

The sound of fingers tapping against a keyboard filled the quiet room.

Ysabel sat at her desk, eyes focused on the screen as words spilled from her mind onto the document. The faint glow of her desk lamp illuminated the scattered notes and half-empty coffee cups that littered her workspace. She had been writing for hours, lost in the world of her story. But then, without warning, her fingers froze.