Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 2

I woke up with my heart racing, breath shallow, like I'd been running in a place I couldn't remember.

The sun hadn't fully risen yet.

Soft orange light filtered through the lace curtains of my window, painting the walls with shadows of morning. The fan spun lazily above me, whining with every third turn, like it was just as tired of pretending as I was. My sheets were tangled around my legs, damp with sweat, though the air was cool.

I sat up slowly, letting the stillness settle around me like fog.

There was a weight in my chest, not grief exactly, not anymore, but a knowing. Something strange. Something felt. Like the faintest fingerprint of a memory I wasn't allowed to keep.

I had dreamed. I knew that much.

But what I dreamed... slipped through my fingers like smoke. All I had was a lingering trace of someone. Not a name. Not a face. Just a presence. The feeling of someone being there, not physically, but in the air, in the pulse beneath my skin.

And a voice.

A boy's voice. Familiar in a way that made my stomach twist. Gentle. Steady.

"Betty."

That was all he said. My name, but like a song someone used to sing just for me. My name, like he missed me.

I tried to hold on to it, but it dissolved. The way dreams do. The more I reached, the more it unraveled. All I had left was the strange throb of my heart, like it remembered what I couldn't.

I lay back down, staring at the ceiling, that cracked old ceiling that now watched me every morning, pretending it belonged to a home. I watched the shadows shift as the sun climbed. My fingers curled over the hem of my blanket, searching for something warm to anchor me, something real.

For a second, I thought I heard the voice again, barely above a whisper, like it was buried in the wind:

"Betty..."

I sat up again.

"Who are you?" I said aloud.

No answer.

Just the quiet hum of the fan. The sleepy rustle of leaves outside. The occasional squawk of a tricycle revving down the road and someone already yelling for pan de sal at the sari-sari store two streets over.

It was morning again.

And still, that name, my name, hung in the air like a secret I hadn't been told yet.

It wasn't the first time I'd woken up feeling like this. Ever since she passed, ever since the world became quieter, hollower, there had been moments where I felt like someone, something, was brushing just beyond the veil of my reality. Like someone I hadn't met yet was looking for me in dreams. Or maybe... remembering me.

I pulled the blanket closer to my chest. I didn't cry. I was past the kind of grief that bled loudly. Now, it lived in me softly. In silence. In the way I hesitated when I woke. In the pause before I stepped out of bed.

And in the quiet ache of my name... spoken like a promise.

"Betty..."

I closed my eyes and breathed in the stillness.

Then I got up.

Because the world never stops for girls like me - even when dreams do.

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The bathroom mirror was still fogged from the warmth of my shower, but I stared into it anyway, dragging a towel through my hair like maybe I could rub the heaviness off my face. My uniform hung loosely on my shoulders, the starch already softened by the humidity. I looked like someone trying to look normal.