Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 13

I walked through the school grounds with my feet touching the pavement, but my mind… somewhere else.
Not here. Not now.

I didn’t dream again last night. And somehow, the absence of the dream left a deeper hollow than the strange comfort it used to give, that weightless floating, that faceless boy with the soft voice. I never got close enough to see him, yet I miss him like a memory that’s just barely out of reach.

It’s strange how the thing that never made sense is now the only thing I want back. Like how sometimes, pain feels more familiar than peace. Or how the brain clings to illusions when reality becomes too loud.

I wanted to dream again, not for answers, but for the feeling. That suspended breath. That stillness. In a world that constantly demanded me to be present, that dream was the one place I didn’t have to exist for anyone but myself.

Then I saw him.

James.

Sitting under the old mahogany tree, the one that looked like it belonged in a different era, with its roots curling like old hands and its branches reaching out like it was trying to remember the sky. James sat in its shadow, his elbows resting on his knees, fingers pressed together like he was praying to something or trying not to scream.

He wore his black hoodie again, his armor.
He always wore it when he wanted to disappear. To most people, black is a color. To James, it’s a defense mechanism.
A wall. A warning. A retreat. His expression was tight, jaw clenched, eyes flicking up like he was counting clouds or regrets. Frustration swirled around him like smoke. And just like that, the dream boy vanished from my mind. Because this boy, real, broken, present, needed someone.

I ran toward him, faster than I meant to. Not because I thought I could fix whatever was going on, but because I knew what it felt like to sit under a tree and pretend you were fine when you were actually drowning.

"Hey," I said, breath catching slightly. "You okay?"

James looked up, startled, just for a second, then softened when he saw me.
Not completely. But just enough to know I still had a place in his world. He didn’t answer right away. Just shook his head slowly, like words were too heavy to lift.

I sat beside him. Neither of us spoke.

Sometimes silence says more than small talk ever could. I glanced at his hands knuckles red like he’d hit something or held on too tight. I didn’t ask. I could feel his energy, coiled like a spring. He was always like that when something at home went wrong. When his dad's words left bruises deeper than fists ever could. When the pressure of being enough —, good enough, strong enough, invisible enough, finally cracked his surface.

“Do you ever feel like... you’re not inside your life?” I asked quietly.
He turned to me, brow furrowing.
“Like you're watching it from the outside, trying to figure out what you’re supposed to say or do, but the script is always in someone else's hands?”

He stared at me for a moment, then nodded. Just once.
“All the time,” he said.

James pulled at the grass beside his shoes, shredding the blades one by one with restless fingers.

“I get what you mean,” he said after a long silence. “Sometimes I feel like I’m just… playing a version of myself. Like I’m in a movie everyone else is directing, and I don’t even like the character I’m supposed to be.”

I turned toward him slowly. “And if you break the script?”

He let out a breathy laugh, humorless, tired. “Then they rewrite it without me.”

A gust of wind rustled through the branches above us, shaking loose a few dried leaves. They spiraled down between us like punctuation marks to a sentence neither of us could finish.