The morning was wrong.
Frei knew it the second he opened his eyes.
His phone's alarm hadn't gone off. The light through the window was too white, like someone had taken the sun and desaturated it in Photoshop. Outside, the street was silent. No traffic. No people. No birds.
He sat up.
His sketchbook was gone from the drawer he locked it in.
In the kitchen, the kettle clicked on before he touched it.
Steam hissed up.
Frei stepped back, unsettled.
It wasn't a ghost. He didn't believe in ghosts.
But something was happening
something mechanical, cold, intentional.
Like someone was watching him from behind a glass wall.
He made it out into the city around 11:30.
Only to realize it was the exact same weather as the day before. Same clouds, same broken umbrella on the sidewalk, same newspaper headline blowing across his shoe.
He reached the train station.
A chill hit him as he looked across the platform.
She was there again.
Same pose. Same spot. Same unreadable expression.
But this time, when he looked up at the digital schedule board, it glitched.
Flashed something that didn't belong.
REPEAT.
REPEAT.
REPEAT.
And then it was gone.
The train whooshed past between them.
When it passed...
She was gone again.
Frei staggered backward, dazed.
An elderly woman brushed past him, muttering to herself in a rhythmic loop:
"You'll forget again... You'll forget again... You'll forget again..."
He spun around.
She was gone.
No one noticed.
Not even the security guard who stood perfectly still, not blinking, staring at nothing.
He returned home, heart pounding.
As he opened his front door, a faint smell of ink hit his nose. Not regular ink. That strange, chemical scent from old books left in sunlit attics.
The sketchbook was lying open on the table.
Not in the drawer.
The drawing of the woman had changed—her eyes were no longer looking straight ahead. Now, they looked upward, toward something drawn faintly above her: strings.
Thin, nearly invisible strings, holding her like a marionette.
And beneath her:
"Everything is written. Until it isn't."
He grabbed the sketchbook and threw it across the room.
It hit the wall, slid down, pages fluttering.
He didn't sleep that night.
But something else did.
*Later that Week*
Dr. Maeda's office was warmly lit. Too warmly lit.
Frei sat across from him, rubbing his temples, eyes red.
"I think I'm stuck in something," he said quietly. "Time feels broken. People are repeating. Objects move. I... I don't think I'm dreaming, but it feels like someone is pulling my life out of a drawer and hitting 'play' again and again."
Dr. Maeda didn't blink. He folded his hands on his desk.
"That's a common disassociation symptom," he said smoothly. "Looping perception. Déjà vu. Depression can fragment the mind's ability to trust the present moment."
Frei shook his head. "It's not that."
Dr. Maeda leaned forward. "Frei, do you think the world is real?"
The question startled him.
"What?"
"Do you think you are real?"
Frei's mouth opened.
Closed.
He had no answer.
...
At 2:46 a.m., Frei woke to a high-pitched sound.
He didn't know why he checked his computer.
Maybe because it was already on.
There was a folder open on his desktop that hadn't been there before.
/xznx_l/temp_drafts/
Inside: A single document.
"chapter3_loop.txt"
He clicked it.
Lines scrolled by. Lines he hadn't typed. Words he hadn't written.
But they were his thoughts. His movements. His dialogue from therapy. His argument with himself. Even now, as he read it-
This moment was being typed.
"Frei sat at the desk, staring in disbelief, as the file documented every thought forming in his mind, real-time, like a mirror made of words."
His hands started shaking.
He scrolled down.
The final line was just written:
"He looked behind him."
And even though he didn't want to...
Even though every nerve in his body screamed don't do it—
He looked behind him.
No one was there.
But in the reflection on the window...
He saw a second version of himself.
Sitting at the desk.
Smiling.
BINABASA MO ANG
Factured Strings
Mystery / ThrillerFrei, a tall, reclusive man living in modern Tokyo, battles with depression and dissociation. As his life spirals into surreal events and strange encounters, he begins to uncover disturbing truths about himself, memory, and reality. Slowly, he reali...
