The Theory of the Multiverse

Misadventure

He looked through his shots--from brown to green to blue, like his eyes.

She skimmed through her mother's journal--hoping she'd figure something out.

He was browsing, and so was she when she walked in. Every step was heard against the wooden floor, but hers just faded. He peeked--hoping to see what made her stop. A canvass, it was a canvass. Of course, it was. It conveyed an image of a family yet to become.

His hair was somewhat golden like the rings circling his pupils. Her smile was beyond compare as she looked at the joy none will ever see.

The  painting was half  finished, yet it was cleped, 'For Ever'.

"The universe does not allow perfection." A voice said. She felt his presence quite strangely, uncomfortably, relievedly, disappointedly, miraculously beside her. Though her ears were barred from the sound of reality, she clearly heard what he said, and quite possibly what he wanted to say after that: "It has made an exception."

"Excuse me?" She plugged her earphones off as she turned to the direction of his voice.

He must've drowned in her obscure eyes, for it took him a second or two before saying, "Oh, I was just admiring this painting you've been looking at."

She smiled. She smiled because she knew.

It wasn't the last time they ever crossed paths. For days, she comes back just to see the masterwork she'll never get over with. For days, he comes back just to see the masterpiece he'll never get over with. Days after that, her smile turned somewhat weary. Days after that, his turned too.

One day it just happened like this:

Her smile, her snorts, her face, her laconic expressions--it all came back to him as he pulled his luggage that felt a bit heavier than  how it should've just weighed.

His eyes, his voice, his stories, his defensive denials--it all came back to her as she stood where he used to when they first met.

Everything came flashing back to him and to her as well though so little time they've spent. Every beat of her heart pounded in her ears--louder than every step against the wooden floor, louder than the music she was listening to when he first talked to her. Then suddenly, no beat was heard--just silence, just like how the gallery used to be, just like how the world was before they met.

All along she was troubled by the thought that she is in love. At some point she wondered, "Am I truly in love with him . . . or with someone from the past he only reminded me of . . . or maybe--just maybe--only with the feeling and idea of love?"

It felt to her as though the world somehow changed its rotation: one day he was in love and she was not so she left., and the next she was in love but he was not so he left.