This wasn’t a new idea. I’d been searching for
answers since my first therapy session. The
<
sudden appearance of Garrett in my dreams,
the overwhelming grief, the way it spilled into my waking life
–
it was all unnatural. I’d
thought I’d escaped when I detoxed from Ethan. Then came the play, recreating the dream, forcing me to relive the obsession. It was trying to regain control.
To test my theory, I made an excuse to Julian and visited the temple, the one that kept popping up in conversations. The monk, as if expecting me, asked if I was troubled by love. I let him hypnotize me.
The dream extended. I saw my past life with
Garrett. The dream, the knife, the gun
—
it had
all happened before. We loved each other, but we were on opposing sides. Garrett, in a grand
gesture of sacrifice, let me live. I died soon
after, heartbroken. The hypnosis confirmed it:
Ethan was Garrett reincarnated. Everything
pointed to destiny, to rekindling our past love.
く
But I saw something else, too, vague, half-
erased scenes, like someone was trying to
remove them.
“Are those… the life I was supposed to have
with Ethan?” I asked the monk, the life that was
being erased because my detox had prevented
it from happening.
He looked away, chanting, “It is not to be
spoken of.”
By then, I knew. My life was a story. A play. My
emotions, my choices, scripted by someone
else. I was grateful to Julian. He’d made me
question the script, question Garrett’s noble
sacrifice. He’d shown me how to mock destiny.
Now, I knew what to do.
- 14.
Ethan didn’t contact me that night. I worked
く
with the director, finalizing the revised ending.
The next morning, Ethan, still injured, showed
up at the theater. Tears welled up in his eyes as
he saw me. He just stared, lost for words. I sent
a crew member to give him a front–row seat.
The first dress rehearsal felt like it was staged
just for us, a replay of our painful journey, a
way to erase Ethan’s past cruelty. He sat
silently, watching, his demeanor shifting,
becoming more like Garrett with every passing
scene.
I wasn’t acting. The despair, the grief, it was all
real. I cried when Julian kissed me. I felt no
hope when he talked about our future, only
despair. Julian frowned, trying to pull me back,
to break the spell, like in rehearsals. But my
hesitation, my sadness, infected him. The crew
watched in stunned silence as our performance
mirrored the original script, all our
improvisations, our sparks, gone.
く
The play became unbearably bleak. Then came
the climax. My despair consumed Julian. He
embraced me from behind, frisking me,
deliberately ignoring the knife at my waist. He
bit my neck, then kissed me, a desperate,
messy kiss.
The gun pressed against my waist.
“Garrett, are you going to do it?”
“Bang.”
I slashed Julian’s throat. Blood bloomed. He
smiled triumphantly. “Nancy, don’t forget me!”
Lost in the moment, the dream and the play
blurring, I sobbed. Ethan, in the front row, was
crying, too. I saw certainty in his eyes, a sad,
unwavering certainty. He thought I still loved
him, that we were destined to be together. Our
shared dream, our mirrored heartbreak,
connected us
<
The pain in my chest was almost enough to
convince me, too.
Then Julian sat up.
