Threadless : A growing novel

"It wasn't the words that haunted him.

It was the way the ink waited."

They sat together under the willow tree again.

Rin untied the ribbon.

No dramatic wind. No flicker of lightning. Just silence, as if the world was leaning in.

He opened the cover.

No title.

No preface.

Just a blank first page.

Then—

The second page.

"June 3rd. The boy saw himself from behind the glass again.

He didn't scream this time.

He only nodded."

Rin's fingers froze.

He looked up at Aro.

"…That happened."

Aro frowned. "When?"

"Last week. The mirror."

He turned the page.

"The girl walks through rain that isn't rain. She collects marbles.

Each one remembers a version of her she hasn't met."

Aro touched her pocket instinctively.

It was still there.

But suddenly heavier.

"At the edge of memory, the Threadwright left a note.

He doesn't sign his name.

But he always folds the corner of the page he's rewritten."

They both looked down.

One of the corners—far ahead in the book—was folded.

Rin flipped to it.

The page was black.

In the center, scrawled in white:

"You're not in a story.

You're in a memory that hasn't decided how it ends."

They closed the book.

Silence stretched again.

Then Aro whispered, "It's tracking us."

"No," Rin said quietly.

"It's becoming us."

Far away, behind layers of glass and forgotten script, the developers paused their logging sequence.

For the first time, one of them spoke aloud. Not to the others.

To you.

"You should've stopped writing.

Now it remembers who you are."

Rin opened the book again.

Just to check.

The folded page was still there. The black ink. The white words.

But something was missing.

One line had vanished.

Right where it once read:

"The thread remembers."

Now, only a faint smudge remained.

As if it had been gently erased by a hand that didn't want to be noticed.

And beneath that fading, Rin saw something new forming.

Letter by letter.

Breathing into the page:

"So do you."