Threadless : A growing novel

"If a picture changes without you touching it,

does that mean it remembered first?"

Rin didn't notice the change at first.

The photograph — the same one they'd kept tucked behind Aro's notes, nearly forgotten again — still showed the three of them. Two visible. One empty outline.

But today, under the sunlight, the blank space had moved.

It was no longer an absence standing beside them.

Now it was sitting on the bench. Legs crossed. Hand on Aro's shoulder.

Head turned just slightly toward Rin — as if looking directly at him.

And though the face was still obscured — smudged like old ink — he felt it smiling.

He didn't tell Aro right away.

Not because he didn't trust her.

But because this didn't feel like something he was supposed to say.

It felt like something that wanted to be discovered together.

Later, in the threadroom, Aro reached for her tools and stopped.

There, in her thread kit — buried beneath rows of color-coded loops — was something that didn't belong.

A small black watch.

Old, ticking faintly.

It had no name. No brand.

And it was wound backward.

She frowned. "...This isn't mine."

Rin, watching her across the room, whispered without realizing:

"I gave it to you once."

She looked up. "What?"

He blinked.

"...I don't know."

That night, Mei sat under the tree humming to herself.

Not for Jun, not for drama, just to keep herself from forgetting.

Kaen approached quietly. "You've been doing that since yesterday."

"Doing what?"

"Humming that tune."

Mei stopped.

"I haven't heard this song in years," she said. "Or... maybe I never heard it at all.

I think it came from someone we used to know.

But I can't find the memory. Just the music."

And somewhere, behind a wall of chalkboards and string maps,

someone else listened to the same song.

The chalk figure sketched in the old room — the one no one remembered drawing —

moved its hand slightly.

Only the shadow saw it.