Threadless : A growing novel

"Some watches tell time.

Others tell you when you were loved."

Aro wore the watch.

Not because she believed in its meaning — not yet — but because it felt like it wanted to be worn.

The ticking wasn't steady.

It pulsed.

Not in seconds, but in moments.

Every time it ticked, she felt a pull — a flicker of thought, a scent, a word not spoken yet.

At breakfast, she reached for a spoon — but found herself holding the same kind of spoon she used to use in Workshop Year 1.

Except she'd never attended Workshop Year 1.

Not in this version.

Jun noticed first.

"Hey, where'd you get that?"

Aro blinked. "What?"

"The old-issue ones. Those haven't been around in… wait—"

He tilted his head. "How do I remember that?"

Aro looked at the watch.

It was ticking backward again.

Later, during class, she looked at Rin's handwriting and remembered how it used to slant more to the left — how he once wrote her name over and over in a notebook neither of them currently owned.

She wasn't hallucinating.

She was experiencing memories from a previous loop.

Ones that had never fully faded.

Ones still bound to the watch.

She met Mei after school. Quietly.

"Mei," she said. "Did we ever… meet before all this? I mean— before the academy?"

Mei didn't answer right away. Instead, she plucked a thread from Aro's shoulder — one that hadn't been there seconds ago.

It was violet.

Not from any current thread kit.

She held it up to the light.

"You're remembering him, aren't you?" Mei whispered.

Aro froze.

"I don't know his name."

"That's okay," Mei smiled, sadly.

"He still knows yours."

That night, Rin returned to the photo again.

This time, the smudge on the third figure's face had cleared just enough to see the shape of a jaw. A collar.

Something about the way he leaned — the softness of it.

Rin's hand trembled.

"I... used to wait for him," he whispered.

The photo didn't reply.

But the ink in the background shimmered faintly — like someone had written over it once and then erased the message, but the emotion had stayed.

In the distant thread archive, behind an old wall panel,

a name began to write itself in reversed ink:

Rȅ̷̟m̶͓̈́͘ͅe̴̟͇͊̚m̵͖͈̕͘b̷̡̂̐e̶̖̹̅r̷̩̈́...

The developers saw it.

They reached for the purge protocol.

But this time, the system hesitated.