Threadless : A growing novel

"The world doesn't shift all at once.

It starts with how people look at you."

Classes resumed like nothing had happened.

Same bells.

Same schedules.

Same looped weather patterns.

But everyone was watching them now.

Aro felt it in the halls. People moved aside a little too quickly. Conversations paused a second too long when he and Rin passed. Even the instructors' smiles had changed — stretched too wide or clipped too short.

"We're flagged," he muttered.

"Looped or not, they've noticed the ripple."

"Good," Rin said under her breath.

"That means we touched something real."

She sounded steady. She wasn't. Aro could tell by the way she hadn't touched her bracelet once all morning.

They took new seats in the workshop theory class — third row, center. It was the row without memory seats, which meant what happened there was harder to trace.

Kaen sat behind them, chewing a broken piece of chalk.

Jun was missing. Mei wasn't.

Instead, she arrived late, dragging her chair with unnecessary volume, dropped into it beside Aro, and leaned in.

"So," she whispered.

"What's it feel like, carrying the glitch?"

Aro didn't answer. Rin didn't blink.

"Relax," Mei said, eyes flicking to the corners of the classroom. "I'm not here to report you. I'm here because someone edited your shadow wrong."

"What?" Rin asked.

"You cast two," Mei replied. "One's always a second late."

Aro turned his head slowly. And there it was — their shadows across the tile, but Rin's second shadow blinked.

Just once.

Then it vanished.

"You're being watched by something not from this loop," Mei said.

"And I think it used to be your friend."