Threadless : A growing novel

"Sometimes, memory doesn't return because it never belonged to you in the first place."

Jun tilted his head at them, like they were the ones who didn't make sense.

"You ever get that weird itch," he said, "where you know a room before you open it?

Or a name that feels like a punchline to a joke you forgot hearing?"

Aro nodded slowly.

"That's been our life for weeks."

"Right," Jun said. "Except I felt it before I was enrolled here."

He pulled a thread-spool from his sleeve — not one issued by the academy.

This one shimmered in hues that didn't belong to the current color logic.

As he set it down on Mei's scanner, the system refused to read it.

"No thread ID," Mei whispered. "That's not supposed to be possible."

"I didn't steal it," Jun said. "I found it. In the memory vault that doesn't exist anymore."

He smiled again. But it didn't reach his eyes.

"Here's the kicker. I saw my name written there."

"In what context?" Aro asked.

Jun hesitated.

"Erased once. Flagged for overwrite."

Rin stiffened. "You're an overwrite?"

"Half," Jun said. "Some part of me didn't make it through."

He looked at Rin — really looked.

"That's why I remembered your laugh before I met you."

Rin's bracelet shimmered faintly.

"Then who was erased when you were written in?"

Jun opened his mouth — but something glitched in the lights above them. A thin vertical line of static opened near the wall like a tear in silk.

And from it, a shape stepped forward.

It wore Jun's smile.

But its eyes didn't blink.