Threadless : A growing novel

"You can't be rewritten without leaving a scar somewhere else."

The classroom shimmered. Not with light — with decisions.

Two Juns. One real. One… close enough to pass, if you didn't know where to look.

"Back off," Rin said, stepping in front of Aro. Her bracelet pulsed — a faint, defensive signal. "He's real. You're not."

"What's real is what survives," the duplicate said. "And he only survived because I was removed."

Aro stared at the mimic. There was no malice in its eyes — just emptiness, and the faint reflection of what Jun might've been, if someone else had written him first.

Mei stepped forward, holding up her tablet. The interface flickered, struggled, then synced.

"Thread imprint detected," she said. "Partial overwrite. Archive-locked. Class: Developer-side prototype."

The duplicate turned to her.

"You're not cleared for that scan."

"I never asked," Mei replied.

Jun — the one they knew — walked closer. For once, no joke on his lips.

"If he's a version of me," Jun said slowly, "then does that mean… I was supposed to erase someone else?"

The duplicate smiled, gently.

"You did."

No one moved.

Then, without warning, the mimic stepped backward — and its outline flickered, tearing along invisible seams. As it faded, one whisper echoed:

"I was the thread before the draft.

I was her name… before you forgot it."

Rin dropped to her knees.

Aro reached for her, but she was shaking — not with fear.

With memory.

"He knew something about me," she said.

"Something I haven't remembered yet."

In the corner of the room, Mei's tablet glitched again — not in red, not in system error blue.

But white.

A message blinked, once:

[INTERFERENCE DETECTED – TW//01 SIGNAL ACTIVE]