Threadless : A growing novel

[Selene, Iris, Alin]

There was no conversation at first.

Only the creaking of the stone beneath them, worn smooth by time and bodies long vanished.

Selene reached into her sleeve and drew out an old card — pressed, faded, its corners curled like forgotten petals. It bore a student number that no longer existed.

"They took you out of the system," she said, handing it to Alin.

"They tried," Alin replied. "But some data resists deletion. Especially the kind that still feels."

Iris leaned back, letting her fingers trail through the dust in the fountain's basin.

"We weren't just friends with Aro," she said, her voice careful. "We were a trio. The frame always had three points. One was missing, but we never looked too hard."

Alin didn't smile, but her eyes softened.

"He looked harder than anyone."

Selene looked up — not at the sky, but past it.

Something had stirred again. A shift, like gravity reorienting itself mid-orbit.

[Aro]

He was standing in a place that didn't have a name. A marketplace that no longer operated, stalls covered in gray sheeting, walls tagged with signs from languages no one remembered writing.

He wasn't shopping. He didn't know why he was there at all.

Until the wind changed.

It wasn't a sound. Not exactly.

It was a pattern recognition impulse — like remembering a scent that had no name but every feeling.

He turned.

Nothing was behind him.

But the ache arrived.

A sudden, sharp yearning in his chest — not the kind that made you cry, but the kind that made you walk faster. The kind that said:

"Someone just remembered you."

He sat down on the edge of a crate and looked at his hands.

They were trembling slightly. Not from fear.

From alignment.

[All Three]

In another part of the recursion, three girls sat in silence.

One who returned. One who never left. One who was never seen, but always known.

And somewhere out of sight, a boy looked up at the clouds and smiled —

not knowing that he was the reason they had gathered again.