Evan woke up to his alarm screaming like it hated him personally.
7:42 AM.
Late.
Again.
He slapped his phone. Missed. Slapped it again. Nailed it.
Silence.
He stayed still for a moment, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the world to collapse.
It didn't.
No darkness swallowing him whole. No impossible light. No stone digging into his cheek.
Just the fan humming overhead and the smell of breakfast drifting in from the kitchen.
"…Wow," he muttered. "After yesterday, this feels disrespectful."
Suspicious
He sat up.
Everything felt normal.
Which immediately made it worse.
He lifted his hands.
Clean. Steady. No blood.
Good.
Then he noticed the bedsheet.
A thin tear near the edge, like fabric stressed too far and given up quietly.
Evan frowned. "I don't remember doing that."
The sheet remained uncooperative.
---
The bathroom mirror greeted him with the same tired version of himself:
messy hair, tired eyes, shoulders slightly hunched like he was bracing for an apology he hadn't made yet.
He splashed cold water on his face.
Cold. Real.
For half a second—just long enough to register—his reflection didn't blink when he did.
His stomach dropped.
Then it blinked. Late.
"…Nope," Evan said calmly, gripping the sink. "We're not starting the day like this."
The mirror behaved.
Good enough.
He straightened, exhaled, and decided that if his brain wanted to fall apart, it could schedule an appointment like everything else.
---
School was loud.
Not chaotic—functionally loud. The kind where everyone seemed to know where they were going and why they existed there.
Evan slid into his seat by the window, headphones in without music. His usual disguise.
Lyra turned around and waved.
He waved back—slower, awkward, but real.
She smiled.
That helped more than he was comfortable admitting.
---
Classes passed.
Math. Physics. History.
His notes were… fine.
Too fine.
Halfway through, he noticed thin lines creeping through the margins of his notebook. Cracks. Branching outward.
He didn't remember drawing them.
Lyra leaned over during lunch. "You always doodle like that?"
"Like what?" Evan asked.
She pointed.
His stomach tightened.
He shut the notebook. "Guess my brain needs better supervision."
She laughed. Not politely. Genuinely.
"Walk with me after school?"
"…Yeah," he said. "Sure."
---
They split at the gate.
"Tomorrow," she said.
"Tomorrow," he replied.
He turned—
Stopped.
"…My diary."
His pulse jumped.
He turned and jogged back inside the school, halls stretching longer than they should've.
Lights flickered.
"Relax," he muttered. "Old building. Bad wiring. Definitely not ominous."
The classroom door creaked open.
Desk. Chair.
Diary still there.
Relief hit him hard enough that he had to sit down.
He picked it up, holding it closer than necessary.
This wasn't just a notebook.
This was where his thoughts went when they didn't want witnesses.
As he stood, something felt wrong.
The weight.
He opened it.
There was a page he didn't remember writing.
Fresh. Clean.
His handwriting stared back at him—but steadier. Like someone who didn't hesitate halfway through a sentence.
At the center was a sketch.
Stone ground.
Shadows stretching in directions light shouldn't allow.
A sky that felt heavy, even on paper.
Evan swallowed.
"I didn't draw this," he whispered.
At the bottom of the page, one line waited.
Next time, don't hesitate.
His handwriting.
Not his memory.
He closed the diary slowly.
"…Great," he said under his breath. "Even my subconscious has expectations now."
The lights stopped flickering.
The hallway felt normal again.
Everything looked fine.
---
Evan slid the diary into his bag and stepped outside.
The evening air was warm. Ordinary. Comfortingly indifferent.
People passed him—laughing, arguing, living lives that hadn't recently tried to overwrite themselves. A dog barked somewhere. A shop shutter rattled closed.
Normal.
Too normal.
As he walked, he became aware of a strange sensation, like a thread tied somewhere behind his ribs—tugging, not painfully, just… persistently. As if something far away had noticed he was still standing.
He adjusted his bag on his shoulder.
"Relax," he murmured. "Cool. Apparently this thing comes in sequels."
The streetlights flickered on, one by one.
For a moment, in the glass of a parked car, he thought he saw a different sky reflected back at him—darker, heavier, wrong.
Then it was gone.
Evan kept walking.
But his hand never left the strap of his bag.
And for the first time, he had the uneasy feeling that whatever had found him yesterday wasn't chasing him anymore.
It was walking alongside him.
Quiet.
Patient.
Waiting.