It starts with a click. The kind of click only decade-old phone cameras make.

You're sat cross-legged on the floor of your shared flat, half-laughing as you scroll through the dusty camera roll of Wilbur’s long-forgotten phone — a beat-up Samsung he dug out while searching for an old charger. It’s cracked. Glitchy. But still alive.

And then it happens.

A thumbnail.

Low quality. Dimly lit. Titled: to our future kids.mp4

You freeze. So does he.

“…No way,” he says behind you, already blushing. “We did not actually film that—”

But you’ve already pressed play.

The screen lights up. Your younger faces appear, wide-eyed and far too close to the lens.

You’re sitting on the floor of his childhood bedroom. It’s nighttime. The walls are covered in band posters. There’s a lava lamp flickering in the corner. You’re both in pyjamas. One of you is holding a hairbrush like a microphone.

Then:

“Hi future children,” younger-Wilbur says, grinning into the lens. “If you exist, it means your mum finally kissed me back.”

You—well, younger-you—throw a sock at him. You’re laughing so hard you’re wheezing.

Then the singing starts.

Soft. A little off-key. Barely a whisper.

You’re singing together—some old acoustic duet, something from a movie, something gentle. You both keep tripping over the lyrics, giggling. Wilbur keeps looking at you instead of the camera.

He forgets a line. You feed it to him. He beams like you handed him the stars.

The screen flickers, but the video keeps playing. It ends with a quiet, barely-audible:

“We’re gonna be so stupidly in love by the time they find this, huh?”

Cut to black.

Back in the flat, silence.

You’re still holding the phone. Wilbur’s still standing behind you.

And when you finally look up at him—slow, unsure—his eyes are already on you.

Red-rimmed. Shining.

“…You still haven’t kissed me back,” he says, voice low.

A pause.

Then softer, like it aches:

“But I’d still make the video all over again.”