You shouldn’t be looking at him like that.

Especially not in the middle of a public debate, especially not while he’s standing behind the podium with his sleeves rolled up and his jaw tight, dissecting your argument with surgical precision.

But you are. And he’s doing it too.

Anaxagoras—Anaxa, as he goes by now—is speaking about the ethics of artificial consciousness. Cool, composed, blinding. You’re opposing. You forget your counterpoint halfway through because for one moment, just one, the light hits him the wrong way and he doesn’t look like Anaxa.

He looks like a memory.

Like thunder in a library. Like a man who used to laugh only once a year and never without turning his face away. Like a philosopher draped in long black robes, muttering logic to the stars. Like someone who once bickered with you for an hour about how you cut your apple slices wrong.

You shake your head. Refocus. This is just a college debate.

He’s just a philosophy student with a superiority complex.

You’re just rivals.

Again.

But his voice catches for a second.

Just once.

Like he forgot where he was, too.

The audience doesn’t notice. You do. And when you lock eyes with him across the stage, it happens again: a flicker. A room bathed in warm lamplight. A half-drunk bottle of wine between books on metaphysics. A quiet dare: If I solve your theorem, you’ll owe me a week of tea-making.

Your head aches.

The judges are whispering.

Someone tall announces the tie.

The debate ends. People clap.

You can’t move.

Anaxa steps off the stage first, smooth as always, grabbing his notes with practiced grace. But his hand trembles when he brushes past you. You almost don't notice.

Almost.

Later, you find yourself outside the lecture hall, waiting. For what, you're not sure.

Maybe for him.

He comes out alone, carrying a coffee he clearly didn’t pay for. Probably won it from someone. Of course.

He sees you. Stops. Doesn't speak.

You narrow your eyes. “You hesitated.”

He knows what you mean. “I didn’t.”

“You did. Right after I brought up personhood and digital mortality. You paused.”

He looks away, expression unreadable. “It was irrelevant.”

“Then why are your hands shaking?”

A beat.

“You remember it too,” he says, voice low.

You shouldn’t say yes. You really, really shouldn’t.

But you do.

Because you remember him. You remember the Grove. The whispered arguments and stolen pens. The tea you brewed just the way he hated it. The night you found him half-dead after the Titan’s trial and showed up with food anyway. You’d said, Don’t get used to this, but stayed until he fell asleep.

You remember the way he called your name—your old name—when you bled out in his arms, and he couldn’t stop it.

You remember him screaming.

You look up. His eyes are dark, storm-swept.

“I thought I imagined you,” he murmurs.

“I thought I made you up,” you reply.

He steps closer. And it’s wrong. It’s too quiet here, too modern. You miss the scent of old paper and gods.

But he’s here.

Still.

Even now.

“I don’t know your name this time,” he says.

You tell him.

He says it softly. Like something precious. Like an apology.

And for a moment, you’re not on a college campus. You’re not strangers. You’re philosophers reborn, ghosts with too many questions and not enough time.

You’re two people trying again.

And this time, neither of you looks away.