- Me, to You (When I Forgot Again)
© 2025 Kaela Seraphine. All Rights Reserved
Seat 8 always smelled faintly of sandalwood and longing.
This time, it smelled like Yeon.
She was already there—beret tilted, scarf draped loosely around her neck, sipping espresso like this was a Parisian café instead of a bus stuck somewhere between time and dreams. Her eyes scanned the foggy window like it was a painting only she could interpret.
I paused beside the booth, unsure if I was invited. Or intruding.
She didn’t look at me when she spoke. “Sit, darling. Before the silence gets too loud.”
I slid into the seat.
She glanced over her sunglasses, her lips curled into a Mona Lisa smirk. “Still dramatic, I see.”
“You remember me?”
She tapped her finger against the lid of her notebook. “I remember the version of you that used to write me poems and never finished a single one.”
I swallowed. “That… sounds like me.”
She raised a perfectly sculpted brow. “Tragic. And charming.”
The bus creaked forward. We stayed still.
Yeon reached into her coat and pulled out a small envelope. Cream-colored. Wax-sealed. My name scrawled across it in handwriting I knew wasn’t mine… but still felt familiar.
“What is this?” I asked.
She pushed it across the table. “A letter you never sent. From the second loop.”
I opened it carefully. Inside: a poem.
If your name is the sound my heart makes, Then I have been speaking you in silence for centuries.
My hands shook.
“You wrote this?” I asked.
“No,” she said softly. “You did.”
My eyes snapped to hers. “Then why do you have it?”
Yeon gave a quiet sigh, like the answer itself was a kind of pain. “Because I keep collecting the versions of you who almost remember. I can’t let them disappear.”
“You sound like you’ve done this… a lot.”
She smiled, wistful. “Three times I watched you fall for me. Two times, I watched you forget. Once, I was the one who ran.”
“Why?”
Yeon rested her chin in her palm. “Because you asked me to. You said if I stayed, the loop would trap us both forever.”