The sky over San Diego was impossibly clear.

  Not a single cloud above, just a flawless stretch of blue that looked almost too perfect—cold in its precision.

  Iris stood beneath it, still.

  People streamed past her outside the subway station, caught in their evening routines. Footsteps, car horns, distant guitar strings from a street musician nearby—all the sounds of life moving forward.

  But for her, time had stopped.

  Because she saw him.

  Theo.

  Her heart didn't race.

  It dropped, silently—like a key falling into deep water.

  He looked exactly as she remembered and nothing like she expected.

  Ordinary. Familiar.

  As if he belonged here, now, with no idea what he’d left behind in another life.

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  Iris couldn’t move.

  The breath in her lungs turned fragile.

  If she called out to him, if she let the moment break—

  would it all shatter?

  So instead, she whispered, lips barely parting.

  “...Theo.”

  He didn’t hear her. Of course not.

  He passed by like any stranger would.

  In this life, Theo didn’t know her.

  She smiled.

  Not out of joy, but in the helpless way a person does when grief and longing arrive at the same time.

  And then, she cried.

  *I didn’t know a name could carry so much of me.

  I saw him again—and in the same breath, I lost him again.*

  She didn’t wipe her tears.

  Letting them fall was the most honest thing she could do.

  Iris followed.

  Not close enough to touch him—never that close.

  But just enough to remember how he walked.

  His back looked exactly the same.

  And somehow, that made everything feel different.

  The city continued around her.

  Sunlight fell in soft gold on the buildings, people laughed into their phones, the world went on.

  But for her—

  it felt like a storm had just passed through her chest.

  And still, she was certain.

  I’ve met him again.

  He doesn’t remember.

  And this... is both a beginning, and another goodbye.