A long silence settled between them.
"Can I… at least know your name?" he asked, forcing his voice to steady.
This time she blinked, as if the idea surprised her.
"Kaira," she said. "Kaira Arclen."
He repeated it under his breath.
"And how long," he asked, "have you been doing this? Seeing things. Being whatever you are."
Her expression shifted.
"A long time."
"How long is 'long'?"
"One hundred and twelve years."
Evan's breath caught. She didn't look a day over nineteen. Her voice didn't tremble with age. But her eyes… her eyes were old.
"You're serious," he whispered.
Her mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "I wish I weren't."
"Kaira…" he murmured, still not sure the name belonged to a real person. "What am I supposed to do with any of this?"
She stood near the old metal desk, arms folded across her chest. Her posture was steady, but her eyes looked hollow, like someone who had forgotten what rest felt like.
"For now," she said quietly, "just breathe. Processing comes later."
He gave a humorless snort. "Great. Can't wait."
But he tried. He really did.
It didn't help.
"What... what happened to me?"
She knew what he meant immediately
"There are beings from beyond this world" she said. Her voice dropped, almost a whisper. "They despise those like us. They twist probability, warp the world around us. So we.. and the people close to us die quietly."
He felt a cold weight settle in his stomach.
"But..."
Kaira hesitated. A rare crack in her composure.
"They've never tried to kill me directly before," she said. "Not like what happened to you."
"..."
She went on, voice low but certain. "But whatever they did... it cost them. Their influence on this world has weakened. For now, at least."
Silence pressed down on him, thick and suffocating.
Finally, he found his voice. "How do you know all this?"
Kaira exhaled slowly.
"I just… do," she said. "It's the same way you kept feeling that wrongness around you. The pressure. The distortion in the air."
She touched her temple lightly.
"But for me, I can glean more, I'm guessing it's also part of my gift."
"I see," he murmured, though his mind was anything but calm.
She took a small step toward him. "That's why you should—"
"I'm going back," he cut in. "My friends must be worried sick."
Kaira stared at him as if he'd just announced he was stepping in front of a train.
"Didn't you listen to anything I said?" Her voice was sharp, urgent. "Going back will endanger everyone. Your friends, your family, everyone you hold dear will be in danger from merely being in your presence."
"You said it yourself," He shot back "whoever they are, their presence had diminished. And I can't just abandon my life. My classes, my friends… everything. I can't just... leave."
"You think I didn't have a life once?" she whispered, something breaking faintly in her voice. "You think I don't know what it costs to walk away?"
Her eyes locked onto his, steady and solemn.
"You are like me," she said. "And that means you will stop aging. You won't die, and you won't change. The years will pass, and you won't. Everyone you love will grow old, will change, will fade. You will live through all of it. These attachments…" Her breath shuddered. "…they will bring you only pain."
Evan clenched his fists.
"I still can't fully trust everything you're saying. Not yet."
Kaira nodded once—slowly, sadly. "I won't stop you."
"But," she added, her voice turning firm again, "you need to understand what you're walking back into."
He swallowed. "What does that mean?"
Kaira stepped closer, close enough that he could feel a faint warmth radiating from her—similar to the warmth in his own chest, but older, steadier.
"You... you seem to hold the power to heal. That warm presence inside you? It's not just a feeling. It's a gift."
"Understand your gift, master it. Only then, may you have a chance to protect the people you care about."
Her eyes, normally distant, met his with sharp clarity.
"When you return, be weary, trust your senses. And above all," her voice softened "remember this: 'There are no coincidences'"
Evan's pulse quickened. The words felt like a warning and a prophecy all at once.
He steadied his voice. "How do I contact you? If something happens… if I need help…"
Kaira shook her head. "You won't have to."
"That's not an answer."
"I'll be there."
For some reason, he believed her.
"What if there is something I have to deal with myself?"
Kaira hesitated, a flicker of unease crossing her features.
"Then you run," she said. "And you don't look back."
A soft wind rattled the boarded window, filling the silence that followed.
Evan finally stood, the blanket slipping off his shoulders. His legs felt steadier now, though the wrongness coiled somewhere deep inside him, waiting.
"I'm leaving now." He stated.
Kaira didn't reply. She simply watched him with an unreadable expression.
He crossed the room, each step heavier than the last, and pulled the door open, stepping into world that suddenly felt much larger, and far more dangerous than he'd ever imagined.
Just before the door clicked shut, her voice reached him one last time, soft and certain:
"You won't be the same person when you return. Don't expect your old life to fit you anymore."
The cold night air hit him like a slap. The street was mostly empty, washed in the dull glow of scattered streetlamps. He pulled out his phone with hands that still trembled faintly and ordered a cab back to campus.
While he waited, a thought hit him.
How did she even bring me here? This place is over five kilometers away from campus.
He replayed the memory of her slight frame, her tired arms, the way she barely looked strong enough to carry a backpack, let alone a grown man bleeding out.
He wasn't sure whether to be impressed or worried.
The cab rolled up. Evan climbed in without a word. The driver gave him a quick glance in the mirror, as if debating small talk, but whatever he saw in Evan's expression convinced him otherwise.
The city lights blurred past the windows. Evan barely saw them.
His mind kept looping—Kaira's age, her visions, the thing inside his chest, the wrongness in his veins, the beings that wanted him dead simply for existing.
The weight of it pressed down on him until he remembered his phone.
He unlocked it.
50+ missed notifications.
Messages from the group chat.
From classmates.
From Mei.
From Lucien.
From his father.
Most were cheerful, oblivious messages wishing him a happy birthday.
But scattered between the emojis and exclamation marks were the ones that hurt a little more:
"You seemed kinda out of it this morning. Everything good?"
"Where'd you go? You wanna grab dinner? My treat."
Each one felt like someone calling out to a version of him that no longer existed.
He stared at the screen for a long moment, throat tightening.
Right, it was his birthday today, he'd almost forgotten.
He typed out a quick message to the group chat: "Thanks guys. Sorry I disappeared for a bit. I'm okay. Just needed some time to myself."
To Mei: "I'll explain later. Just… don't worry, alright?"
To Lucien:
"Ahhh sorry, man. I decided to stay off my devices for the rest of the day. Maybe next time."
Then to his father: "Love you. I'm fine. Call you tomorrow."
He set the phone down, exhaling slowly.
They didn't know. They couldn't.
The cab pulled to a stop at the curb near his dorm. He paid, stepped out, and scanned the quiet campus. Everything seemed normal and he didn't feel any of the strangeness from that morning.
His senses told him something else.
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
No danger.
Just silence.
He headed toward his building.
Inside his room, he closed the door softly behind him.
He moved straight to his desk drawer and pulled it open. Under a pile of old lecture notes and a cracked calculator was an emergency box cutter he'd once used for moving-day boxes.
It wasn't much of a weapon, but at least it was something.
He set it on his bedside table.
His phone vibrated again.
One new message.
Mei: "You only text like this when something really is wrong. Just... tell me."
Her words tightened something in his chest.He stared at them longer than he meant to.
He placed the phone face-down beside the box cutter and sat on the edge of the bed.
He couldn't.
Not tonight.
Not with the wrongness curling somewhere deep inside him.
Mei had been his friend for over five years.
She deserved more than a half-truth.
Right now, even a half-truth felt impossible.
His body felt heavy, it was as if the day had taken something from him he hadn't realized he needed.
The room was dim, the only light a weak glow from the hallway leaking under the door.
Here, in the quiet, the events of the day finally caught up with him all at once.
Kaira's voice.
The moon.
The warmth in his chest.
The sense that the world had shifted and he hadn't caught up yet.
His breathing slowed.
Exhaustion seeped in, thick and irresistible.
He lay back without changing.The bedsheet felt strangely cold against his skin.
For a moment, he stared at the ceiling, waiting for the wrongness to stir, for some phantom threat to materialize in the dark.
Nothing came.
Just silence.
Eventually, his eyelids grew too heavy to hold open.
And Evan slipped into a sleep— uneasy, dreamless, and deeper than any he'd had in years.