The heart buried in her name
635 Words
Rin’s voice was barely a whisper. “Everything… like what?”
Akira didn’t move.
He stood there at the end of the ruined hallway, the shadows stretching around him like the weight of a memory too heavy to speak aloud.
“Like who you were before,” he said. “Before this body. Before this name.”
Rin shook her head. “I’m not anyone else. I’m just—me.”
His eyes flicked to her collarbone where the third mark had stopped glowing. “That’s what we told ourselves too.”
She took a step forward. “You’re not making sense.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he walked toward her. Slow. Careful. As if she might vanish again, or worse—become someone else entirely.
When he stopped just inches away, she saw it in his eyes.
Grief.
Not the kind you feel when you lose someone.
The kind you carry when you’ve lost them again and again.
“You died in my arms,” he said quietly. “Not just once. Over and over. In different cities. Different names. But always the same eyes.”
She stared at him, heart racing.
He touched her cheek, gently. As if this version of her might break too.
“You were called Noor once. Then Aira. Then Lian. You always found me. Or I found you. And it always ended the same.”
Rin’s hands clenched around the fabric of his blazer she still held.
“Noor,” she repeated. “That name… it feels…”
She couldn’t finish.
Because it did feel.
Like a key that fit inside a lock buried in her chest. Like the echo of someone calling her from deep water.
“That’s why I knew you the moment I saw you,” Akira said. “Even before the marks woke up.”
She wanted to scream. To cry. To deny it.
But the tears didn’t fall.
They burned.
The mirror’s words echoed again.
“You sealed me away.”
She looked up at him, voice tight. “So who did I used to be? Some kind of curse?”
Akira didn’t answer immediately.
His silence was too long.
And when he finally did speak, it wasn’t what she expected.
“You were the storm they couldn’t kill.”
“What?”
He let out a breath that sounded like a prayer and a confession.
“They called you the Heart-Binder. A soul that never stays dead. The reason I was marked.”
“The reason you’re hunted,” he added, barely louder than the wind.
Rin stumbled back. “You’re saying this is all because of me?”
“No,” he said quickly. “It’s not your fault.”
“It’s your existence.”
Something rustled.
Both their heads turned.
Down the hallway, a figure appeared.
Not a student.
Not anything human.
A long cloak dragged the ground, and its face was hidden beneath a mask cracked in the middle, one side laughing, the other weeping.
Akira pushed Rin behind him.
“Don’t look at its eyes,” he said.
The masked figure tilted its head. It was humming something now. A lullaby, broken and wrong, like it had forgotten the ending.
“What is that?” Rin whispered.
“One of them,” Akira said. “The ones who remember what you were. What we both were.”
The creature raised its hand.
And from its fingertips, black threads spilled out like smoke.
Akira grabbed Rin’s hand. “Run.”
They bolted, feet pounding through the splintered tiles and broken glass.
The hall stretched longer than it should’ve. The lights blinked out behind them, one by one.
And the lullaby grew louder.
Almost sweet.
Almost loving.
But Rin knew, deep down—
It was meant to lure her back.
- Writer
