ECHO BETWEEN TWO HEARTS
1427 Words
The air in the house was thinner that evening.
Not because of the weather, the rain had stopped, the fog had lifted, but because everything between them felt breakable now, like glass stretched too far.
Banjo had gone to the market with Yuan, promising to bring home Kristine’s favorite pastries, as though small, ordinary things could fix something so deeply unordinary.
Kristine stayed behind, pacing through the quiet house, fingers brushing along the walls like she was tracing memories that weren’t hers.
Every photo felt like evidence of a crime she didn’t remember or committing.
Wedding pictures. Birthday candles. Trips to Tagaytay and Siargao.
Her face was in every one of them, smiling beside Banjo, and holding Yuan... but behind the smile, she saw someone else staring back.
Someone who wasn’t her.
She paused in front of a framed photo of their wedding. The woman in white looked radiant, her eyes glimmering with the kind of love Kristine wanted to remember. She lifted the frame, searching for a trace of herself in it, but all she saw was the ghost of a stranger.
Then she heard it... a faint whisper, low and distant.
“Kristine…”
She froze. The sound wasn’t Banjo’s voice. It was softer, deeper... and familiar in a way that made her heart stumble.
“Rico?” she whispered back, catching her breath.
The whisper seemed to come from everywhere at once, the walls, the air, the beating pulse beneath her skin.
“I’m here.”
The photo frame slipped from her hands and shattered against the floor.
Glass scattered like fragments of memory.
Her vision blurred, the edges of the room rippling like water. For a heartbeat, she wasn’t in the house anymore.
She was back in Tokyo.
The neon lights glowed outside her hospital window, the smell of antiseptic sharp in her nose. Machines beeped rhythmically beside her. She could see her own hand... pale, trembling, and another hand clutching it tightly.
Rico’s.
He looked tired, eyes red from nights without sleep. “Please,” he said softly. “Don’t leave me, Kris.”
Tears stung her eyes. “I don’t want to,” she whispered back. “But I can’t feel my heart anymore.”
He pressed her hand to his lips. “Then let mine beat for you.”
And then... flatline. The sound that ended everything.
Kristine gasped and stumbled back into the present.
Her knees crashed onto the floor, and the living room came back into view, the shards of glass sparkling like ice beneath her. Her chest ached, and her heart raced. She clutched her pendant tightly, holding it like a lifeline. For the first time since waking from the coma, the compass inside it quivered, and the needle began to move.
It pointed toward the front door.
“Kristine?”
Banjo’s voice startled her. She looked up, he was standing in the doorway, holding a paper bag, Yuan clinging to his leg. His face paled when he saw the shattered photo. “What happened?”
“I…” she swallowed. “I heard something. Someone.”
Banjo’s gaze darted to the compass, then to her trembling hands. He placed the bag on the table and knelt beside her. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine,” she lied.
He reached for her hand, but she flinched, the movement so small, but it felt like a wall rising between them.
Banjo froze, the rejection cutting through him.
Yuan peeked from behind his leg, his small voice uncertain. “Mom? Are you okay?”
Kristine forced a smile again. “Yes, sweetheart. Mommy’s just… dizzy.”
Yuan stepped forward, offering her his dinosaur toy. “You can hold Dino when you’re scared.”
The innocence of it broke her. She hugged him tightly, whispering a thank-you against his hair.
Banjo Gomez watched them...his wife, his son, the family he’d almost lost... and yet the woman before him wasn’t the same. There was a distance in her eyes that even love couldn’t cross.
That night, after Yuan had fallen asleep, Banjo found Kristine sitting on the veranda again.
The city glowed faintly under a half-moon. She held the compass pendant up to the light, watching it spin and tremble like it had a will of its own.
“Can we talk?” Banjo asked quietly.
She nodded, without looking at him.
Banjo sat beside her. The silence stretched for long seconds before he spoke again. “When you were gone… I used to sit out here every night. I couldn’t sleep. I’d imagine hearing your voice, your footsteps... even your laugh. I thought if I wanted it enough, maybe God would bring you back.”
Kristine lowered the pendant. “Maybe He did. Just not the way you expected.”
Banjo’s throat tightened. “You really believe you’re someone else?”
She looked at him... really looked, and the sorrow in her eyes made his chest ache.
“I don’t want to believe it,” she whispered. “But every time I close my eyes, I see his face. Rico. I feel his touch, his warmth. His goodbye. How can I explain that, Banjo?”
Banjo exhaled slowly. “Then let’s find out. If there’s something, someone... inside you, I want to understand it.”
She turned to him, startled. “You’d really do that?”
“I’d do anything to keep you,” he said, his voice raw. “Even if it means chasing a ghost.”
The next day, they went to the hospital where Kristine had been treated.
The white walls felt sterile, but the smell of antiseptic triggered something deep inside her. Her palms grew clammy.
Dr. Dela Cruz, the neurologist, greeted them with polite warmth and confusion. “You’re looking better, Kristine. How have you been feeling?”
“She’s been remembering… things,” Banjo said carefully. “But not her old life.”
Dr. Dela Cruz raised a brow. “What kind of things?”
Kristine hesitated. “Another life. Another city. A man named Rico. I can remember how he died... how I died, and then waking up here.”
The doctor studied her quietly. “And these memories, they feel… real?”
“They are real,” Kristine whispered. “I can smell the rain. I can hear the trains in Tokyo. I know his voice.”
The doctor scribbled notes. “It’s possible these are confabulations, the brain’s way of filling memory gaps after trauma. But…” He glanced at the pendant she held. “You said this compass moved?”
Banjo frowned. “It’s just jewelry.”
Dr. Dela Cruz leaned closer. “Sometimes, our minds anchor emotions to objects. Maybe that compass triggers her subconscious memories.”
Kristine looked down at it, the needle quivered slightly, pointing east.
Something cold crawled up her spine. “No. It’s not my me. It’s him. He’s calling me.”
That evening, back home, Banjo sat on the couch with his head in his hands.
He’d held her through sickness, through grief... but this was something else. Something beyond logic.
Upstairs, Kristine stood before the mirror, the compass glowing faintly in the dim light.
Her reflection flickered, for a moment, she saw her face shift, soften, and behind it, another woman’s outline.... it's the other Kristine. The real Mrs. Kristine Gomez
Her breath hitched. “Who are you?” she whispered to her reflection.
The woman in the mirror smiled faintly.
"I'm you. But not only you"
Kristine stepped back, trembling. “What do you want from me?”
"To remember what love costs," the voice inside her murmured. "To understand why you came back..."
She closed her eyes, clutching the pendant until her fingers ached.
Downstairs, Banjo heard she whisper a name, but not his name.
“Rico…”
He pressed a fist to his mouth, silent tears burning his eyes.
That night, sleep didn’t come, or either both of them.
Banjo was wide awake in the guest room, his restless breathing echoing softly through the walls.
While Kristine is still awake, sat by the window, the compass glowing faintly on her palm.
Two lives. Two loves.
There was a truth that drew them together, something that neither heaven nor earth could fully understand.
Outside, the thunder rumbled once more... soft and far away, as if the very world was paying attention.
And in the dark, a voice whispered once more:
“I’m still here.”
Kristine’s tears fell silently. "I know,” she breathed. “But for how long?”
- Writer
