BETWEEN ME AND YOU

YUAN

The boy stood at the edge of the hallway in his pajamas, clutching a stuffed dinosaur. His big eyes flickered from one parent to the other, sensing the tension in the air. “Are you and Daddy fighting?”

Kristine’s heart clenched. “No, sweetheart,” she said quickly, forcing a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Just… talking.”

Yuan looked uncertain. Then he ran to her, wrapping his tiny arms around her waist. “Don’t cry, Mom.”

Her knees nearly buckled. She hugged him tightly, inhaling the scent of milk and baby soap, feeling his heartbeat against hers. It felt real. So painfully real. “I’m okay,” she whispered against his hair. “Mommy’s okay.”

But Banjo stood frozen, his hands fisting at his sides, watching them, the picture of a family, except one of them didn’t belong.

Later, after Yuan had gone upstairs to play, the silence between them returned, heavier than before. Banjo leaned against the kitchen counter, staring at the cold coffee in his cup. Kristine stood near the window, the photograph still in her hand, her reflection fractured by raindrops sliding down the glass.

“Do you think I don’t want to believe you?” Banjo said finally. “I’ve been praying for months for you to come back to me. I watched you slip away in that hospital bed, Kristine. I begged you to wake up. And when you finally did, I thought it was a miracle.”

He looked up at her, his voice breaking. “Now you’re telling me it was a mistake?”

Her eyes softened. “Maybe it was a different kind of miracle,” she said. “Maybe your wife saved me. Maybe when I died, something of her pulled me back.”

Banjo’s breath caught. “You sound insane.”

She almost laughed... a broken, bitter sound. “You think I haven’t asked myself the same thing?”

He rubbed his temples, exhaustion lining his face. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Neither do I,” she admitted. Her gaze dropped to the pendant at her chest. “But I know this compass doesn’t point to you.”

The words hit him like a punch. He looked at her for a long moment, then turned away, his shoulders trembling.

That night, they barely spoke. The house seemed to breathe with them, heavy, restless, wounded. Banjo stayed in the living room with his laptop open, pretending to work. Kristine sat in the bedroom, tracing the edges of the pendant until her fingers went numb.

Outside, thunder rolled over the city, and the sound reminded her of another storm, another night when she’d run through the streets of Tokyo, soaked to the bone, laughing as Rico held her hand.

“You’re crazy,” he’d said, pulling her under a tin roof.

“You love it,” she’d teased, and he’d kissed her, a kiss so real she could still taste it.

Her breath hitched. She pressed her hand to her chest, as if she could silence the two hearts beating inside her one for Rico, one for Banjo.

Banjo climbed the stairs quietly near midnight. He paused outside the bedroom door, listening. The faint sound of sobbing reached his ears.

He wanted to go in, to hold her, to promise he’d make her whole again. But every time he closed his eyes, he saw her words written across his mind: “Maybe your wife saved me.”

He turned away and went to the guest room instead.

Morning came slow. Pale sunlight seeped through the curtains. Kristine woke with the pendant still clenched in her fist and her pillow damp from tears.

She wandered outside to the veranda, barefoot, the cold tiles grounding her in reality. The city was waking up — distant engines, barking dogs, life moving on.

Banjo stepped out behind her quietly. He looked like he hadn’t slept. “You didn’t come down for dinner,” he said.

“I wasn’t hungry.”

They stood there for a while, side by side, but miles apart. The air smelled of rain and uncertainty.

Finally, Banjo spoke, voice low. “I called the doctor. Maybe we should schedule another evaluation. Just to make sure everything’s okay.”

Kristine turned to him slowly. “You think this is something a doctor can fix?”

“I don’t know,” he said helplessly. “But I have to try. I can’t lose you again.”

Her eyes shimmered. “You already did.”

Banjo looked away, jaw tight. “Then who are you?”

The question hung between them, raw and unanswerable.

Kristine exhaled shakily. “Someone who remembers loving another man in another life. Someone who looks like your wife but feels like a stranger in her own skin.”

He laughed once, bitterly. “That’s not fair.”

“None of this is.”

Yuan’s laughter drifted from inside the house. For a moment, both of them looked toward the sound,the innocent melody of a child untouched by ghosts.

Banjo’s expression softened. “He needs his mother.”

Kristine’s throat tightened. “And I’m trying to be her. But every time he calls me Mom, a part of me feels like I’m stealing someone else’s name.”

He closed the distance between them. “Then let me help you remember.”

“Banjo..."

“Please,” he whispered. “Let’s start over. Even if you don’t remember me, let me make you fall in love again.”

Her eyes glistened with tears. “What if I never do?”

“Then I’ll still stay,” he said. “Because maybe love isn’t about remembering. Maybe it’s about choosing.”

Kristine’s lips parted, but no words came. The morning wind carried the scent of rain and something bittersweet between them. She looked down at the pendant again... to check the compass, but the needle is not moving.

The fog began to lift beyond. But inside the house, two souls stood at the edge of something uncharted, not quite life, not quite the afterlife. Just the fragile, trembling space where love refused to die.

The two spirit of unrested women, for one love. And one body trapped on these fate.

Kristine closed her hand around it and whispered, “Then help me find my way.”