CHAPTER SIX
623 Words
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
The courtyard felt suddenly colder.
Amelia stared at Edward as though he had uttered something impossible, something that did not belong to her life.
“I promised I would never come back?” she repeated quietly.
Edward nodded once.
“You were very certain,” he said. “More certain than I’d ever seen you.”
Amelia looked away.
Oxford surrounded her — the ancient stone walls, the echo of distant bells, the rustle of leaves beneath invisible footsteps. How could she have sworn never to return to a place that felt so strangely alive within her?
“Why?” she asked.
Edward’s fingers tightened slightly around the spine of his book.
“Because staying had become unbearable.”
The words were simple, but they carried weight.
They walked in silence through narrow streets until they reached the edge of Christ Church Meadow. The open fields stretched before them, touched with gold by the fading afternoon light. The river moved slowly, indifferent to human memory and human pain.
Amelia stopped near the water.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
Edward hesitated.
“There are things you were not ready to remember,” he said.
“And you decided that for me?” she asked sharply.
He met her gaze.
“I was afraid,” he admitted.
The confession surprised her.
“Afraid of what?”
“Of losing you again.”
The words lingered between them, fragile and dangerous.
Edward took a slow breath.
“Five years ago,” he began, “you were one of the most brilliant students in your department. Everyone noticed you. You had a rare gift for seeing patterns in stories — meanings others overlooked.”
Amelia listened in silence.
“We were assigned to the same research fellowship,” he continued. “At first, you barely tolerated me.”
She almost laughed.
“That sounds plausible.”
“But slowly,” he said, “we became inseparable.”
His voice softened.
“You told me Oxford felt like destiny. That some places choose us long before we choose them.”
Amelia felt a dull ache in her chest.
“And then?” she asked.
Edward looked toward the river.
“Then you discovered something.”
Her heart skipped.
“Something in the archives,” he said. “A set of documents that were never meant to be found.”
“What documents?”
He turned back to her.
“They suggested that certain students, across decades, had disappeared from Oxford records entirely. Not expelled. Not transferred. Erased.”
Amelia felt a chill creep across her skin.
“Erased?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “And when you looked deeper, you realised something worse.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“What?”
Edward’s eyes met hers.
“You realised that you were one of them.”
The world seemed to tilt.
Amelia stepped back.
“That’s impossible,” she said. “I exist. I’m here.”
Edward nodded slowly.
“That’s what terrified you,” he said. “According to the records, you shouldn’t be.”
Silence fell.
The river continued its quiet journey, unconcerned with revelations.
Amelia’s mind raced.
“If I was erased,” she said slowly, “why do I remember anything at all?”
Edward watched her carefully.
“Because,” he said, “you refused to disappear.”
A gust of wind swept across the meadow, lifting strands of her hair.
For the first time since arriving in Oxford, Amelia felt truly afraid.
Not of the city.
Not of Edward.
But of herself — and the promise she had made to escape something she was only just beginning to understand.
- Writer
