The Confession Page

Chapter 4 - You Were There

I didn't tell Lara about the message.

On the way back to the dormitory, I kept my phone inside my pocket, afraid that if I looked at the screen again, another message would appear. The words were still fresh in my mind.

You should stop asking about Adriana.

I tried convincing myself that it was probably someone playing a cruel prank. Maybe someone had seen us looking through the old forum. Maybe the person behind the confession page knew that Lara and I had been talking about Adriana. There had to be a reasonable explanation.

But no matter how many explanations I came up with, one question remained.

How did they know my number?

I barely slept that night.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the old hallway from the photograph. The dim fluorescent lights. The classroom doors. The red ID lace hanging from the doorknob. And, at the very end of the corridor, the silhouette of a girl standing with her back toward me.

Sometimes I imagined that she turned around.

But every time she did in my mind, I woke up before I could see her face.

The next morning, I went to class exhausted. I tried to focus on the lecture, but the words on the board seemed to blur together. My mind kept returning to the same name.

Adriana.

I had never met her. At least, that's what I kept telling myself.

She had been a student at the university years before I enrolled. There was no reason for me to know her, and yet something about her name felt strangely familiar.

During our break, I checked NU Confessions again.

There were several new posts, most of them ordinary. Someone was looking for a lost wallet. Someone had confessed their feelings for a classmate. Another student was complaining about an upcoming deadline.

Then I saw it.

CONFESSION #8474

I froze.

The post contained only three words.

"You were there."

I stared at the screen.

For a few seconds, I couldn't breathe properly.

There was no explanation. No name. No photograph. Nothing that could tell me who the confession was meant for.

But somehow, I knew.

It was meant for me.

I read the words again.

You were there.

My fingers tightened around my phone.

“No,” I whispered.

I immediately closed the app, but the words remained in my mind. I tried to return to class, but I couldn't concentrate anymore. I kept asking myself the same question.

Where was I?

The answer came without warning.

The hallway.

I suddenly remembered the old building.

Not the photograph.

Something else.

A memory.

I was standing in a hallway.

It was dark, but the lights were still on. I could hear footsteps somewhere behind me. Someone was calling my name, but I couldn't understand what they were saying.

Then I remembered a red ID lace.

It was hanging from a door.

My heart began beating faster.

I closed my eyes, trying to hold on to the memory before it disappeared.

There was a girl.

She was standing a few meters away from me.

I couldn't see her face.

She was saying something.

Something important.

I tried to remember her voice, but the memory became distorted, like a recording being played underwater.

Then came another image.

A classroom door.

A hand reaching for the doorknob.

The red ID lace.

A sudden sound.

Someone crying.

Then everything disappeared.

I opened my eyes.

I was back in the classroom.

My hands were shaking.

“Mika?”

I looked up.

Lara was standing beside my desk.

“You okay?”

I swallowed and nodded. “Yeah. I'm fine.”

She looked at me suspiciously. “You don't look fine.”

“I just didn't sleep well.”

She pulled out the chair beside me and sat down. “Is this about Adriana?”

I didn't answer.

That was enough for her.

“Mika,” she said quietly, “what happened?”

I looked around the classroom. The other students were busy talking among themselves, and the professor hadn't returned yet.

“I think I've seen the hallway before.”

Lara's expression changed.

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know.”

I looked down at my hands.

“I remember being there.”

She stared at me. “When?”

“I don't know.”

“Are you saying you were inside the old building?”

“I think so.”

“But how? You said you didn't recognize it until you saw the photograph.”

“I know.”

I could hear my own heartbeat.

“That’s the problem.”

Lara didn't say anything.

I opened NU Confessions again and showed her the post.

You were there.

Her eyes moved from the screen to me.

“Mika…”

“I think they're telling the truth.”

“You don't know that.”

“I remember something.”

“What?”

I shook my head. “Not enough.”

I wanted to explain everything I had just seen in my memory, but the images were already fading. The harder I tried to hold on to them, the more they slipped away.

There had been a girl.

There had been a hallway.

There had been a red ID lace.

And there had been something else.

Something I was afraid to remember.

That afternoon, I went back to the publication office alone. I told Lara I had work to finish, but the truth was that I needed to find something.

If I had really been there, there had to be some record of it.

I searched through old publication files, photographs, and archived articles. Most of the documents were years old and poorly organized. After nearly an hour, I found a folder containing photographs from an old university event.

I flipped through them one by one.

Students.

Teachers.

Campus activities.

Classroom photographs.

Nothing.

Then I stopped.

One photograph showed a group of students standing outside the old building.

I looked at the date.

It was from several years ago.

My eyes moved across the photograph.

Then my heart stopped.

Near the edge of the group was a girl with medium-length dark hair.

Adriana.

I didn't know how I knew.

There was no caption identifying her.

But I knew it was her.

And standing beside her was another girl.

I moved closer to the photograph.

My breath caught in my throat.

It was me.

Younger.

Standing beside Adriana.

I dropped the photograph onto the desk.

For several seconds, I couldn't move.

I had spent the entire day trying to convince myself that I might have been mistaken.

That maybe the memory wasn't real.

That maybe I had never been inside the old building.

But there I was.

In the photograph.

Standing beside Adriana.

And suddenly, the message on NU Confessions made sense.

You were there.

I stared at the photograph, unable to look away.

Then my phone vibrated.

I didn't want to check it.

But I already knew who it was.

Another message from the unknown number appeared on the screen.

“Now you remember where you met her.”

My hands went cold.

A second message appeared.

“But you still don't remember what you did.”