Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I don’t belong anywhere anymore. Not to any timeline, not to any place. I move between them—slip in, slip out and yet I remain the same. My memories stay with me. My name, my face, the weight of everything I’ve lived through. The pod made sure of that.

Sometimes I think I should have given it back to The Courier a long time ago. I promised I would. But as long as it’s still with me, I can’t stay too long in one place. The longer I linger, the greater the risk that someone finds it and uses it for something cruel. I’ve seen what desperation can do to people. I won’t let that happen again.

Sansorina is gone. I’ve accepted that—or at least I’m trying to. But there’s Pilar. My daughter. The one I can’t stop thinking about, even when I try to convince myself that she’s fine without me. And she is. She’s in good hands. I make sure of it, even if she never knows I’m there. I only watch from a distance, just long enough to see her safe before I drift away again. I can’t risk breaking her reality.

But drifting has its dangers, too. Every timeline shows me a different version of Sansorina. In one, she’s alive and laughing. In another, she never met me. In some, she doesn’t even exist. I tell myself I’m just checking—that I’ll stay invisible, that I won’t interfere. Just a glimpse, that’s all.

And yet, sometimes I break that promise. Sometimes the silence is too much, and I just want to hear her voice again—even if it’s not my Sansorina’s voice anymore. I remind myself that I’m only a fragment now. No one, nowhere, almost nothing. But if that’s the price for keeping them safe, then I’ll keep drifting. I’ll keep watching. And when the time comes, I’ll give the pod back.

Maybe then, I can finally rest.

Chapter Text

The moment I stepped out of the pod, the stench hit me like a slap.

Rot. Rust. Sewage. Manila but not the one I remembered from any polished version of the past. This was the underbelly, slick with rain and survival.

I scrunched my nose and squinted into the dark. Something clanged nearby, metal on metal, sharp and echoing down the narrow passage. I froze. A child? A rat? Hard to tell. The air was thick with the hum of electricity bleeding from bundled wires overhead, tangled like veins feeding this broken place.

The pod adjusted its hum and drifted higher above me, cautious. It couldn’t risk brushing against the nests of cable or the hanging laundry lines that dripped muddy water onto my shoulders. I sighed, straightened up, and fixed my clothes—black silk shirt, tucked neatly into pressed slacks, dark brown leather shoes.

A few strands of hair slipped into my face as I rolled my sleeves up to my elbows. The tie at the nape of my neck loosened, letting a few strands fall. I tucked them back behind my ear, breathing through the sour air.

Each step I took splashed against the puddles that shimmered beneath the flickering street lights. My polished shoes looked absurd here, but I’d stopped caring about blending in. You can’t ever truly belong when you don’t have a timeline anymore.

The noise of the city grew louder as I walked—music, laughter, broken glass, the hum of the club where I’d become a regular these past weeks. A place with more sin than soul, yet the only place where I’d found her again.

Sheilalaine.

That was her name in this timeline.

A waitress.

The first time I saw her, I couldn’t even look at her properly. The outfit was too revealing—not something my Sansorina would ever wear. I had to look away, ashamed not of her, but of myself, because seeing her like that in this world made something twist painfully in my chest.

That’s when she noticed me.

She mistook my silence for judgment and stormed up, eyes blazing. Before I could even breathe, her hand met my cheek—sharp, echoing through the crowd.

“I’m maybe a waitress,” she said, her voice low, trembling but fierce, “pero wala pa na kahit sino ang naikama ako.”

For a moment, I was stunned. Not because of the slap, I’d faced worse but because of the fire in her. My Sansorina was kind, composed. This one… burned like she was made of all the things the world tried to break.

I apologized. Clumsy, too formal. I told her I never meant to offend, that I only looked away because I didn’t want to disrespect her. She didn’t believe me at first. Why would she? Men like me, dressed like me, didn’t come here for decency.

But still, I came back. Not to be forgiven but to make sure she was safe.

Now I’m here almost every night. Sitting quietly at the same corner table. Watching. Waiting until she finishes her shift so I can follow from a distance, making sure no one touches her, that she gets home safely.

I found out she works in a convenience store in the mornings. Barely sleeps. She walks home alone through alleys that smell like smoke and rain. I’ve never spoken of it, she doesn’t know I follow. She doesn’t need to.

I don’t know what kind of life this Sansorina has here, what kind of pain or hope has shaped her but she’s tangled around my thoughts again, like a loop I can’t untie.

Maybe it’s foolish. Maybe it’s dangerous.

But I’ve drifted through too many timelines, seen too many versions of her, to pretend I don’t care.

So I stay.
For now.
Just a little longer.

I was dripping in sweat. The kind that sticks to your shirt and makes you feel like you’re swimming in your own skin. This Manila was unbearable—hot, sticky, and loud. The air itself felt like it was pressing down on me, and for the first time, I missed the pod’s cold hum, its quiet hum of comfort.

I sat outside a small coffee shop across from the convenience store, the one where Sheilalaine worked. I’d been here for almost an hour, pretending to sip the last drops of my iced coffee that had long turned to warm water. My eyes stayed fixed on the glass door of the store.

Then, I saw her.

She’d already taken off her apron, her hair loosely tied, a few strands falling over her face as she stepped out. Her expression was unreadable at first, but then her gaze found me, sitting there like some misplaced ghost from another time.

“Wala ka bang kotse?” she asked, walking straight toward me, her eyes scanning me from head to toe. There was a teasing edge to her voice. “Napaka-out of place naman ng suot mo.”

I looked down at my clothes—black long-sleeved silk shirt, neatly tucked into slacks, leather shoes that had seen better weather. Maybe she was right. I probably looked ridiculous here, sweating like a fool while everyone else wore shorts and slippers.

“Wala ka bang trabaho?” she went on, folding her arms. “Lagi kang naka-aligid sa akin, eh.”

Her tone wasn’t harsh, but it hit me still. I felt caught, like she’d just pulled away whatever excuse I thought I had. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t following her, that I just wanted to make sure she was safe. That I wasn’t him anymore, not the man she thought I was, not the man I used to be.

But I said nothing.

I only managed a small, awkward smile, one that felt heavy on my face. The words sat in my throat, unsaid, as the city buzzed around us, tricycles roaring by, people shouting, the smell of frying oil and exhaust mixing in the air.

And yet, in that chaos, all I could see was her.

I’ve made a routine out of her life.
Mornings, I’d sit across the street from the convenience store, pretending to read the newspaper or sip coffee. Evenings, I’d stand outside the club, never too close, never too far. Just enough to see her walk past the bouncers, flash that tired half-smile, and vanish into the dim lights of that place.

I never got bored. Not once. Because somewhere between her shifts, she’d notice me—walk up, throw a jab, or say something absurdly sharp. Sometimes she’d roast me for my clothes, other times for my silence. And each time, I’d just smile. Because that meant she saw me.

But that night, everything felt different.

I was already near the club when I saw her. Sheilalaine.
And a man in a hoodie.
Too close.

Her shoulders stiffened. Her body froze. Then I saw the man finally let go of her arm. Something inside me snapped.

I ran.

My voice came out sharper than I intended. I reached her just as the man disappeared down the alley. “Are you okay?”

She turned to me, her eyes wet, burning—not just from fear, but from anger.
“Lagi kang nakaaligid pero pakiramdam ko hindi pa din ako ligtas!”

Her words hit harder than any bullet I’d ever taken. I thought I was protecting her, watching over her. But that wasn’t what she felt. To her, I was just another shadow following her home.

“Sino ka ba? Ano ba kailangan mo?!” she shouted again, voice trembling. I could see her chest rising and falling fast, fear still clawing at her.

Then, softer this time, she said, “Iuwi mo na muna ako.”

Before I could answer, she reached for my hand.
Her grip was firm, desperate, almost. It caught me off guard. I let her pull me, her pace quick and impatient as we walked down the other end of the alleyway.

“Bakit kasi wala kang kotse, eh,” she muttered, still holding on to me. “Baka timawa ka din tulad ko pero trying hard.”

Then, with a small, sharp laugh, she added, “Call boy ka ba?”

I blinked, too stunned to react. She talked so fast, so much, her words tumbling over one another like waves crashing. I could barely keep up.

But I didn’t stop her. I just listened, her hand still clutching mine, her voice filling the humid night.

And for the first time in a long while, I realized something terrifying.

I wasn’t watching over her anymore.
I was following her.

Her place was small, smaller than any room I had ever been in.
Cramped, low ceiling, the air heavy with detergent and instant coffee. I could barely move without bumping into something.

“Upo ka muna dun,” she said, pointing at the small bed pressed against the wall.

I obeyed right away, careful not to make a sound. My knees almost touched the stack of neatly folded clothes beside it. Everything in this room had a place, even if there wasn’t much space to begin with. I sat stiffly, my hands on my knees, watching her move around the room like she had done it a thousand times—quick, precise, exhausted.

She offered me a cup of coffee. The steam rose between us like a thin veil.
“Alam mo, mukha kang timang,” she said suddenly, sitting on a stool I hadn’t even noticed earlier. “Mukha kang nawawalang tagapagmana ng kompanya.”

I blinked. I still wasn’t used to how fast she talked, how she always found a way to tease me even when her eyes looked tired.

“Pasensya ka na dito. Ito lang kaya ko eh.”

Her voice softened at that. Then she looked at me, really looked at me. The kind of stare that weighed more than words.

“Mayaman ka ba talaga?” she asked quietly. “Matutulungan mo ba ako?”

I met her gaze, but before I could even think of what to say, she shook her head. Her lips trembled.

And then she cried.

Not loudly. Not like a storm. Just silent, breaking sobs that she tried to swallow down.

I froze. If this were her, if this were my Sansorina, I’d already be holding her. I’d be rubbing her back, whispering that everything was going to be fine, that I’d fix it all, even if it meant tearing the world apart.

But this wasn’t her.
This was Sheilalaine—same eyes, same face, same fire but a different soul, carrying her own battles I couldn’t claim to understand.

“Kahit siguro hati-hatiin ko ang sarili ko sa pagtatrabaho, kulang pa din talaga,” she muttered between sobs.
“Pagod na pagod na ako… pero kulang pa din.”

Each word stabbed through me in quiet succession.

I wanted to reach out, to do something, anything but I just sat there, useless, holding a cup of coffee that had gone cold.

In every timeline, I always found her.
And every time, she was still fighting to survive.

Chapter Text

The air was thick with the smell of rain and asphalt when I stepped out of the pod. Another timeline, another borrowed face, another pair of shoes that didn’t quite fit. I told myself I’d only stay long enough for coffee—just something warm before slipping back into the current.

The café was nearly empty. I sat by the window, stirring my cup even after the sugar had long dissolved. The hum of the pod lingered in the back of my mind, calling for me, steady and patient. I could almost feel the tug in my chest like a reminder that I didn’t belong here. Not in this quiet hour. Not in this place.

I left the café and started toward the alley where the pod waited, its faint light cutting through the fog. The street was dim, the kind of dim that felt soft and heavy all at once. Then I heard it—a sob.

At first, I thought it was just the wind brushing past the rusted gates. I almost ignored it. I almost kept walking. But then she moved.

She turned her head toward me.

Her eyes met mine.

And my world, this fragile, borrowed world—stilled.

Another Sansorina.

My heart clenched the same way it always did when I saw her face in someone else’s lifetime. The same shape of her mouth, the same quiet grief in her eyes, the same way she looked at me without knowing me at all.

The pod hummed louder now, impatient for my return. It was waiting for my touch—one press, and I’d vanish. Leave this street, this echo, this ghost behind.

But I couldn’t. Not yet.

I turned away from the light, from the pod, from safety.
And walked in the opposite direction.

Because even if it broke me every single time, 
I always walked toward her.

It had been days since I last saw her. Days since I walked away from the alley where her sobs echoed in my head long after I’d left. I told myself that was it, that I’d let her be. But fate, or whatever cruel thing guides these timelines, seemed to have other plans.

She was there, sitting on a bench in a small park meant for laughter. Children ran barefoot on the grass, their shouts bright and careless. The world spun around her, full of color and motion, but she sat still, as if she didn’t belong in it. Her gaze was far away, somewhere I couldn’t reach.

A balloon slipped from a child’s grip and floated her way. It brushed against her arm before a little girl came to take it back. She smiled then, a soft, polite curve of her lips but her eyes didn’t move with it. The light stopped just before it could touch her.

I stood a few meters away, watching. Hidden behind the noise of the children, behind the illusion of a stranger who just happened to pass by.

Another Sansorina. Another version of her broken.

Every time I found her in a new life, it was always like this, something about her was always bruised. As if the universe refused to let her rest, and I… I kept showing up too late to stop it.

I clenched my fists in my pockets, forcing myself to stay still. To not step forward. To not reach out.

Because I promised myself, no more interfering. No more rewriting the pain that wasn’t mine to fix.

Still, watching her like that… it felt like someone was pressing on my ribs, steady and cruel.

So I just stayed there, under the shade of a tree, heart breaking quietly for a woman who would never remember me.

The hallway smelled like old rain and dust, the kind that clung to the walls of forgotten places. For days I’d watched her window from the street below, always dark, always silent. Not even a flicker. It didn’t make sense. Someone like her should still be moving, breathing, doing something. But that window stayed dead.

Something twisted inside my chest. It wasn’t logic anymore, it was instinct. I needed to see.

When I reached her floor, the corridor was narrow, dim, the air stale. I stared at her door, paper-thin, paint peeling and saw the envelopes stuffed into the gap. Bills, letters, some already fallen to the floor. Unread. Unmoved.

My heart started to pound.

“Sansorina…” I whispered, though she wouldn’t hear me.

Then I banged on the door. Once, twice, until the sound became a tremor up my arm. Nothing. No response.

“Ang ingay naman, kuya,” someone from another room said, peeking out.

“She’s not answering me,” I stammered. “I’m her husband.” The words fell out before I even realized it, a lie, desperate and raw.

The woman hesitated, then called someone. Minutes felt like hours before the landlord appeared with a ring of keys. I thanked him, though I barely remember the sound of my voice. My hands were shaking.

The door opened.

It was dark. The air inside heavy, that kind of silence that didn’t belong to the living. I reached for the wall, stumbled on something, and then a faint light clicked on.

And there she was.

In the kitchen.
Standing by a chair.
A rope between her hands.

She was testing the knot.

My blood ran cold. I didn’t think, I couldn’t. The promise I’d made to myself, the rule I always followed, no contact—shattered like glass.

I crossed the room and grabbed her. Arms around her trembling frame, pulling her away from the chair, from the rope, from the edge she was already halfway over.

She gasped, but I held tighter. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, though my voice was shaking. “It’s okay…”

But it wasn’t.

Her body went limp against mine, and I realized I was trembling too. Not from fear but from the sheer weight of what almost happened.

This version of her, this Sansorina—had come so close to ending everything.

And I… I couldn’t let her. Not again.

Morning came slowly, bleeding through the thin curtains like a whisper. The air inside her apartment was still, heavy with the scent of tears, dust, and sleepless nights. I hadn’t moved. I couldn’t.

Her name, I realized when the light caught the small ID on the table, was Shane.
Working in a BPO industry.
Another Sansorina with a different life, a different pain.

She was curled against me on the couch, silent, eyes open but seeing nothing. My arms were still around her, tight but gentle. I was afraid that if I let go, she’d vanish or worse, go back to what she was about to do.

“Talk to me, please,” I said quietly. My voice almost broke the stillness.

For a moment, nothing. Then, a rough sound came from her throat.

“Pagod na ako…”

Her voice was hoarse, raw. Maybe from crying all night. Maybe from holding it in too long.

“I worked myself for him,” she went on, words trembling. “For him to finish college. But…”
She swallowed hard, her body shaking in my arms.
“…but I just found out he’s already started a family, while I fed him.”

A sob tore out of her chest, and she tried to hide her face in her hands, but I held her tighter. I didn’t know how to speak her language well, but pain didn’t need translation.

“Pagod na ako. Gusto ko nang magpahinga.”

Each word felt like a blade.

“I’ve been working all my life… not for myself, but for people I thought were mine,” she whispered.

Her voice cracked at the end, and I could feel her trembling against me. I didn’t say anything. There was nothing I could say that could mend that kind of wound. So I just pulled her closer, her head under my chin, my arms wrapped around her as if I could keep her whole by sheer will.

In that small room, with the weak sunlight crawling in, she cried until her body gave in to exhaustion. And I stayed, silent, unmoving, just a ghost holding on to a woman who reminded me too much of someone I’d already lost.

The nights with Shane were quieter now. The silence between us was no longer heavy, it had softened, like the calm that follows after a storm finally spends itself.

She was the first to speak after hours of just sitting beside each other, the city humming faintly outside her window.
“So… where are you really from?” she asked, voice small but steady.

I looked at her, at those tired but curious eyes, and something inside me said she deserved the truth or at least, as much of it as I could give.

So I told her.
About the pod.
About the timelines.

About how I was a man who no longer belonged anywhere, wandering through lives that were never mine, always chasing echoes of someone I once called home.

When I finished, Shane stared at me for a long time. Then she smiled. Not mockingly, but softly.

“So, I’m your wife from another lifetime?”

I smiled back and nodded.
“Yes. You are or at least, you were.”

Her head tilted. “So how was I as your wife?”

That question caught me off guard. For a moment, all I could do was breathe her in, the faint scent of coffee and soap and exhaustion. Then I began to speak, quietly at first.

I told her about Sansorina.
How she laughed softly when she thought I wasn’t listening.
How she hummed old tunes when she worked.
How she had this way of making everything, even silence—feel alive.

Shane listened, eyes glistening. When I finished, she smiled again.

“You really love your wife, no?" she said.

I nodded. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

She let out a small laugh, the first real one I’d heard from her. Then she pulled away gently, sitting back on the couch.

“I don’t know if you’re bluffing,” she said, “but it gave me another goal to live for.”

We stayed like that for days, talking about nothing and everything. About her work, about the stars, about dreams that felt impossible. She was brighter now. Still fragile, but burning again, in her own small way.

One night, while we were eating instant noodles she’d made for both of us, she asked,
“You think my own George would find me?”

I smiled. “I’m so down bad for Sansorina,” I said, half laughing, “so for sure, they would find you.”

She nodded, a spark in her eyes now.
“Then I’ll wait for my own George.”

By dawn, when the sky began to pale, I stood by her window and looked at her one last time—asleep, peaceful, alive. I whispered, “Thank you,” though I wasn’t sure if it was for her or for myself.

Then I stepped into the pod.
The hum surrounded me again, the world folding into light.

It was time to see Pilar, my princess, before I drifted into another timeline.

Chapter Text

The moment I slipped into this timeline, I knew something was wrong.
It was night, a kind of night that swallowed every sound. No crickets, no wind, no life. Just the heavy, stale air of war. I could feel it before I even saw the ruins.

When my boots touched the ground, I stumbled, right into a pile of bodies. The smell hit first. Burnt flesh, old blood, rot. I gagged and nearly turned back, ready to slip out again. But then I heard it, a muffled sound, soft and broken. A whimper. A plea.

I froze.

The pod hummed faintly above me, invisible now—one of the upgrades I’d made. It hovered one or two meters overhead, following my every move. I told myself I’d just look, then leave. Just make sure someone was still alive.

The noise led me to a small cabin, if you could call it that. It looked more like a chicken coop, half-collapsed, lit by a weak, flickering yellow light. No guards. No one outside. Only that sound.

I crouched, pushed the small door open, and stepped in. That’s when I saw him, a soldier, crouched over a woman. She couldn’t have been older than twenty.

Something in me snapped.

I didn’t think. I just moved. There was a knife by the door, one of the soldier’s things. I grabbed it, crossed the room in two strides, and yanked him up by the shoulder. His eyes met mine, small, surprised, and stupid and before I even realized it, I drove the blade into the side of his neck.

He tried to scream, but it came out as a wet gurgle. His white hands clawed at the wound, blood spilling between his fingers. I pulled the knife free.

He stumbled, naked and trembling, trying to crawl to the door. I caught him, shoved him against the wall. My hand covered his mouth. “Shhh,” I whispered.

The woman was pressed against the far wall now, eyes wide, shaking. I turned to her, still keeping my voice low. “Shhh. It’s over.”

My heart was hammering in my chest, but the adrenaline, it burned hotter, sharper than fear. I’d fired guns before, trained with weapons all my life. But this, stabbing someone—it felt different. Too close. Too real.

The soldier’s skin turned red beneath my palm. I pressed harder, leaned in, showed him the knife, his blood dripping down the blade. His small eyes followed it, terrified.

And then he stopped shaking. His body went limp.

I stepped back, breathing hard. The knife slipped from my fingers, clattering to the floor. For a moment, I couldn’t hear anything except the rush in my ears. My heart felt like it was inside my skull, pounding and wild.

I looked down at the body, at what I’d done and part of me couldn’t believe it. But another part, a darker one, whispered: it already happened.

When the first light of dawn started bleeding into the sky, I finally saw what this place really was.

The cabin—no, the coop, wasn’t for chickens. It was a den. Four tiny rooms, each smaller than a closet, each one carrying a smell that made my stomach turn. Sweat. Blood. Fear.

I forced myself to open the doors. One by one. I don’t even know what I was looking for, maybe proof that what I’d seen wasn’t real. But it was. In every room, there were bodies. Women. Some barely breathing, some not at all. Their eyes were hollow, skin bruised, hair matted.

The truth hit me like a punch to the chest: this was where they lined up every night. Soldiers. One after another. Waiting for their turn.

I wanted to burn the whole place down. To erase it from existence. My hands were shaking as I grabbed the next door and wrenched it open, the wood cracking under the force. “Come with me,” I said. My voice came out rough, desperate. “Please. Come with me.”

They stared at me, wide eyes, trembling, shrinking into the corners. I realized how I must look to them. My clothes, torn and soaked in someone else’s blood. My voice, foreign. My face, unfamiliar. To them, I was just another man. Another monster.

“Come with me,” I said again, softer this time. But they didn’t move.

Then the woman from the first room, the one I’d saved—stood up, unsteady but fierce. She said something in a trembling voice I didn’t understand, pointing at me, then at the dead soldier in the doorway. The others listened. Her words carried weight, maybe truth. Maybe hope.

Slowly, one by one, the women began to move.

She came to me, her hand brushing my arm, light as a ghost’s touch. Then she pointed toward the east, where the sun was starting to rise behind the trees. A faint trail wound through the hills. “There,” she whispered. Or something that sounded like it.

I nodded. I didn’t ask where it led. I just followed.

The pod hovered somewhere above me, invisible and silent. I could feel it hum, restless, like it knew I didn’t belong here. But as I walked behind those women, as they clung to one another in the pale light of morning, I realized I couldn’t leave yet.

Not until I was sure they’d make it out.

And for the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel like a ghost drifting between timelines. I felt alive. Terrified, sick, angry but alive.

The trail the woman led us through twisted between trees and fallen fences, until the dirt path opened to a village half-hidden by the hills. At first glance, it looked abandoned, roofs caved in, smoke faintly rising from somewhere deep inside. But the closer we got, the clearer it became: it was alive.

A hidden village. One that learned how to breathe quietly.

They took us in before sunrise, guiding the women to a hut near the back, where older women rushed out to meet them. The air was heavy, grief mixed with relief. Someone pressed water into my hands. I didn’t realize how much blood was still on them until I saw the water turn red.

Then a man approached me, sharp eyes, rough hands, a rifle slung over his shoulder. He looked me up and down before speaking. “You American?” he asked.

I hesitated. “Hindi,” I said quietly. “Hindi ako Amerikano.”

He frowned, studying me again. “Mukha ka kasing Amerikano. Sa suot mo.”

That made sense. I’d come from an era long after this one, when American influence had already sunk deep into everything: the schools, the language, even the clothes. My family, especially, had worn it like a second skin. We were the kind who had workers that spoke Filipino around us, not with us.

I could understand enough to get by, but speaking it still felt strange in my mouth. Words learned from overheard conversations, not from belonging.

The man led me to what looked like their meeting place, a hut reinforced with bamboo and old crates. Inside, several people were already waiting. They spoke quietly, voices thick with exhaustion. I caught pieces of it, Japanese soldiers, raids, missing people, escape routes.

I listened. I stayed silent.

One of them handed me food. Rice and dried fish. I thanked them in broken Filipino. They nodded, still wary. I couldn’t blame them.

They wanted me to stay for the day—to rest, to hide until it was safe to move again. I told myself I shouldn’t. I’d already stayed too long. Every minute here was a risk, a thread tangled in a web I didn’t belong to.

But something in me resisted.

Maybe it was the sound of the women’s laughter, faint but real, from the hut outside. Maybe it was the way the morning light hit the village roofs, fragile and alive despite everything. Or maybe it was just that I hadn’t felt part of anything in a very long time.

I told myself I’d leave by nightfall. Just one day. One sunrise.

But deep down, I already knew, I didn’t want to leave yet.

The men led me through the edge of the village, toward what they called a safe place. I nodded, though what I really wanted was somewhere I could bring the pod back, somewhere quiet enough to disappear.

We didn’t make it that far.

The sound came first—boots, heavy and deliberate. Practiced, confident footsteps echoing through the dirt road. We froze. The men ducked into the brush, motioning for me to do the same.

Japanese soldiers.

A small unit, maybe ten or fifteen of them, moving like a single body. Some were dragging people by their arms, villagers, maybe from the next settlement. I saw a man fall to his knees, begging. A woman screamed. The sound was sharp and cut through the air before it was silenced by a slap.

Something inside me snapped.

My vision tunneled, my pulse roaring in my ears. I almost stood up right then, I would have but one of the men beside me grabbed my arm and shook his head violently. His eyes said don’t.

So we stayed. We watched.
And it was hell to watch.

I counted them, twelve, thirteen… fourteen. And then one more. The last soldier walked alone, several meters behind the troop. His uniform was different, cleaner, heavier, marked with rank. The way he moved, arrogant and detached, told me everything I needed to know.

A general.

Before I could think, before anyone could stop me, I moved. My hand shot out, grabbed the man by the collar, and yanked him into the shadows. The men reacted instantly, one clamped a hand over the soldier’s mouth, another drew a knife.

“Wait,” I hissed. My voice was sharp enough to cut through their panic. “Don’t kill him.”

They stared at me, confused, but I was already pulling at the soldier’s jacket. “Help me,” I said, low and quick.

They hesitated. Until they saw I meant it. Then they joined in, working fast and silent.

The soldier struggled, eyes wide with confusion, muffled protests dying under the man’s hand. We stripped him down, his fine uniform hitting the dirt in pieces. I didn’t care how it looked, I was already undoing my own clothes, fast, clumsy, my hands shaking not from fear but from focus.

I felt the night air against my skin. My chest binder tight beneath my shirt. For a moment, one of the men stared, realization flickering in his eyes but he said nothing.

I slipped into the general’s uniform, the fabric still warm. It fit almost perfectly. I tightened the belt, straightened the cap. My heart was pounding, but my movements were calm. Controlled.

Somewhere beyond the trees, the soldiers had stopped marching. They were starting to notice their superior was missing.

I leaned close to the men and whispered, “Be safe. Find me.”

Then I stepped out of the shadows.

The soldiers looked back just as I emerged from the treeline, walking with the same arrogant stride their general had moments ago. None of them questioned it. They straightened, barked something in Japanese, and fell back in line.

And just like that, I was one of them.

A ghost wearing the enemy’s skin.

I didn’t know how I managed to pull it off.

The moment I walked into their camp, the noise dropped. Laughter cut off, conversations died mid-word, and every soldier straightened their back. My silence and calm must’ve looked like authority to them.

If only they knew.

Inside, my anger was coiled tight, barely contained. Every face I saw, smug, careless, laughing was a reminder of what they’d done to the women in that coop. I wanted to tear every one of them apart. But I couldn’t. Not yet.

I didn’t understand a single word they were saying, but the pod hovered above me, invisible, steady. A faint hum in my head translated everything they said, like a ghost whispering in my ear. General, sir. The next village. Supplies. Women.

The more I listened, the more I wanted to kill them all.

I realized quickly that silence made them uneasy. Staring, too—they hated it. Whenever I looked one of them straight in the eye, they would flinch or drop their gaze. That became my advantage. It bought me time. It made them afraid to question me.

Still, I had to speak sometimes. A general who never speaks is a dead giveaway.

So I whispered the words I needed, short commands, simple phrases and the pod translated them aloud in crisp Japanese, matching the general’s voice perfectly. Move out. Check the perimeter. Rest until sundown.

The soldiers obeyed. They didn’t even look at me twice.

I mimicked their movements, their salutes, their shouts. When they barked orders, I barked louder. Maybe it was the act, or maybe it was just my anger finding another way out but every shout came from somewhere deeper, darker. The more I played the part, the more it felt like I was swallowing something poisonous.

These men, these monsters laughed while people begged for their lives. They burned villages for amusement. I could hear it in their words, every casual sentence about “punishments” and “orders.”

My calm broke them. My silence unnerved them. But my rage, that was what truly scared them.

And maybe, for the first time, I wanted them to be afraid.

I didn’t plan it. I only wanted them to stop hurting the women. But the moment I leveled the gun and fired into the dirt by a man’s boot, everything snapped into place.

The crack of the shot cut through the morning like an alarm. Heads whipped around. Conversation died. They obeyed—without hesitation, without the lazy arrogance that had marked them all night. The pod whispered translations in my ear: Lieutenant? Captain? Sir? Their confusion bought me the authority I needed.

I spoke sharp and fast. The words came out in Japanese—my mouth forming sounds that felt foreign and wrong, and the pod made them perfect and hard as command. “All the women will stay in one place. Those women are mine.” I hated the words as they left my lips; the phrase was crude, brutal, meant to shock. But it worked. The men flinched at the ownership implied and, more importantly, at the implication that one man would answer for them. It put a line in the dirt they dared not cross.

I gave the next orders without a pause. The captured men, those rounded up from the road, the ones still coughing and bruised were to work the fields. Till the land. Plant rice. If they were busy with sun and soil they couldn’t be out raiding other villages. It was punishment and containment wrapped in something that might actually keep people fed. I watched them blanch when the order hit them; the idea of toiling under a hot sun in a land they didn’t know made them shrivel. I’d seen it before, these pale men were not made for the Philippine heat. They would break faster than the people here.

I told my soldiers, my voice flat and cold that they were to guard the workers while they farmed. Rotate posts. No one was to touch the women but me. If any man disobeyed, there would be consequences. The pod translated again, smooth and convincing. The soldiers obeyed because structure was what they lived for. They obeyed because I had become their structure.

The women’s faces were a map of fear and mistrust. Some looked at me like I was another monster who would sell them, others like a sliver of refuge. The woman who had led them here gave me a look that was equal parts wary and grateful. None of them understood every word I said, but they understood the rhythm of an order that meant safety, for now.

After the men were marched off to the fields and the guards posted in rigid lines, I stood in the middle of that camp, wearing a uniform that wasn’t mine, holding power I never wanted. My chest felt tight. I had protected them, yes, but I’d done it by becoming what they feared. I could hear the pod hum above me like a second heartbeat, translating, smoothing, justifying.

For a heartbeat I allowed myself the cruel comfort that the women would not be touched tonight. Then the guilt rolled in—a slow, cold tide. I had promised myself not to linger, not to change histories. But I had done both. And as the sun climbed higher and the new orders took root in their scared lives, I felt something else creep up: the terrible ease of command, and the dangerous thought that maybe I could stay a little longer to keep them safe.

That night the camp tried to laugh in the dark. Small, smug jokes slipped between the guards as they polished rifles and traded whispers about which woman they'd have when the general turned his back. I heard every slur like a stone thrown against my ribs.

One of them stood up, brazen with cheap courage. He stepped forward, voice low, and asked, just one woman, sir?—the words slick as oil.

Something in me went cold and sharp. I moved before I thought. My hand found my pistol, I raised it, and I fired straight into his open mouth. The sound was brutal and absolute in the close night; his head snapped back, blood fountaining, and the joke died in his throat. The rest of them froze hard enough to crack.

After that, there were no more jokes. Not from the captives, not from the soldiers. Fear had changed sides.

I set the rules down with the same flatness I used for all my orders: the old and the sick would be isolated and tended to. The soldiers’ mouths moved in suspicion, they expected executions, clean and final. They imagined me as the sort who burned what he didn't need. But I had other plans.

Behind closed doors, the women I had pulled from that coop took care of the sick. They scrubbed fevered foreheads, fed cracked lips soup, mended wounds with hands that had known worse. It was small work, tender and stubborn. When the men grew stronger, I slipped them away not into the heat of the fields but toward whatever safety the village could offer, released like a secret.

I told the women they could go too. Most left when it felt right, clutching bundles and wincing at sunlight, unsure but moving. Some stayed. The woman who had first led them, the one who had spoken for me in that broken place, kept her distance but did not leave. A few others lingered, eyes wary but steady. They worked alongside the sick, kept watch, spoke softly to the frightened. They said they would stay with the script, play along with the lie of the general, if it meant keeping more safe.

The soldiers watched all of it and assumed I was doing what generals do: eliminate, intimidate, control. In truth, I was doing the opposite. I was precise in my cruelty only when I had to be; otherwise, I was careful with mercy. Each kindness I gave had to be measured, disguised as duty, because mercy from a man in that uniform would have been dangerous if it were obvious.

When I lay down that night, the pod humming faintly like a second pulse above me, I felt the weight of what I'd done. I had crossed lines I swore I wouldn't. I had stayed. I had become someone's general. But the faces of the women who stayed, tending to the dying and helping the injured, kept me from collapsing into the kind of nihilism that had followed me between timelines.

I promised myself I would leave. I still promised The Courier that. But the promise had a new qualification now—a dangerous, human addendum: not yet.

It was supposed to be a night of performance, nothing more. I had sent the older, braver soldiers away with the other generals, told them to enjoy their “comfort,” to drown in whatever filth they needed to. I kept the younger ones, the ones who still flinched at raised voices and took orders without question. They were too afraid of me to disobey, and that fear was useful.

If I wanted to keep suspicion away, I had to play the role.
So I went with the others.

The tavern reeked of rice wine, sweat, and smoke. The air was thick with laughter that wasn’t joy — only the kind that filled the space before violence. Women moved between tables with heads down, hands trembling as they poured drinks. A few Japanese generals shouted about victory, about fire, about glory. All I heard was the sound of teeth grinding behind my jaw.

I sat still. I sipped what I had to. I let their words wash over me, not understanding half of it but feeling every intention through the pod’s translation hum. Dirty. Cruel. Loud. They called this relaxation.

Then one of them m  a thick-necked bastard with a medal too clean for someone who hadn’t bled   stood and walked to the counter. His voice was syrupy with menace.
“You wouldn’t want your tavern to burn, would you?” he said in Japanese.

The translator, a boy who looked too young to even hold a rifle, adjusted the words. “He says he wants your dishwasher.”

The woman who owned the place froze. Her eyes darted between the soldiers and the door, like she was choosing which would kill her faster. Slowly, she nodded and turned to the back, calling for someone.

The laughter grew, ugly and loud. Men slapped tables, barked words I didn’t want to understand.

And then she appeared.

She walked out from the kitchen, her hands still wet from washing. Her eyes were fixed on the floor, her shoulders small and trembling. I didn’t even breathe at first, not until she stepped into the lamplight.

The glass in my hand slipped.

Sansorina.

No, not possible.
Not her. Not here.

But that face, the same lines, the same quiet sorrow. The shape of her mouth when she tried not to cry. My mind fought it, told me this was a trick of the timeline, a coincidence, an echo of someone long gone. But my chest already knew better.

I felt the room close in. The laughter turned to static in my ears. The pod hummed faintly, translating words I no longer cared to hear.

She looked up for just a second, maybe drawn by the sound of glass hitting the table. Our eyes met, hers wide with fear, mine with something I didn’t have a name for.

And in that single second, the whole charade, the uniform, the gun, the command, cracked.

I wasn’t the general anymore.
I was just George.
And the world had just thrown Sansorina back into my hell.

The tavern stank of sweat and rice wine, but all I could smell was my own rage. My hands were steady as I rose from my seat. Steady because they had to be. Inside, everything was shaking.

She stood there, still wet from the kitchen sink, looking like a ghost dragged out of my past. Sansorina. Not her. Couldn’t be her. But her face, the same one I used to know made the room tilt sideways.

I walked straight to the counter. The words came out like poison in my mouth, in crisp Japanese:
“She’s mine. My bitch.”

It burned to say it. Every syllable felt like ash on my tongue. But I had to. If I didn’t, she was gone before I could even reach her.

The whole tavern went dead quiet. Even the drunkest men stopped breathing. All eyes flicked between me and the bald general, medals on his chest, filth in his grin. His sake cup paused halfway to his mouth.

For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then his lips curled.
“Greedy bastard,” he muttered in Japanese, shaking his head.

He stared at me for a long moment. I stared back. I didn’t blink, didn’t move. Not now. Not when she was at stake.

Finally, he gave a short laugh, shoved his cup back, and walked out of the tavern. The noise rose again, but duller now, like everyone was pretending nothing happened.

I turned to her, to the woman with Sansorina’s face. Her eyes were a strange mix of relief and terror. I motioned with my hand, sharp but low, telling her to follow. She hesitated. Of course she did. To her, I was just another uniform, another predator.

But she followed. She had no choice.

Outside, the air was cooler but heavy with smoke. I opened the passenger door of a Japanese jeep and gestured again. She climbed in like a prisoner being marched somewhere unknown.

We drove. I didn’t look back at the tavern. I didn’t look at her, either. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel. The pod hummed faintly above me, invisible, translating every fragment of her breath.

When we were far enough, I finally spoke, my voice cracking as I forced the Filipino words out:
“Saan bahay niyo?”

I prayed she’d understand.

She sobbed instantly, her voice trembling. “Don’t kill my family… please… I only have my lola at home waiting for me…”

I stopped the jeep, the engine idling rough in the silence. I turned to her, shaking my head hard.

“No,” I said. “Hindi ko gagawin ’yon. Ever.”

My voice came out almost pleading, and that scared me. I wasn’t supposed to sound like this. Not as the general. But I couldn’t help it. My chest ached with it.

She was confused, of course. How could she not be? A Japanese “general” taking her away, then saying this. None of it made sense.

But it didn’t matter. Not yet.

All that mattered was that she was alive, and that I could at least keep her safe in this timeline.
If not for me, then for her lola.
If not for her lola, then for the face that haunted me, Sansorina’s face.

At least in this life, I could try.

We stopped at the foot of a hill. The air was damp with the smell of grass and gunpowder. The woman pointed upward, her hand trembling as if afraid even the wind might hear.

“Doon,” she whispered. There.

I nodded and followed her through the tall, whispering bushes. Every step was soft but heavy. The hill hid a small hut, almost swallowed by the wild growth. It was clever, I thought. A place the soldiers would never bother to look.

“Susana?” an old woman’s voice called out from inside.

Susana froze for a heartbeat before answering, her voice small, “Lola, ako ho ito.”

I ducked to enter the hut, careful not to bump my head. The air inside was warm, filled with the smell of woodsmoke and boiled roots. An old woman sat by a dim lamp, her hands folded but trembling slightly when she saw me. Her eyes studied my uniform, Japanese, blood still faint on the cuffs but she didn’t flinch. Just looked… tired.

Susana’s lips moved quickly, explaining something I couldn’t catch, but I understood enough.

The old woman looked at me again and, to my surprise, smiled.

Something in me cracked at that, quietly, almost politely. I took her frail hand, the skin paper-thin and warm. It reminded me of my mother’s hands. The real George’s mother. The one I’d buried along with my twin in a different time. Another world. Another life I kept trying to forget.

Susana moved around the hut, tidying what little they had. Dried fish. A folded mat. A pot still warm from earlier. She avoided my eyes. I let her.

We didn’t talk much after that. The old woman offered food, which I couldn’t bring myself to eat. My throat felt locked, full of ghosts. I stayed until the first gray light started seeping through the cracks in the walls.

Before leaving, I placed the bundle of money on the low table, enough for her to never return to that tavern again, enough to keep her and her lola hidden.

She tried to refuse at first, shaking her head, whispering something about not owing me anything. I just nodded, quietly. “Para sa inyo,” I said, my accent heavy, broken.

Then I stepped outside. The pod hummed faintly above the mist. Dawn painted the hill pale gold.

I didn’t look back.

I hoped I’d never see Susana again.
Not because I didn’t care but because if I did, it would mean something had gone wrong in this world too.

Months passed, and I learned to wear the mask of a general like a second skin. Every movement had to be measured, every glance rehearsed. The trick was to act like you belonged, even when everything in you screamed that you didn’t.

They whispered about me, of course. That I was soft. Tolerable. That I wasn’t like the others. Some said it like a curse, others like a quiet mercy. I didn’t care. As long as the orders kept the soldiers busy and the guns pointed at no one’s head, I could live with the whispers.

The raids still happened. They always would. Japan wanted its illusion of control, the labor, the obedience, the show of discipline. I couldn’t stop that without risking the entire province, but I could reshape it. So I did.

When we entered a village, I ordered the men to work the fields instead of torching them. I told them this was how Japan would “build its empire.” I said it in sharp Japanese, with my pistol holstered but visible. They believed it. Or maybe they just feared me enough not to question it.

And slowly, almost miraculously, the violence dulled. The soldiers began to settle. They still barked and cursed, but their hands stayed off the women. Their guns stayed holstered too. Labor replaced cruelty. I taught them structure, and in return, I bought a little peace.

Every night, when the campfire cracked and the pod hummed quietly above my tent, I thought of Susana.

I told myself not to. I’d left her safe. That should have been enough. But in the quiet, her face returned, the way she had clutched her lola’s hand, the way her eyes darted at me as if trying to read the truth behind my uniform.

I prayed she was all right. I prayed that the money lasted. I prayed she never saw another soldier again, especially me.

Sometimes I almost convinced myself she was safe.
Other times, I wasn’t sure who I was praying to anymore.

It was the last year of the Japanese in the country, their empire collapsing under its own madness. The air smelled different now. Desperation has its own scent, a sour mix of smoke, blood, and hopeless pride.

But under my command, this province stayed untouched. Not because of Japan, not because of me pretending to be their general but because of the quiet cooperation of the people, the labor, the order I’d forced in place. It was fragile peace, but it held. For a while.

When the Americans finally arrived, I knew it was over. The real generals were dead or gone, and my men, my soldiers who once obeyed out of fear, laid down their weapons one by one. They didn’t fight. Maybe they were relieved. Maybe they were tired of pretending too.

I stood at the edge of the camp and watched the flags change. The world shifted again.

Then I took off the uniform.
Every button felt like a confession.

I folded it neatly, not out of respect for the symbol it carried, but for what I had turned it into. A disguise. A shield. A lie that saved more lives than it took.

I stepped into the pod. The hum was faint at first, like a sigh. For a moment, I thought I’d leave without looking back. But I couldn’t.

Not without seeing the hill.

I told the pod to take me there. It hovered low, the wind brushing the overgrown grass. But the hut was gone. Nothing left, not even the posts. Just flattened earth, and the silence of something that used to mean safety.

My chest tightened. The first thought that came wasn’t logical, it was fear. That the Japanese, in their last, bitter weeks, had found her. Found them.

I wanted to believe otherwise. I wanted to believe she’d left on her own. But wanting and knowing were different things.

I turned to leave but something in me pulled toward the city. One last check. One last goodbye.

The pod hummed as it floated toward the plaza, where the Americans were keeping the remaining Japanese prisoners. Rows of them, broken and kneeling in the dirt. I scanned the faces out of habit then froze.

There. Moving through the crowd, brushing past the Americans, looking, searching, Susana.

Her face. Her movements. The same nervous determination. She was alive.

She checked each soldier’s face, one by one, her eyes sharp and wet at the same time. She was searching for me. For the man who had worn their uniform, who had saved her and her lola and then vanished like smoke.

I smiled, small and tired. No one could see it. The pod shimmered invisible above the square.

At least she’s safe.
That was enough. That was all I ever wanted in this timeline.

As the pod lifted higher, the city shrinking below, a different ache stirred in me. Familiar. Deeper.

Pilar.

My princess. My daughter in another time, another world.

I whispered her name into the pod’s quiet light, the same way I used to when she was small and still believed I could fix anything.

“I’m coming, my princess,” I said softly.

Then the pod drifted forward, and the world beneath me, war, grief, redemption, dissolved into another horizon.

Chapter Text

It was supposed to be a short visit, one of those quiet Sundays where I drop by the orphanage, bring what I can, talk to Ate Evelyn, and watch the kids for a while before slipping back to wherever I’ll land next. The pod was waiting, cloaked and humming faintly in the corner of the yard. The air smelled like morning soap and damp grass.

“Salamat ng marami, George,” Ate Evelyn said beside me, her voice always soft but steady. “Dahil sa’yo, hindi nagugutom ang mga bata. Delayed kasi minsan ‘yung ibang sponsors… ‘yung iba nga huminto na magbigay.”

I nodded, offering a small smile. “Thank you din po sa pag-stay with them,” I replied in my broken Filipino. She chuckled the way she always does whenever I try. It makes her smile, maybe because she knows I try hard to sound like I belong, even if I never do.

We stood watching the children doing their morning routines. The chatter and laughter filled the air, bright and noisy and full of life. I never get tired of that sound. Maybe because it drowns out the quiet.

Then I saw her.

Someone was doing laundry by the backyard. I frowned. Volunteers usually came on Saturdays, not Sundays. Ate Evelyn noticed my eyes wander.

“Si Lyle ‘yan,” she said. “Iniwan siya ng nanay niya dito nung pitong taon siya. Nangako ‘yung nanay niya na babalikan siya, bumalik nga pero hindi para kunin siya… para mag-iwan muli ng bata. Kaya noong natapos niya ang elementarya dito, nagpaalam siya na lalabas para mag-working student, para makapag-aral ng high school, tapos nagtrabaho ulit para sa kolehiyo. Sabi niya kahit college level lang daw basta makahanap siya ng trabaho. Tatlong taon na siyang saleslady sa mall sa syudad. No’ng isang taon, kinuha na niya ‘yung kapatid niya dito.”

She paused and smiled faintly, pride glinting in her eyes. “Tuwing Linggo na dapat pahinga niya, pumupunta pa rin dito para tumulong. ‘Yun lang daw kasi ang maitutulong niya. Pasasalamat na rin daw sa amin.”

I listened quietly. But my eyes didn’t leave her.

The woman looked up then, just for a moment and when she saw us, she bowed her head politely before returning to the laundry line. The wind lifted a strand of her hair. Sunlight caught her face.

And I froze.

It was her.
Not the same her, but still her.

Another Sansorina.

Same eyes. Same quiet weight in the way she moved — like she carried something she never set down.

I felt my chest tighten. Every version of her carried a story, and every time I found one, she was breaking in a different way. And still, I couldn’t interfere. Not again.

I told myself I was only here for the orphanage. For the kids. For the promises I made across the timelines. But standing there, watching her wring out clothes with hands that once might’ve played the piano, or painted, or held mine in another life, I knew I was lying to myself again.

I didn’t move closer. I just watched. The sun was bright that morning, but somehow it felt colder.

I was sitting on a bench, watching the kids run around the playground. The sound of laughter echoed, soft, bright, the kind that fills the air and leaves no room for silence. I come here when it gets hard. When the longing creeps in again.

I had just visited Pilar earlier from a distance, of course. I promised I wouldn’t linger too much. It’s a promise I made to her mother, and to myself. But sometimes, the ache of wanting to see my daughter grows too heavy to ignore, and the only way to ease it is to watch other children instead. It’s never the same, but it helps. A little.

There was a girl chasing bubbles nearby, her laughter sharp as sunlight. I found myself smiling.

Then someone sat down on the other end of the bench. I felt the slight shift in weight, heard the rustle of fabric, but I didn’t turn my head. I rarely do. I’ve learned to avoid unnecessary interactions in every timeline I slip into. I don’t belong anywhere for too long, and people have a way of reminding me of that.

Then, footsteps. Small, hurried ones.

“Sir!”

A boy stood before me, panting but smiling. He looked familiar, though I couldn’t place him right away. I turned my head and froze for a second.

Lyle.

She bowed her head slightly, polite as ever. Her hand was on the boy’s shoulder, steadying him as she wiped the sweat off his face and placed a towel on his back.

“Thank you, sir!” the boy said cheerfully before running off toward the playground again.

Maybe he’d seen me at the orphanage before.

I nodded in response, curt, almost stiff. I didn’t trust my voice.

Lyle gave me a small, fleeting smile before turning her gaze back to the boy. There was sunlight on her face again, the same way I remembered it, the same way it hit Sansorina’s face in another time.

I looked away, because I didn’t want her, any version of her—to ever bow her head to me like that. Not out of gratitude. Not out of habit.

In life we shared, I made sure she never served me. If she cooked, I washed the dishes. If she stayed up late with Pilar, I took the morning shift. I didn’t want to be the man who just received. Even though we have house helpers.

But when Sansorina insisted, when she pressed her care on me anyway, I would thank her quietly. Leave small wildflowers on her pillow. Kiss her more.

Because it was enough. More than enough. That she accepted me as I was. That she carried our daughter. That she gave me a place, even for a short time, to belong.

Now I just sit on benches, in different timelines, pretending that the laughter of other children belongs to us too.

I was about to leave. The sky was turning soft, the kind of dusk that makes the air smell like warm dust and soap from the laundries nearby. I took one last look at the playground before turning toward the street, ready to slip away.

Then I felt a small tug on my hand.

“Sir! K-kelan ka visit ampunan ulit?”

I looked down. It was the same boy from earlier, Ken. His words slurred slightly, but I understood him right away. His grip was light, his eyes bright.

“Next time,” I said, offering him a small smile.

“Bitaw ka kay sir, Ken,” Lyle said gently, coming up beside him and taking his hand away from mine. She looked a bit flustered, like she didn’t expect the boy to stop me.

I smiled at her, trying to ease her worry, then gestured to the bench. “Sit again, Ken,” I said.

Ken grinned and sat in front of me, his small legs swinging.

“Sir, thank you for shirt!” he said proudly, tugging at the fabric of the shirt he wore. It was one of the ones I’d dropped off with the donations a few weeks back.

I nodded. “Sit properly, Ken,” Lyle reminded him, smoothing his hair.

Ken adjusted himself, turning his full attention to me. “Ge… getss mo ako, sir?” he asked, his words tumbling out carefully.

I nodded again, softer this time. “Of course. I can understand you,” I said.

Ken smiled wide, that kind of unfiltered smile only children have, and nodded eagerly.

I felt something twist in my chest, that quiet, wordless ache again.

I looked at Lyle. She was watching her brother, not me. Her face was tender but tired, the way Sansorina’s was when she stayed up all night soothing Pilar.

“Late po kasi development niya, sir,” she said when she noticed me looking. “Kaya po nagsumikap po akong makapag-aral para po makahanap ng mas magandang trabaho. Para po mapatingnan ko po siya.”

Her words were steady, but her voice trembled near the end.

I looked at Ken again, still smiling, still humming to himself, oblivious to how much his sister was carrying for him. Then back to Lyle, her hands rough from work, her eyes soft from love.

And I saw it clearly.

That same light. That same unwavering care I’d seen in every Sansorina I’ve met across time.

The universe kept rewriting her, giving her different names, faces, and lives but her heart always found its way back to love someone the way she used to love me.

“What help do you need?” I asked.

Lyle didn’t answer right away. She just kept walking beside me, holding Ken’s hand tightly, her thumb tracing small circles on the back of his palm. We were on the narrow street that led to the jeepney stop, the one where people always waited with heavy bags and tired faces.

She breathed in before answering. “Gusto ko lang po na mapatingnan si Ken, para po alam ko po paano po siya matulungan bilang kapatid niya.”

That was all. No mention of herself. No talk about the long hours she worked, or the way her shoulders sagged at the end of every week. Just Ken.

I knew that answer before she even said it. My Sansorina never asked for anything that would make her own life easier. Only for the ones she loved.

“That’s all I ever asked, sir,” she added softly, her eyes fixed ahead.

I nodded and reached for Ken’s free hand. His little fingers slipped into mine without hesitation, warm and trusting. He looked up at me and grinned, and for a second, I felt that familiar warmth, the same one I used to feel when Pilar wrapped her tiny hand around my finger.

Ken was eight, but his steps were smaller, uneven. His thoughts wandered the same way too, light and drifting, like a child much younger.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I thought about Lyle’s quiet strength, about the way she smiled at Ken even when she was clearly exhausted. By morning, I was already moving.

I talked to the best specialists I knew, the ones who understood child development better than anyone else across the timelines I’d passed through. I told them about Ken, about his speech, about his delays. They agreed to take him in.

But I couldn’t tell Lyle it was from me. She wouldn’t take it if she knew.

So I told her it was part of a program, an NGO initiative helping children with similar conditions as Ken’s. She believed me, with that cautious hope I’d seen before in so many versions of her.

She thanked me quietly, bowing her head like she always did.

And as she walked away with Ken, I stayed still for a moment, watching another Sansorina love, sacrifice, and hope… while pretending it was nothing special.

I stayed longer than I should have. Longer than I promised myself I would.

I told myself I was only here for Ken, to make sure he got the help he needed, that Lyle wouldn’t have to carry everything alone. But somehow, the days blurred into weeks, and the weeks into months.

And then came that morning.

Ken was standing by the school gate, proudly wearing his uniform, the smallest one in his SPED class. He waved at me and Lyle as he followed his teacher inside. His steps were still clumsy, but sure. His little backpack bounced with every stride.

Lyle exhaled. For the first time since I’d met her, she looked lighter, not happy exactly, but unburdened. Like she could finally breathe without guilt pressing down on her chest.

I watched her from the corner of my eye. She smiled faintly, her gaze following her brother until he disappeared into the building.

“He’ll do well,” I said quietly.

She nodded. “Opo. Alam ko po na kaya niya.” Then she looked at me, eyes soft with gratitude she couldn’t put into words. “Salamat, sir.”

I smiled back, but didn’t answer. If I said anything more, she might start asking questions I couldn’t answer.

That afternoon, I visited Pilar. She was at the garden again, chasing the butterflies her mother planted flowers for. She didn’t see me, I made sure of that. I just stood there, a few meters away, memorizing the way her laughter filled the air.

My little girl. My anchor between timelines.

When I finally turned to leave, the pod was already humming in the distance, patient, waiting.

It was time to go.
Another timeline.
Another version of Sansorina.
Another life to glimpse, and to let go of again.

I took one last breath of the air that carried Pilar’s laughter, then stepped forward.

Chapter Text

There’s a certain kind of silence that clings to the city after midnight. The kind that hums, faint and restless, between the spaces of traffic lights and sleeping homes. It’s the kind of silence that doesn’t mean peace, it just means no one’s left to talk about the noise.

I was walking near the bridge when I first saw her. She was sitting on the edge of the railing, feet dangling, the river below glinting like liquid glass under the streetlight. A cigarette burned between her fingers. Her hair stuck to her face, unwashed, streaked with color that wasn’t quite fading yet. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t really looking anywhere.

And yet, something in me stilled.

I’ve seen that kind of look before.
That half-empty gaze that sees too much and nothing at all.

Sansorina used to have it too, on nights when she thought I was asleep, when she’d sit by the window with her hands clasped together as if holding her own heart from falling apart.

It’s strange how the world bends time in small ways. How it lets me meet people who carry traces of the one I can’t forget.

I didn’t speak to the girl right away. I just watched from the other side of the bridge. She took another drag, then exhaled like she was trying to empty herself.

When she finally noticed me, she didn’t look startled. Just tired.
“What, you gonna tell me not to smoke here, old man?”

Her voice was rough around the edges, too young to sound that broken.

“No,” I said quietly. “Just thought you might fall.”

She scoffed. “Then I’ll fall.”

“Wouldn’t that be a shame?”

“Would it?” she asked, the corner of her lip twitching like she didn’t know whether to sneer or cry.

I walked closer, slow, careful. I didn’t reach out, didn’t move too much. Sometimes people like her, people drowning quietly—flinch at kindness.

“I’ve seen better ways to disappear,” I said.

She gave a bitter laugh. “Disappear. I like that. That’s what I’ve been trying to do for months.”

“Not doing a very good job,” I said. “You’re still here.”

That earned me a glare. “Who the hell are you?”

“Just someone walking.”

“Then keep walking.”

But I didn’t. Not yet. Something in her posture, the way her hands trembled slightly, how her voice cracked on the edge of fury, told me she was barely holding on.

“Okay,” I said finally, and turned to go.

She called out before I took two steps. “Hey—”

I stopped, but didn’t look back.

“You got a light?”

I turned around and nodded. She threw her cigarette away. “Just kidding,” she said. “Trying to quit.”

That’s when she smiled. Small, crooked, uncertain. The kind of smile that looks like it forgot how to exist.

The next time I saw her, it was by the same bridge. Morning this time. She was sitting on the steps, sipping something from a cheap paper cup. Her clothes were cleaner, her hair pulled back.

She noticed me before I spoke. “Stalker?”

“Coincidence,” I said.

“Right.” She smirked. “You always take morning walks by random bridges?”

“I do now.”

Her name was Nica Mae. Seventeen, though she looked older in the way some kids do when life makes them grow up too early.

She told me, without me asking, about the things she was trying to leave behind—people, places, pills, and powder. Her voice was detached, like she was narrating someone else’s life.

I didn’t ask her to stop. I didn’t tell her it was wrong. I just listened.

Because sometimes, that’s what the dying part of you needs the most, to be heard without being dissected.

“Everyone wants something from me,” she said once. “Money. Time. My body. My silence. What do you want?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just conversation.”

She stared at me for a long time. “You’re weird.”

“Maybe.”

“Most men my age or yours would’ve asked for something by now.”

“I’m not most men.”

“Then what are you?”

“Someone who knows what losing looks like.”

That shut her up. For a moment, the air between us felt heavy, almost familiar. I could almost hear Sansorina’s voice somewhere in that silence, whispering through the years.

That’s when I realized that this girl, Nica Mae—she wasn’t looking for salvation. She was looking for proof that she wasn’t too late.

And if I could be that proof, even for a while, then that was enough.

People talk about recovery as if it’s a straight line, one long road heading toward light.
They don’t see the loops, the falls, the days you swear you’re clean only to wake up shaking for something that almost killed you.

For Nica Mae, every morning was a battle between the girl she wanted to be and the ghost that still whispered inside her veins.
I saw it in her hands, how they trembled when she thought no one was looking. I saw it in the way her eyes darted to alleys, to people who carried the same scent of ruin she once called home.

She’d been clean for twenty-three days when she relapsed.

It happened after I told her I would be out of town for work for only a few days, I said.
But to someone who’s been abandoned all her life, a few days sounds a lot like forever.

When I came back, I found her sitting by the same bridge, the cigarette replaced by a small piece of foil, her pupils wide and wild.
The moment she saw me, she froze, shame flushing her cheeks like bruises.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she said. Her voice cracked, brittle as glass.

“So you tried to disappear again?” I asked quietly.

She turned away. “It’s not that simple, George.”

“It never is,” I said. “But it’s still a choice.”

She laughed, a hoarse, broken sound. “You think I want this?”

“No. I think you’re scared of what you’d be without it.”

That made her cry. I didn’t reach for her. I just stayed, letting the wind carry the sound of her sobs over the water.

After a while she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” I said. “You didn’t break my trust. You broke your own and you can rebuild that.”

She shook her head, knees drawn to her chest. “You sound like my mother.”

She told me about her family then.
A mother who worked overseas and sent money but no warmth.
A father who treated silence like love.
And a brother who stopped calling after she started stealing from him.

“They said I embarrassed them,” she said, her voice trembling. “That I ruined everything they gave me. Maybe I did.”
I stayed quiet.

“My boyfriend was the only one who stayed,” she added. “He said he loved me. Said the world hated girls like me, but he didn’t. He gave me my first hit. Said it would make things quiet.”

Her eyes glazed over. “It did. Until it didn’t. Then it was just noise again, but louder.”

She told me about nights spent in rooms that smelled of sweat and smoke, about the way she learned to trade pieces of herself for attention, how she mistook control for care.
“He used to say, you’re nothing without me.”
She looked up at me then. “And when you left for those few days, I thought maybe he was right.”

Days turned into weeks. Nica Mae started going to a small community center where an old counselor named Aster held group sessions. She hated it at first, said everyone there was fake, pretending they were better than they were.
But she kept going, maybe because I kept waiting for her outside, sitting on the same bench every time.

“You don’t have to babysit me,” she’d mutter after every session.
“I know,” I’d answer. “But benches don’t mind company.”

Slowly, she began to smile again. Sometimes she brought coffee for me, sometimes she just sat beside me in silence, legs swinging like a child’s.

Then, one evening, I noticed a familiar shadow waiting across the street.
Tall, thin, eyes like a knife.
Her boyfriend.

He walked up when she left the center, sneer already on his face.
“Hey, babe,” he said. “Miss me?”

Nica Mae froze. The air around her seemed to collapse.
“Go home, Jace,” she said softly.
“This is home,” he laughed, glancing at me. “Who’s the old guy? Your sponsor? You sleeping with him too?”

Before I could speak, she slapped him. The sound cracked the air.

He grabbed her wrist, too tight. “You think you’re better than me now?”

“Let her go,” I said, my voice calm.

Jace turned to me, grinning. “You don’t scare me, grandpa.”

I stepped forward just enough for him to see that I wasn’t bluffing. There’s a certain stillness that men like him recognize, the kind born from years of restraint, not rage.

He let her go, spat on the ground, and walked away muttering.

Nica Mae was shaking.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to be sorry for surviving,” I said. “That’s already enough.”

She broke then, collapsing against me, sobbing until her voice was raw.

The days that followed were hard. Jace tried to come back twice, once with gifts, once with threats. She refused him both times. But each time, she spiraled afterward, her cravings worse, her temper shorter.

“I hate that I still want it,” she admitted one night. “It’s like my body misses the poison.”

“It’s not your body that misses it,” I said. “It’s the emptiness it used to fill.”

She looked at me then with something fragile in her eyes, something that scared me because I’d seen it before.

“George…” she began, voice barely above a whisper. “Do you ever get tired of saving people?”

“I don’t save anyone,” I said. “I just stay until they can walk alone.”

“What if I don’t want you to leave?”

I didn’t answer right away. I saw the storm in her eyes, the same one Sansorina used to have, the one that begged to be seen, to be chosen, to be loved right this time.

“I know what you’re feeling,” I said softly.
She laughed through tears. “Of course you do. You always know everything.”
“I don’t know everything. But I know this, you don’t love me, Nica Mae. You love what I make you feel: safe, seen, forgiven.”

She stared at me, trembling. “And if I say I don’t care? If I say I still want you?”

“Then I’d still say no,” I said.

Her face crumpled, and she turned away, muttering something I couldn’t hear. The next day she didn’t come to the center.

I waited three days before I went looking.

I found her behind an abandoned warehouse, shaking, pale, her pupils tiny this time. Her body curled against the wall, a spent syringe beside her.

“Nica Mae,” I said, crouching beside her.

She blinked, sluggish. “You came back.”

“Of course I did.”

“I thought you said you’d leave when I could walk alone,” she slurred. “Guess I can’t yet.”

I lifted her gently, carried her to the small clinic nearby. She vomited twice on the way, crying in between.

When she finally stabilized, she looked at me with hollow eyes. “Why do you keep coming back?”

“Because someone once did the same for me,” I said.

She frowned, trying to piece the meaning together, but sleep took her before she could ask more.

Weeks passed. Withdrawal again. Therapy again.
The world turned slowly, and so did she.

She started drawing, rough sketches of bridges, rivers, and hands. She said it helped when words felt too heavy.
Sometimes, when she was quiet, I’d catch her watching me, like she was memorizing my face.

One afternoon, she handed me a folded paper.
Inside was a drawing of a man sitting on a bench, a young girl beside him, both staring at the horizon.
Underneath, she’d written: Thank you for waiting.

I didn’t say anything. Just smiled and tucked it into my pocket.

The day I left, she didn’t cry.
She just stood by the bridge, wind tugging at her hair, looking stronger somehow.

“So this is it?” she said.

“For now,” I answered.

“Will I see you again?”

“Maybe. But if you don’t, it means you made it.”

She nodded slowly. “I’ll hate you for a while.”

“I know.”

Then she smiled, a real one this time. “But I’ll still thank you someday.”

I touched her shoulder lightly, then walked away.
Behind me, the river murmured, carrying the echo of her voice.

That night, I sat beside a quiet pod hidden beneath the shed, the same one that had followed me through every shift of time and memory. Its surface pulsed faintly, waiting.

I thought of Sansorina—of her laughter, her gentleness, the way she’d look at me when she thought I wasn’t watching.
Every time I met another version of her, different gaze, different life—I realized it wasn’t her I was chasing. It was the reminder of who I became because of her.

And Nica Mae, with her trembling hands and brave heart, was proof that love doesn’t always need to be returned to matter.

I closed my eyes and whispered, “Another one. One more who needed saving.”

The pod hummed softly, light swallowing the night, and when I opened my eyes again, the world had already changed.

Chapter Text

It was raining the afternoon I met her. The kind of rain that didn’t pour hard, but stayed long enough to soak everything slowly, quiet and stubborn. I was sitting by the edge of a small café across the university when I saw her, standing under the awning of a nearby bookstore. Her umbrella was broken, one of its ribs bent upward like a wing. She didn’t seem to notice. She was staring at the puddles forming on the pavement, her eyes lost somewhere far beyond them.

That was the first time I saw Chrisleigh.

I didn’t know yet that she had three children waiting for her at home. I didn’t know that she once used to teach in that university, or that she had stopped because her husband wanted her to “focus on the family.” I didn’t know that the woman with the broken umbrella had been breaking for years, quietly, without anyone noticing.

I only knew that I felt something familiar, a pull, like gravity made of sadness.

When I saw her struggling to fix the umbrella, I stood and walked to her side. “May I?” I asked, my voice soft, unsure if she’d even hear me over the rain.

She turned. Her eyes were dull, but polite. “It’s fine,” she said. But it wasn’t. The rain had already soaked through her sleeves, and the handle of the umbrella was cracked.

Still, she thanked me when I offered my handkerchief. That was all. She left soon after, walking quickly into the blur of the street, and I was left there, holding the quiet she’d left behind.

A week later, I saw her again.

It was in the same café, this time with three small children. Two girls and one boy, all under ten. The boy was clinging to her arm while the girls shared a pastry on the table. She looked exhausted, but she smiled at them the way a mother does when she’s too tired to speak.

When one of the girls accidentally spilled the milk, the boy froze, expecting anger. But she didn’t raise her voice. She simply sighed and wiped it clean with the napkin, humming faintly to calm him.

I knew that kind of patience. It was the patience that grows from pain, from trying too long to hold everything together.

When the children were done eating, she sent them to the counter to look at the cakes, just so she could breathe. She sat there, alone for a moment, staring at the condensation on her glass. I took it as my chance to return her umbrella, which I’d fixed days ago when I found it left behind.

“You left this,” I said as I approached.

She blinked up at me, surprised. “You… fixed it?”

“It wasn’t that broken,” I said, handing it to her.

She gave a faint smile, a small one, but it reached her eyes for the first time. “Thank you,” she said. “Most things that break in my life don’t get fixed.”

I didn’t reply. I only nodded, but something about the way she said it stayed with me.

Over the next few weeks, I saw her often. Not by coincidence, not entirely. I found myself taking the same coffee breaks, the same paths, just to see if she was around. Sometimes she was. Sometimes she wasn’t. But when she was, she would greet me with that small, tired smile.

Her name, I learned, was Chrisleigh. She was thirty-two. Once an instructor in education. Married for eight years. Her husband was a businessman, often away, but even when he was home, she said it felt like living beside a storm, all noise and no warmth.

“He used to love me,” she said one afternoon, as we sat near the café window watching her children play on the street. “He said he loved that I was smart. That I had plans. But when I started to grow, he said I was getting too proud. He said a good wife should know her place. And I thought… maybe he was right.”

“Do you still think that?” I asked.

She looked at her hands, at the small scar near her ring finger. “I don’t know how not to,” she said quietly.

She had learned obedience the way some people learn to breathe, something automatic, hard to unlearn.

I didn’t push. I never do. I knew better than to pull someone out of a storm they’re still trying to survive. So I stayed near, quietly, offering what little space of peace I could give.

Sometimes I’d find her walking home, the children ahead of her, and I’d carry their small bags. Sometimes we’d talk about simple things—books, music, food. And sometimes, she would talk about her old students, her dream of finishing her master’s degree, the life she could’ve had if she hadn’t gotten pregnant too soon.

“It’s my fault,” she said once. “I was careless. I thought love was enough. But it’s not. It’s never enough.”

“Maybe it’s not about enough,” I said. “Maybe it’s about right.”

She smiled faintly. “And what if I don’t know what right feels like anymore?”

“Then start with what feels kind,” I told her.

I became a quiet constant in her days, a stranger who asked nothing, who only listened. Her husband didn’t notice, or maybe he didn’t care. He had his own affairs, his own circles. She told me about them in passing, not with anger, but with the dull resignation of someone who had run out of tears.

“I used to fight,” she said one evening. “Then I realized it’s useless. The more I fight, the more he reminds me that I depend on him. That I owe him everything, the house, the food, the children. He says I’m nothing without him.”

“What do you think?” I asked.

She paused. “I think he’s right. I don’t know who I am without him.”

I wanted to tell her that she was still herself, the same woman who once stood in front of students with fire in her words, who dreamed of more than surviving. But I only said, “You’re not nothing.”

She looked at me then, and I saw the smallest flicker of belief.

It took months before she began to change. Small things, at first. She started teaching part-time again, online classes in the evenings. She started walking alone to the market instead of asking her husband’s driver. She started keeping a journal.

“I write everything now,” she told me one morning. “Even the ugly things. It’s like pulling out thorns.”

She smiled when she said it, and for the first time, I saw her alive, not just breathing, but alive.

Her husband noticed too. He didn’t like it. He accused her of neglecting the children, of being ungrateful. He shouted, broke plates, locked her phone. She didn’t tell me everything, but I knew.

And still, she stayed.

“I can’t leave,” she whispered one night. “I can’t do that to the kids.”

“You’re not doing it to them,” I said. “You’re doing it for them.”

Her voice trembled. “He said if I leave, no one will take me. That I’m just a tired mother with nothing left.”

“Then prove him wrong,” I said.

It was slow, painful, but one day she did.

I helped her pack quietly when her husband was out of town. She didn’t take much, just clothes, documents, and her children’s favorite toys. She left the rest.

As she closed the door, she turned to me. “What if I can’t do it?”

“You already are,” I said.

She nodded, holding back tears, and left.

I didn’t see her for a long while after that. I knew where she’d gone, a women’s center that helped single mothers find work and shelter. I didn’t visit. I wanted her to find her own footing without me hovering near.

Weeks later, I received a letter left at the café. It was from her.

“George,” it said. “Thank you for reminding me that I’m still someone. The kids are in school now. I’m teaching again. Sometimes I’m scared, sometimes I cry, but I’m free. And freedom, I realized, is love too. Maybe even more than love.”

I folded the letter and kept it in my coat pocket.

That night, I sat on a park bench and watched the children running around. Their laughter filled the air, bright and careless. I closed my eyes, and for a moment, I imagined one of them, a little girl with her mother’s eyes and my quiet smile. Pilar.

My daughter.

The one I always visit before I go.

The one who never grows old in my memory, who stays at the age I last held her.

The pod hummed faintly from where it hid beyond the trees. Waiting. Always waiting.

I stayed there for a while longer, watching the lights blur through the drizzle.

Then I stood, and without looking back, I walked toward the sound of the hum, toward another place, another time, where perhaps another Sansorina waited, unaware that somewhere, somehow, she had already been loved enough to last across every lifetime.

It reminds me of why I do this, why I keep going, through each life, through each broken version of Sansorina. Because each time, I help them heal a part of her that I lost.

And when the air shifts, when the world folds softly into another, I find myself before another version again.

A new place.
A different story.
But always her.

Always my Sansorina.

Chapter Text

It was supposed to be an ordinary evening, one of those quiet nights when the world pretends it isn’t tired. The city lights flickered like they were trying too hard to be stars, and the air was warm with the hum of people dressed in pressed suits and borrowed smiles.

I didn’t plan to attend the charity event. I never do, not really. I’ve learned that my place isn’t in crowds but in the corners, where I can observe the edges of people’s lives without touching them. But someone I had helped before, a woman who reminded me of another lifetime—had invited me, and it felt wrong to refuse.

So I went.

The hall was filled with laughter, bright and polite. The kind of laughter that covers exhaustion. I stood near the open balcony, nursing a glass I didn’t drink, and watched as people clinked glasses, took pictures, made promises they’d forget by morning.

That’s when I saw her.

She was standing near the stage, surrounded by people but not consumed by them. She laughed, genuinely and it startled me. Because in a world where everything sounded rehearsed, her laughter was real.

Her name was Dani.
I learned it when the host introduced her as one of the beneficiaries turned volunteers of the foundation.

I didn’t move at first. I just listened as she spoke—light, certain, radiant. She talked about gratitude, about how every day was a borrowed one. She thanked the doctors, the donors, the strangers who believed in helping without asking.

But what stayed with me wasn’t her words. It was the way she smiled.
Bright. Unapologetic.
Alive.

I almost forgot myself in that moment, forgot that I was not supposed to stay, that I was just a fragment passing through lives that were never mine to keep.

After the program, she found me first.

“You’ve been standing there all night,” she said, her voice playful but soft. “Are you allergic to people?”

I smiled faintly. “Something like that.”

She laughed, and I could tell she found it funny that I didn’t deny it. “I’m Dani,” she said, extending her hand.

“George.”

Her grip was warm, firm but not forced. Her eyes studied me, and for a second, I felt exposed.

“You don’t look like the type who attends these kinds of events,” she teased.

“I’m not,” I admitted.

“So why are you here?”

“Someone invited me.”

She nodded as if she understood something deeper than my words. “Ah. The kind who comes because it would be impolite not to.”

I didn’t reply, but she smiled anyway, satisfied with her own observation.

“Then maybe you can make it worth your time,” she said. “Help me with the raffle tickets.”

Before I could refuse, she had already handed me a roll of tickets and walked off toward a group of guests, her steps light and sure. I followed, partly because she asked, and partly because I wanted to know how someone could still smile like that.

We spent the next few hours together, she doing most of the talking, I listening. She was quick, witty, and disarmingly sincere. She talked about books, about small dreams, about how she once wanted to travel but settled for collecting postcards instead.

“I like imagining places,” she said. “It’s cheaper and less tiring.”

“Why not go?” I asked without thinking.

She looked at me, her eyes calm but heavy. “Because I might not have enough time to come back.”

I didn’t understand it then. Not fully.

Later that evening, I found out why.
Someone mentioned her story in passing, about how she had lived with blood cancer since she was a baby, how every year was a borrowed gift.

She wasn’t supposed to live past twelve, someone said.
She was twenty-three now.

I saw her again a few days later. It wasn’t planned, not really. I just happened to pass by the hospital where the foundation often held volunteer programs, and she was there, helping organize care kits for children.

“George!” she called out, waving. “You came back!”

I almost corrected her, that I wasn’t coming back for anyone, that I just wandered where time took me, but her smile disarmed me again.

“I didn’t know you volunteer here,” I said.

“I don’t, technically,” she admitted, grinning. “They just can’t get rid of me.”

I watched her kneel beside a child, handing the little boy a stuffed bear. She spoke softly, gently, as if her words could ease every needle mark and scar.

There was no trace of sadness in her, no bitterness, no fear. Only warmth.

“How long have you been doing this?” I asked.

“Since I could walk again without tubes attached to me,” she said casually, as if that wasn’t the most heartbreaking thing someone could say.

I stayed longer that day than I should have. We talked until the sun began to fall behind the hospital’s walls. She told me about her treatments, her relapses, the nights she prayed not for healing but for peace.

“You don’t sound afraid,” I said quietly.

She shrugged. “I used to be. But you can’t live forever scared. You just end up missing the good parts.”

She smiled at me then, not with pity or pain, but with understanding. “You look like someone who’s been missing a lot of good parts, George.”

I didn’t answer. She was right.

In the weeks that followed, I found myself seeking her out. I told myself it was to help, to carry boxes, to fix things she couldn’t reach, small tasks that gave me an excuse to stay.

But deep down, I knew it wasn’t that.

I stayed because Dani was a light I didn’t know I needed.
She was life refusing to give in to the quiet.

We’d sit by the hospital garden in the late afternoons, watching children play. She’d talk about everything—her favorite songs, her least favorite medicines, the feeling of sunlight after chemotherapy.

Once, she caught me staring. “What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just… you make everything sound so easy.”

She chuckled softly. “It’s not easy. It’s just… lighter when you stop expecting it to be perfect.”

I nodded, though I didn’t fully grasp it until later.

One night, we stayed past visiting hours. The nurses didn’t mind, they were used to her brightness filling the halls. She sat on the edge of her bed, her legs swinging slightly, the IV tube taped neatly on her wrist.

“I think I’m getting better,” she said, grinning. “Or maybe I’m just good at pretending.”

“Pretending what?”

“That I’m not scared of leaving.”

Her voice softened then, and I felt something twist in my chest.

“George,” she said after a long pause, “do you believe that people like us, people who are just passing through—can leave something that lasts?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I looked at her, the dim light tracing the outline of her face—fragile, yet strong in a way I couldn’t describe.

“You already have,” I said finally.

She smiled faintly. “Good. Then I can rest easy when the time comes.”

But Dani wasn’t done teaching me yet.
Because when the time came, when her strength began to fade, and the hospital room grew quieter, she didn’t disappear into sadness.

She laughed still.
She greeted every nurse by name.
She sang along to songs she barely had the breath for.

I visited her every day, though she told me not to.

“I don’t want people staying because they pity me,” she said once, smiling weakly.

“I’m not staying for pity,” I said.

“Then why?”

I looked at her, unable to speak. Maybe because I didn’t know anymore. Maybe because for the first time, I wanted to stay for no reason at all.

She reached out and took my hand. “Then stay. But don’t cry for me later, okay? Promise me that.”

I wanted to promise.
But I couldn’t.

I didn’t keep that promise.

When Dani died, I wept. For the first time across all timelines, I cried, not for myself, not even for the loss of my Sansorina, but for her.

Because she didn’t deserve it. Because she was brave enough to face every sunrise knowing it might be her last. Because she spent her borrowed life giving back what the world couldn’t take from her, kindness.

I didn’t visit Pilar after that.
I couldn’t.

Maybe because seeing my daughter would remind me that the world still had small, gentle things left in it, and I wasn’t ready to forgive it yet for taking Dani.

I stayed in the hospital garden long after everyone had gone home.

The night air was thick with the smell of disinfectant and rain. The nurses had turned off the hallway lights, and the only glow came from the small candles some of the volunteers had left by Dani’s bed, wax trembling, like they were trying to breathe for her.

She was gone.

The room felt wrong without her laughter. I kept expecting her to burst through the door, smiling, asking if I wanted to sneak to the cafeteria again for instant noodles. But all I could hear was the faint humming of the machines she no longer needed.

I thought I was ready.
I thought I understood how time worked, how some people were meant to leave, how I was meant to move on. But standing there, I realized that understanding doesn’t make anything easier.

Days passed.
Or maybe weeks.
Time doesn’t move the same way when you’re grieving.

I still went to the places where she used to be. The hospital garden, the small café across the street, the bench near the fountain where she’d feed the stray cats and pretend they were her audience.

She had a way of making the ordinary feel holy.

The volunteers still talked about her, “Dani the stubborn,” they’d say, or “Dani the sunshine.” Everyone had a story. Everyone had a smile that wilted when they spoke her name. She left something behind in each of them, even in people she only met once. That was her kind of immortality.

I used to think love was about holding on.
Dani taught me it was also about letting go.

The pod was waiting for me, as always. Hidden somewhere in the quiet. Humming faintly, as if it could sense my hesitation.

I didn’t step inside.

I just stood near it, staring at the faint shimmer of its outline. I knew what would happen if I touched it, I’d slip again, drift into another timeline, another world, another version of her.

But for the first time, I didn’t want to.

I wasn’t ready to meet another face with the same soul, not when Dani’s memory was still breathing in the spaces she left behind.

So I wandered instead.

I took long walks in the city, where life went on as if nothing had been lost. I watched people rushing, laughing, arguing, each of them caught in their own small tragedies, their own small joys. It reminded me of something Dani said once:

“People forget that living is already brave.”

She was right. Every breath is defiance. Every morning is a victory.

Sometimes, I’d see her, or parts of her in strangers.
A woman adjusting her scarf the way Dani used to.
A laugh that carried the same rhythm.
A kindness in someone’s eyes that caught me off guard.

It was both comforting and cruel.

Because every time I saw her, I remembered that she was gone.
And every time I remembered, I found a new piece of myself missing.

I tried visiting Pilar once. I thought maybe seeing my daughter would fill the hollow Dani left behind. I made it as far as the street before their house. I could see her, my Pilar—playing with a paper kite, her hair messy, her laughter chasing the wind.

I almost went closer. Almost called her name.
But the grief came like a wave again and I couldn’t let her see me broken.

So I turned away.

Nights were the hardest. The world was too quiet, and the quiet had Dani’s shape in it.
I’d lie awake thinking of the stories she told, the places she wanted to go, the things she wanted to learn if she had more time.

Once, she told me, “If I ever get another tomorrow, I’ll waste it being happy.”

And she did.
Every tomorrow she had, she wasted beautifully.
Helping, laughing, living.

I envied that.

Because somewhere along the timelines, I forgot how to live without purpose. I forgot how to exist just for the sake of being alive.

Dani didn’t.
Even when death was sitting beside her bed, she smiled at it and said thank you for waiting.

Chapter Text

The cathedral’s shadow reached far across the plaza that afternoon, quiet and long, like a tired hand stretching across the cobblestone. The bells had just stopped ringing, leaving a faint hum in the air that mixed with the chatter of a few passersby. It was one of those days that carried both light and heaviness, the kind that makes you want to stay still and think about everything and nothing all at once.

That’s when I saw her.

She was sitting on one of the benches outside the cathedral. White blouse, navy skirt, the kind of outfit that looked like she just came from work, or maybe from somewhere she didn’t really want to be. Her shoulders were straight, but her hands were trembling slightly as they held onto a small rosary. Her lips moved quietly, maybe a prayer, maybe just thoughts escaping her. I didn’t know yet.

But her eyes, there it was again.
That quiet, unreachable sadness that every Sansorina seemed to carry.

She was another version of her.
Another reflection of the same soul, in a different world.
And as always, I was there, not to interfere, not to change her path, but to help her find her way out of it, if she ever wished to.

I sat two benches away from her. Close enough to observe, far enough not to intrude.

The afternoon light touched the sides of her face. There were faint lines near her eyes, not from age, but from exhaustion. Her hair was neatly tied back, but a few strands escaped and danced with the soft breeze. She looked like someone who carried the weight of too many people on her back, yet forgot that she was allowed to rest.

After a while, she noticed me. Or maybe she just needed someone to talk to.
She smiled, polite, cautious.

“You’re not from here, are you?” she asked. Her voice was soft, the kind that always tried not to disturb.

I smiled back. “No, I’m just passing by. You?”

She chuckled faintly. “I’m from here. Well, from the province. But I’ve been working in South Carolina for years. Pharmacy.” She tilted her head slightly, as if studying me. “You don’t look like you belong here either. You’re too quiet.”

I shrugged. “Maybe I’m just listening.”

That made her pause.
Then she laughed a little, the kind of laugh that breaks the stillness of the air. “Listening to what? There’s barely any noise here.”

“To what’s not being said,” I answered.

That silenced her again but not the uncomfortable kind. More like she was deciding whether to let me into her silence.

“I’m Lourie,” she said finally.

“George.”

Over the next few days, I found myself returning to that cathedral. Not because I had to but because she was there, always sitting on the same bench. Sometimes she prayed. Sometimes she just stared at the sky, lips pressed together, as if she was waiting for an answer that never came.

We talked. Slowly. Carefully.

She told me about her family, about the coconut farms they owned, the old houses, the wide lands that used to mean everything. She told me about her father who used to walk around the farm every morning until his legs gave up. About her sister, who got sick after giving birth. About her mother who tried to keep everyone together but ended up falling apart too.

And about herself, the one who never got to fall apart.

“I thought I was lucky,” she said once, staring at her palms. “I had money. I had a stable job. I had everything people prayed for. But sometimes I wake up and wonder if I ever really lived.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Because I don’t remember when I last did something just for myself. I’ve been… surviving. Paying for the treatments, the medicines, the bills. Always working, always fixing something. When my sister got sick, I told myself, ‘Just a few years more and she’ll be okay.’ When my parents got sick, I said the same. But it never stopped.”

Her voice cracked slightly, the way voices do when they carry too many stories.

“I used to think God was testing me. Now I think maybe He just forgot I exist.”

I didn’t interrupt her. I never do.

She sighed and continued, “I wanted to be a pharmacist so I could help people like my brother. But he died before I even graduated. I wanted to travel after that, but my sister got pregnant. Then sick. I wanted to save, but every time I did, something happened. I’m thirty-five now, George. I’ve been the eldest, the breadwinner, the responsible one for so long that I forgot what Lourie wants.”

She smiled bitterly. “Maybe that’s what I’m praying for. Not for money. Not for health. Just… for me. To come back.”

One evening, it rained, hard and uninviting. The kind of rain that empties the streets and fills the air with the smell of wet soil and surrender.

I found her there again. Sitting on the same bench, umbrella forgotten beside her, letting the rain soak her completely.

“Lourie,” I called softly, stepping closer.

She didn’t move.

“Do you ever feel like it’s easier to just… disappear?” she asked, almost whispering. “Like if I vanished right now, no one would even notice? My family depends on me, yes, but that’s it. I’m not their daughter anymore. I’m their wallet. Their caretaker. Their nurse.”

I stepped closer, enough to hold the umbrella above her head. “You’re also their reason.”

She looked up at me then, eyes red from crying or the rain, I couldn’t tell. “You don’t understand.”

“I do,” I said. “Because I’ve met you before.”

She frowned slightly, confused. But I smiled and shook my head. “What I mean is, I’ve met people like you. People who love too much, give too much, until they forget they have the right to rest. It’s not selfish to want to live, Lourie.”

She looked down again. “But they need me.”

“And you need you too.”

That made her cry, the silent kind, the one that hurts more because she’s been holding it in too long. I let her cry. Let her break a little. Sometimes that’s the only way someone can start healing.

Days passed, and our conversations deepened. We talked about small things—food, books, the town’s changes, her old dreams. She told me she once wanted to open a small pharmacy near the sea, where old people could get their medicine without the long lines and expense.

“But dreams are expensive too,” she said with a sad smile.

“One day,” I replied.

She looked at me. “You really think so?”

“I do. Because even when life takes everything, dreams are the only things stubborn enough to wait.”

That made her laugh, genuinely this time.

But there were nights she still cried. Nights she told me how tired she was of being strong. Nights she said she envied people who could just let go.

And I listened. I always listened.

Because that’s what I was here for, not to save, not to fix, but to remind her that she was still human, still capable of wanting, still allowed to begin again.

One morning, I found her standing by the cathedral steps, holding a small piece of paper.

“I’ve decided to resign,” she said.

I blinked. “What?”

“I’m going home,” she continued. “To the province. To take care of my family in my own way. Not by working endlessly for them but by being with them. I realized… maybe I don’t need to save them. Maybe I just need to love them and myself properly.”

I smiled. “That’s brave.”

“It’s terrifying,” she corrected, but she smiled too. “But for the first time, I’m choosing something for me.”

She looked at me then, with gratitude in her eyes. “Thank you, George. You made me remember that I’m still alive.”

The day she left, she handed me a small rosary, the same one she used to hold during her prayers.

“For you,” she said. “So that when you feel lost, you’ll find your way back.”

I nodded, pocketing it carefully. “Goodbye, Lourie.”

“Goodbye, George. I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for too.”

She walked away, light, calm and whole.

That night, I went back to the cathedral alone.

The bench was empty now. The rain had stopped, and the sky was clear. The moon hung low, bright enough to make the world look softer than it really was.

In the distance, the faint hum of the pod waited. Hidden, silent, patient.
My path to the next world.
The next Sansorina.

But for a moment, just one, I closed my eyes and thought of Pilar.

My daughter.
My small, bright light in all these shifting timelines.

Chapter Text

The pod waited at the edge of the abandoned station, humming faintly beneath the air’s stillness. I had planned to visit Pilar for the last time that week, then slip away. But that night, while sitting in a small café trying to pass the hours before sunrise, my phone, borrowed from this world—lit up.

A random post appeared in my feed. A girl’s face, lit by the dull glow of a desk lamp. Her caption was simple:

“Maybe I’m just not meant to be someone worth the miracle.”

I didn’t know why I stopped scrolling. Maybe because of her eyes, heavy, resigned, as though she had already said goodbye to something no one else noticed missing. Her name was Rosette.

The comments under her post were full of tired encouragements, some shallow, some sincere. None of them reached her, I could tell. People were talking at her, not to her.

So I sent her a message.
A stranger’s attempt. A foolish one, maybe.

“You don’t need to be a miracle, Rosette. Just breathing tonight is enough.”

I didn’t expect a reply. I was ready to leave it at that.
But minutes later, my phone buzzed.

“Who are you?”

That was how it began.

She was wary at first, replying in short phrases. She said she was just tired, that life had been beating her too long and too consistently that she didn’t know how to stand again.

I didn’t push. I just asked if she’d eaten.
She said no, she didn’t have the appetite.

“Then drink water. Just that for now.”

She replied with a faint “okay.”

It went on like that for days, short exchanges, fragments of sentences, the kind of talk you’d have with someone standing at the edge of something dark.

She told me she had failed her board exam for the third time. She said she didn’t even tell her mother yet because the woman had pawned one of their last pieces of land to pay for her review.

“They’re expecting too much. But I’m too tired to even expect myself anymore,” she said.

I listened. That was all I could do.

I didn’t know, not in certainty—until she sent me her real account one night. A sign of trust, maybe. Her photo appeared larger this time, clearer. The same eyes, the same tilt of her head when she smiled. Sansorina’s, always, in every timeline.

And just like that, I forgot the hum of the pod again. Rosette lived in a small town where the rain lingered longer than most. She worked part-time in a pharmacy while waiting for another review cycle to open. She was the youngest of three, the only girl. Her father was long gone, and her mother was still working in her fifties to send her younger half-sisters to college.

“I’m supposed to help her,” she told me once. “But I’m useless right now.”

Her words stayed with me.
I knew the sound of people who have given too much. The kind who learned to smile through ruin.

Sometimes she’d post Bible verses followed by crying emojis. Sometimes she’d tweet about wanting to sleep for years.
When we talked, she apologized too much.

“Sorry if I’m too sad today.”
“Sorry if I talk too much about my problems.”
“Sorry if I’m a mess.”

I told her the same thing every time.

“Don’t be sorry for feeling. That’s the last thing that’s still yours.”

There were nights when I found myself waiting for her messages, like a routine I didn’t mean to make. I would sit by the pod’s open door, the blue glow painting the floor, reading her stories. I learned about her father, who died violently. About her eldest brother who broke down from trauma. About the second man of her mother, who was alive but never helped.

Her mother bore two more children from different men after her father’s death, and Rosette had to carry that weight, the expectations, the shame, the struggle to forgive.

“I tried being okay,” she said once, her voice in voice chat soft and raw. “I used to tell people that God is good, that everything has its time. But now, I can’t even pray properly. I’m scared He doesn’t listen anymore.”

I wanted to tell her she was wrong. That I’ve seen the ways God answers, quietly, in the faces of people you least expect.
But I didn’t say that. I just listened.

Because sometimes, listening is the prayer itself. One night, she didn’t message back.

A whole day passed. Then two.

My chest felt heavier with every hour.
It was strange, I’d seen entire worlds fade before, lives loop endlessly, and yet the silence of one woman’s inbox hurt more than any collapse.

I searched her name. Nothing. Until her post appeared again, cryptic and quiet.

“Sorry for the noise. This might be the last.”

I was out of the pod before I realized it. The coordinates shifted. The world’s air turned thick and heavy.

I found her near a small chapel outside town, sitting by the steps with red eyes. She looked at me, startled.

“George?”

I nodded.

She didn’t ask how I got there, and I didn’t explain. I just sat beside her.

She laughed softly through her tears. “You’re not real, are you?”

“I am,” I said. “Real enough to listen.”

She covered her face with her palms and cried quietly. “I just wanted it to stop. I don’t want to keep pretending I’m fine. I’m tired of trying to be the strong one.”

I reached out, not touching her, just letting my hand rest on the cold stone between us. “Then don’t be strong tonight. Just be here.”

That night, Rosette didn’t end her life.
She didn’t pray either. But she breathed, and that was enough. For weeks, I stayed in that town. Quietly, invisibly.

She didn’t know I was never supposed to exist there.

I helped her study again.
We reviewed together in coffee shops and libraries, sometimes just sitting in silence. I found ways to make her smile, simple things, like leaving notes in her books: “You’ve made it this far. You can make it one more day.”

She began to laugh again. Tentatively. Hesitant but genuine.

One morning, she sent me a message before dawn.

“George, I passed.”

I had to read it twice.
She sent a photo of her results, her name circled in red. Her words were all caps, shaky and emotional.

“I PASSED. AFTER EVERYTHING, I REALLY DID IT.”

I smiled. I didn’t cry this time, but my throat tightened.

“Of course you did,” I replied. “You always could. You just needed time to remember.”

She thanked me again and again. I told her she didn’t owe me anything.

I meant it.

It was only after her victory that the feelings began to surface—hers, not mine.

Rosette was subtle at first, but I’ve seen love before, in every version of Sansorina. It’s in the way they start looking for me even when I’m not speaking. The way their laughter slows at the end of a moment, eyes soft, as if asking if I’ll still be there tomorrow.

She confessed one night, after a simple dinner at a carinderia near her dorm.

“I think I’m falling for you, George.”

I paused. The air between us stilled.

Her eyes were determined but trembling. “I know it’s stupid. I know you probably don’t see me like that, but I can’t help it. You’re the only one who made me feel like I mattered again.”

I wanted to tell her that she did matter. That it wasn’t because of me.
That she was already whole before I came.

Instead, I said softly, “Rosette, you don’t owe me your heart for being kind.”

She laughed bitterly. “You sound like you’ve practiced that line.”

“Maybe I have,” I said, smiling faintly.

She looked down, tears threatening. “So you’ll leave too?”

I didn’t answer then. But we both knew I would.

Days turned into weeks. Rosette started working at a small diagnostic clinic. She sent me photos of her first uniform, her ID, her first paycheck. I was proud, quietly so.

She didn’t talk about love again, but I saw it in her messages, the gentleness, the waiting, the unspoken question.

When the time came, the pod was already humming. The air shimmered faintly, like it always did before a slip.

I met her one last time at the same chapel where I first found her. She was lighting a candle, praying this time. Her lips moved silently.

When she turned, she smiled. “I knew you’d come.”

I nodded. “You’re doing great, Rosette.”

She laughed softly. “You sound like a teacher.”

“I’m just someone who’s proud of you.”

She took a step closer, holding something, a small notebook. She pressed it to my hand. “I wrote here everything you told me. For when I forget again.”

I looked down at it. The first page said: For the nights I almost gave up.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice breaking more than I expected.

She tilted her head. “Will I see you again?”

I hesitated. Then, “Not here. But somewhere, maybe.”

Her smile trembled, but she nodded. “Then I’ll be okay. Because you found me when I was gone.”

I wanted to tell her everything, about the other worlds, the other hers, about Sansorina and Pilar and how every version of her keeps me tethered.
But I didn’t.
That was not for this world.

When I stepped into the blue light that night, I carried her notebook with me.

I didn’t go to Pilar right away. I sat by the pod’s open door, reading the first few pages. Her handwriting was uneven, rushed, alive.

“It’s strange. I used to think I was alone. But maybe people find each other because someone up there knows when we’re about to break.”

I closed the notebook and breathed.

Somewhere, Rosette was alive and moving forward. Smiling, maybe, as she walked to work in her white coat.

And somewhere, in another world, Sansorina was too.

The pod hummed again, waiting.

I whispered into the air, for Rosette, for all of them.

“Thank you for still choosing to live.”

Then I stepped forward.

Chapter Text

The pod creaked.

A deep, groaning sound, as if something outside had nudged it too hard. I froze. My hands were still on the panel when another thud came, followed by a faint cry. Not a loud one, just a small, startled sound that didn’t belong to wind or earth. For a second, I thought it was the pod’s system failing again, that strange hum in its walls rearranging itself. But then, I heard the sound of a child.

When I looked through the translucent shell, I saw her, a little girl sitting on the grass, blinking fast, trying not to cry. She had fallen, maybe hit her head on the pod. The pod’s camouflage shimmered faintly; I don’t think she saw it for what it was. She was looking right at me though or at the space I was in.

I shouldn’t have gone out. The pod wasn’t meant to be seen, especially by children. But something about the blood trickling down her nose, bright, thin, snapped something inside me. The next thing I knew, the hatch hissed and I was outside, squinting under the light.

“I’m sorry,” I said before anything else. “I don’t have anything to wipe your nose.”

The girl looked at me like I’d stepped out of a storybook. Not scared, not curious. Just… watching. Then she sniffled, wiped her nose with her palm, and gave a little shrug. Her hair was tangled, sun-warmed, the color of chestnuts. There was a stubbornness in her small shoulders, the kind that comes from growing up a little too quietly.

“Sit with me for a while,” I said. I didn’t mean to sound like an adult; it just slipped out, the way fathers talk to their children after a fall. She obeyed, maybe because I looked old enough to listen to.

“What are you doing here?” she asked after a moment, her voice surprisingly clear. Not the soft babble of a child, but something articulate, formed, as if she had spent a lot of time around adults. It amused me and she reminds me of my Pilar right away.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her back.

She put her tiny finger to her lips and whispered, “Shhh. There’s a mama cat with babies out there.”

She pointed toward a fallen bark of a tree a few meters away. I turned and saw it, a small hollow between the roots, the faintest movement of fur. She laid out a square of faded cloth and placed a portion of dried fish and a slice of bread on it.

“I’ll try to bring milk next time,” she added softly.

And that was how I met Rina, the girl who would ruin my loneliness for weeks.

We started meeting almost every late morning after that. At first, I thought it was a coincidence, but Rina always appeared at the same spot, dragging that same piece of cloth and a small tin lunchbox. It felt strange, a man sitting beside a little girl in a meadow, feeding a cat family together but it didn’t feel wrong. There was something profoundly still about those mornings.

The meadow was endless, lush and loud with crickets. The sun fell differently there, more golden than warm. When Rina laughed, it echoed faintly, like the air itself wanted to remember her voice.

I brought tools from the pod one day, fragments and things I knew would look ordinary enough. Broken wood, dull sheets, useless spare parts from other timelines I had scavenged. I built a small shelter beside the tree bark for the cats. Rina clapped when she saw it. Her palms were soft and small against mine when she held them up for a high five.

“You’re good,” she said, eyes wide with admiration. “You made a house for Georgie.”

“Georgie?” I asked.

“The mama cat,” she replied proudly. “And the baby… her name is Pip.”

“Why Georgie?”

She grinned, showing the gap between her teeth. “Because you helped me build the house. You’re George, right?”

I stared at her for a second. I didn’t remember telling her my name.

“How did you know?”

“You said it once,” she said, nodding, as if that explained everything. “When you talked to yourself.”

I didn’t argue. Maybe I did.

Rina talked a lot. She’d tell me about her house, her kuyas in the city, her mama and papa who were always busy with the tubuhan, the sugarcane fields she said smelled like burnt syrup at night. She said she lived with her ate Nina, who watched over her when the grown-ups weren’t home. Sometimes she’d say “Nina” in a quiet way that made me wonder if Nina was kind. But she never complained, never asked for pity. She just… accepted things, the way only children do.

Her stories reminded me of Pilar. My daughter had that same way of turning silence into something full. It was easy to listen to Rina. Sometimes, I’d forget how many days had passed inside that place.

One morning, it rained hard. I didn’t expect her to come. I stayed inside the pod, half-awake, watching the droplets race down the transparent walls. Then I saw her, a small figure in a yellow raincoat and red boots, trudging through the grass with a lunchbox in her hands. I rushed out before I could stop myself.

“Rina!” I shouted, and she turned, her cheeks pink from the cold.

“Georgie will be hungry,” she said simply, as if that explained why she had to be there.

I knelt beside her, trying to shield her from the rain with my coat. “You’ll get sick.”

She smiled. “Then you’ll take care of me?”

It was the kind of question that left me disarmed. I laughed, the kind that came out of the chest, tired but true. “Of course I will.”

She nodded, satisfied, and placed the fish near the cat’s small house. The cats darted out from under the shelter I’d built. They looked happy, content, unaware of the absurdity of a child and a man feeding them in a storm.

Days bled into each other. Rina’s visits became the rhythm of the place. I started waiting for her. I’d sit outside the pod, pretending to fix something, but really just listening for her humming. She always hummed before she appeared.

Then one day, she didn’t.

I waited till noon. Then till dusk. The meadow turned gray, the light thinner. For the first time, I felt something like panic. She had never missed a day before. Maybe she was sick. Maybe her parents were home. Maybe—

I stopped myself. She was a child. Children had lives. I was the intruder here.

Still, I came the next day. And the next. By the fourth day, I started to think she wouldn’t return.

Then I saw her.

She was walking slower than usual. Her steps were short, hesitant. Her hair wasn’t combed. When she saw me, she smiled but it was weak, polite, the kind of smile you wear when you’ve been told to. I noticed small bruises near her knees, faint ones along her arm. I tried not to stare.

“You okay, Rina?” I asked softly.

She nodded too fast. “Yes. Nina said we shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

I felt something twist inside me. “Then why are you still talking to me?”

She looked down. “Because you’re not a stranger.”

It was a simple sentence, but it felt heavier than anything I’d heard in years. I wanted to ask more, but I didn’t. I knew that tone. I knew it from Pilar, back when she tried to hide the things she didn’t understand.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The pod hummed softly, the screens flickered, but all I could see was Rina’s forced smile and the way she flinched when I moved too quickly. Something was wrong. I knew it.

I went out.

The house wasn’t far. I’d followed her before, only enough to know where she went, never daring to get close. It sat in the middle of a large field, an old ancestral house, high windows, wide stairs, the kind that echoed when you walked inside. From the outside, it looked beautiful. But up close, it was hollow. Too quiet.

I crouched behind a tree, watching through one of the windows. Inside, Rina sat at a long table, small against the heavy wood. She wasn’t eating. Just sitting. Her feet didn’t even touch the floor.

A woman walked in, tall, thin, with her hair tied too tight. Nina, I assumed. Rina flinched when she entered. She said something I couldn’t hear, then froze. Nina slapped the table hard enough to make Rina jump. I felt my fists clench before I realized it.

I wanted to storm in. I wanted to take her away. But what was I, really? To her, to anyone here? A shadow from nowhere. I couldn’t exist in her world the way I wanted to.

So I did what I could. I stayed close. I made sure Nina knew someone was watching.

For the next few nights, I lingered outside the house, letting myself be seen just enough. A movement near the window, a reflection in the glass. Once, I caught her eyes through the curtain. Nina froze. After that, the shouting stopped.

Rina started smiling again when we met. Not the same as before, but closer. The bruises faded. She brought small drawings sometimes, stick figures of her, me, and the cats.

“Who’s this?” I asked one morning, pointing at a small figure beside her in the drawing.

“That’s Mama,” she said. “She’ll come home soon. Nina will leave.”

“That’s good,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.

“She said we’ll live near the big road,” Rina continued. “With lots of people. Mama said we can visit Georgie sometimes.”

I smiled. “Will you still feed her?”

“Yes,” she said, proud again. “But you have to wait for me, okay?”

I hesitated. “I’ll wait.”

She waved as she left that day, a small hand against the light, disappearing into the tall grass.

I waited again the next day. Then the next. But she didn’t come back. The cats still came, mewing near the shelter, looking for her.

I left small bits of food there for a while, until one morning even they stopped showing up.

I don’t know how long I sat there after that, the grass dry, the pod humming faintly behind me. The air smelled like rain and sugarcane. I thought about how she said she’d bring milk next time. How she said I wasn’t a stranger. How she said her mama was coming home.

I tried not to think about how every version of her, every face that bore her name, always came and went like that.

But when I looked at the drawing she’d left behind, folded and tucked in the grass—me, her, the cats, and that little figure of her mama, I found myself smiling. The kind of smile that hurts after.

Maybe she was right. Maybe she was never really gone.

And maybe, somewhere beyond that field, a little girl was still pointing at the sky, telling her mama about the man who built a house for a cat, and kept his promise to wait.

Chapter Text

The pod was humming again, low, persistent, like a warning I’d learned to ignore.

It was a strange place I stepped into this time. A city that looked asleep but never was. Smog heavy enough to taste, streetlights flickering against damp concrete, people always moving but not really going anywhere. The kind of place where everyone looked tired, even the young.

And there she was.

Standing under a busted neon sign of a motel. Rain pooling around her feet, cigarette between her fingers, eyes sharp but empty. Sena.

She was laughing with a man who was clearly too old, too rich, too careless. Her lipstick was smudged. Her laugh wasn’t real.

I didn’t know it was her, not at first. I only saw a woman who looked too alive to be living. But when she turned her head, the curve of her cheek, that slight dip at the corner of her lips, I knew. My chest knew. My breath stopped.

Another Sansorina.

I waited. Like I always do.

But Sena wasn’t the type to wait.

I met her again a few days later.
She was outside a bar, lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers. I didn’t plan to talk to her, I rarely do but she saw me.

“You been following me?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Then you’re terrible at hiding it.”

She smiled. Sharp. Beautiful. Tired.

I didn’t answer. She walked closer, close enough for me to smell the smoke and cheap perfume.
“You’re not from here,” she said, squinting at me.
“No,” I admitted.
“Good. Then maybe you won’t ask questions.”

She walked away.

But I followed her anyway. Not because I wanted to but because she reminded me of a fire I couldn’t look away from.

Sena lived in a narrow apartment above a carwash. The walls were gray from smoke, the floor sticky from spilled liquor. There were bottles on the table, pills on the counter. She didn’t care if I saw.

“Drink?” she asked one night.

“I don’t.”

“Course you don’t. You look like someone who remembers everything.”

She downed hers in one go. Her hand shook. She laughed again, the same brittle laugh from that night under the neon light.

“I used to paint,” she said suddenly. “Before all this. Before I thought I could fix people who never wanted fixing.”

I didn’t say anything. She didn’t need pity.

“Why are you here, stranger?” she asked.

“To listen.”

She snorted. “What kind of man listens without wanting something?”

“The kind that already lost everything,” I said before I could stop myself.

She stared at me.
“Then you’ll fit right in.”

Days blurred.

Sometimes she was kind, almost soft, laughing at nothing, talking about the ocean she’s never seen.
Sometimes she was cruel, spitting words like knives, daring me to leave.

“You think I don’t know what I am?” she said one night, tears and eyeliner mixed on her face. “I’m rotting from the inside out, George. I don’t need saving. I just need someone to look at me like I’m still worth the mess.”

She said my name like she’d always known it.

I froze.
I never told her my name.

Sena smiled through her tears. “Don’t look so scared. You’re not the first ghost I’ve seen.”

It got worse after that.

The man from before came back, the one with the car and the money. I saw her get in.
I told myself not to follow.
But I did.

The hotel room door was ajar when I found her again. She was crying, her blouse torn, her hands shaking as she reached for her lighter.

I knelt beside her. “Sena.”

“Why are you here?” she whispered. “You don’t get to see me like this.”

I touched her wrist, careful, steady. “You’re not alone.”

She laughed again, broken this time. “Don’t lie to me. You’ll leave. They all do.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

She turned her face away, hiding the blood on her lip.
“I don’t deserve kindness. I traded that for survival.”

“You deserve to live,” I said. “Even if it’s just one more day.”

“Then stay for that day,” she said. “Just that.”

So I did.

I stayed.

Through her withdrawals. Through the relapses. Through the days she’d scream at me to leave, and the nights she’d cry until she slept sitting up.

I held her hair when she vomited. I carried her to bed when her legs gave out. I cleaned the pills off the floor when she threw them.

I didn’t say I loved her.
I just stayed.

And maybe that was worse.

It was a morning like any other. She was sitting by the window, sunlight making her look too fragile.

“Do you think people like me ever get forgiven?” she asked quietly.

“For what?”

“For wasting a life.”

“You didn’t waste it.”

She smiled sadly. “You don’t get it, George. I already died years ago. The rest of this, this is just the body catching up.”

I wanted to argue. But she looked so calm I couldn’t.

She reached for my hand. “Thank you for seeing me. No one ever does.”

Then she kissed my knuckles. A small, human gesture that felt like a goodbye.

That was the last time I saw her alive.

They found her two nights later.
Overdose. Alone in her bed.

I got there too late.

The pod hummed faintly from the alley behind her building. I could hear it, low, patient, like it was waiting for me to stop pretending I belonged here.

I sat by her bed for hours. She looked peaceful.
I wanted to hate her for leaving me again. Another version, another ending.
But I couldn’t.

Sena had been the one who looked at me and said you can’t save me.
And she was right.

When I finally stood, I whispered something I didn’t plan to say.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer.”

I buried her with the little money she left in a jar by her window. No family came. No friends. Only me.

And when the dirt hit her coffin, something inside me cracked open, wide and irreversible.

I wept.

Not the quiet kind of weeping I’d learned to control but the kind that tore through my chest and came out shaking. I wept until my body ached, until I couldn’t breathe. I wept for her, for all the versions of her, for myself.

The pod’s hum grew louder, impatient. I wiped my face with shaking hands and walked toward it.

“I can’t keep doing this,” I whispered.
But I knew I would.

Because that’s the curse of love that doesn’t end with death, it finds you again, no matter how far you go.

And in every lifetime, I’ll keep finding her.
And losing her.
And weeping again.

Chapter Text

The pod hummed softly when I woke up. A low, constant vibration under my ribs, the same sound that always reminded me I wasn’t meant to stay. It was early evening outside. A city skyline stitched by wires, buildings breathing smoke into the violet sky. I watched the reflection of my face on the pod’s glass, that familiar man who’s been too many someones in too many places.

Another slip, another time. Another possibility of her.

When I stepped out, the air was thick, smelled like rust and tired rain. My boots met asphalt that hadn’t seen sunlight in days. I didn’t know where I was yet, but I’ve learned to stop asking. The pod knew where to send me. The pod always did.

That’s when I heard it.

A voice. Low. Hoarse. A woman’s voice, muttering curses between sobs. I followed the sound, turning past a half-lit alley where flickering signs buzzed above a convenience store. There she was, sitting on the curb, shivering despite the humid night. A paper bag beside her. Empty beer bottles rolling near her shoes.

Her hair was cut unevenly, like she’d done it herself. Mascara streaked her cheeks. And even before she looked up, I knew.

Sansorina.

Or this world’s version of her.

She was thinner, harder. Her skin dull under the streetlight, her eyes swollen and unfocused. When she finally met my gaze, she didn’t flinch like the others had. She just sighed.

“You got a lighter?”

I shook my head.

“Then what’re you looking at?”

“Someone who shouldn’t be out here alone,” I said.

That made her laugh, a brittle, humorless sound. “Everyone’s alone here, old man.”

I didn’t correct her. Maybe I looked older in this world. Maybe I was.

I sat beside her, and for a while we didn’t speak. I just listened to the faint buzz of electricity from the nearby post and the quiet rhythm of her breath, uneven, as if she’d been crying for hours.

“You don’t look like you belong here,” she said after a while.

“I never do.”

That made her glance sideways. “What are you, a lost priest or something?”

“Something like that.”

She chuckled again, and for a second it almost sounded alive. “Name’s Serina,” she said.

The name hit me like a pulse. The universe had a cruel sense of humor.

I saw her again the next day, at a clinic that reeked of antiseptic and hopelessness. I was there pretending to be a volunteer; I’ve learned to blend in easily, take any role that let me linger. Serina was there for a check-up, shaky hands, old scars on her arms, pupils small.

The doctor asked if she’d been using again. She smiled and said no. The doctor didn’t believe her. Neither did I.

When she saw me near the exit, she frowned. “You stalking me?”

“Just passing by,” I said.

“Right.” She started to walk away, but then stopped. “You got time?”

I nodded.

“Buy me coffee, then. The cheap one.”

We ended up in a small diner with flickering neon lights. She ordered black coffee and poured in too much sugar. I just watched her stir it like she was trying to dissolve her anger along with it.

“I used to study,” she said suddenly. “Med tech. Didn’t finish. You know why?”

I didn’t answer.

“Because I thought love was more important.” She scoffed. “Dumb, huh?”

I didn’t tell her I’d heard those same words in a hundred worlds, from a hundred different versions of her. It never got easier to hear.

“He hit me,” she said quietly. “But I stayed. Because he said I was all he had. Then I started using. Because it made everything less sharp. Until it didn’t.”

The waitress refilled her cup. Serina didn’t look up.

“I tried to die once,” she whispered. “Didn’t work. I think I even failed at that.”

I wanted to tell her she didn’t fail, that living, even brokenly, was a kind of defiance. But I’ve learned not to rush her kind of silence.

Instead, I said, “You didn’t fail. You survived.”

She smiled faintly, bitterly. “You sound like my rehab counselor. You a therapist?”

“No,” I said. “Just someone who listens.”

That night, she didn’t let me walk her home. She said she didn’t have one.

Days passed like blurred glass.

I saw her often, at the diner, sometimes near the clinic, once in a church where she lit a candle but didn’t pray. She said she’d stopped believing, but she liked the smell of wax.

She was a contradiction: fierce and fragile, kind but cruel to herself. She joked about her relapses. She mocked people who tried to help her. But under it all, there was a trembling that never stopped.

I kept my distance. I always did. But when she disappeared for three days, I found myself searching. I told myself it was just habit, the same way I searched for my Pilar’s voice in every laughter I passed.

When I finally found Serina again, she was lying in a public hospital bed, arm bandaged, IV line snaking to her wrist. She wasn’t asleep, just staring at the ceiling, her face blank.

She saw me and said, “You again.”

“Me again.”

“They said I almost didn’t make it.”

“I know.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because you’re here.”

She turned away, but her shoulders started shaking. Not loud sobs. Just small, quiet tremors, the kind that break you because they mean she’s done hiding it.

When she got discharged, I walked her out. She moved slowly, her body weak, her voice softer.

“You always show up when I’m falling apart,” she said.

“Maybe that’s when you need someone most.”

She smiled faintly. “You don’t want to fix me?”

“No,” I said. “I just want you to see that you can.”

That stopped her. For a second her eyes, dark, tired eyes, softened. “You really think I can change?”

“I’ve seen worse souls heal.”

“Maybe not mine,” she said, and she laughed again but this time, it cracked halfway.

Weeks turned into months. Serina got a job, small clerical work in a pharmacy. She cut her hair again, this time properly. She started eating better, sleeping more.

Sometimes she’d text me, short, awkward messages.
Made it to work early today.
Didn’t cry this morning.
Still scared.

I replied every time.
That’s okay.
You’re doing well.
I’m still here.

But something shifted when she found out where I lived or tried to. One evening she showed up near the alley where the pod was hidden, humming faintly under tarps and vines.

“You never told me where you’re from,” she said.

“Does it matter?”

“It does when I start thinking about you before I sleep.”

I froze.

She took a step closer. “You’re kind. You don’t want anything from me. That’s new. And it’s messing me up.”

“Serina—”

“I like you,” she said plainly. “And I hate that I do. Because it makes me scared again. What if you leave?”

I wanted to lie. I wanted to tell her I wouldn’t. But the pod was humming, and I could already feel the shift, the timeline thinning around me. My stay was ending.

“I always leave,” I said quietly.

Her face crumpled, not angry, just hurt. “Then why come at all?”

“Because you needed to remember you were still worth saving.”

“And you?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

She walked away before I could say more.

The next week, I didn’t see her. I waited near the diner, the church, the clinic, nothing. I feared relapse, overdose, disappearance.

When she finally appeared again, she looked... calm. Not happy. But steady. She walked toward me and handed me something, a folded note, her handwriting uneven.

“I’m going to stay clean,” she said. “Not for you. For me.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“But I still want to hate you for leaving.”

“That’s okay too.”

She smiled. For once, it reached her eyes. “Goodbye, George.”

“Goodbye, Serina.”

I didn’t cry when I left other worlds. I’ve always learned to hold it. But when the pod sealed shut and the hum grew louder, something inside me cracked.

Her voice echoed in my head, What if you leave? and for the first time, I wondered if all this slipping was mercy or punishment.

The pod’s light blinked, ready for another jump. Another version. Another chance to see her face.

But this time, I hesitated.

Maybe being a dweller wasn’t salvation. Maybe it was exile.

Because for every world I entered, I left another Serina behind, healed but grieving, stronger but lonelier.

And me? I was just being someone collecting ghosts that all had the same eyes.

The pod is still there. Always there. Even when the lights go out and the city folds into silence, I can feel it, that low hum crawling beneath the floorboards like a trapped heartbeat. It’s not loud, not haunting. It’s just there, constant, the way guilt stays long after you’ve said sorry.

When Sansorina came back or what looked like her, the air changed.
Not the kind of change you see. The kind that presses.

She wasn’t the same. This version… her eyes were too still, her movements deliberate, almost mechanical, as if someone had taught her how to mimic breathing but forgot to teach her how to feel. Her voice carried the weight of something reassembled.

“George,” she said. Just that. Like a memory returning out of order.

For a moment, I thought the hum of the pod grew louder.

“Rina?” I tried. But it didn’t feel right calling her that. The last Sansorina laughed too much, too freely, even when she was breaking. This one only watched, and when she smiled, it felt like a test.

“You stayed,” she said. “You shouldn’t have.”

It wasn’t anger in her tone, it was something colder. Observation, maybe. Like she already knew how I’d answer.

“You asked me to,” I said, though I wasn’t sure anymore.

“I asked him to,” she said, tilting her head slightly, eyes flicking toward the pod’s direction. “Not you.”

And I swear the hum shifted then, like the machine understood her better than I ever could.

She sat down by the window, where the moonlight caught the edges of her face. It wasn’t her, but it was—and that’s what made my stomach twist. She looked at the city the way she used to look at me: searching, half-angry, half-longing.

“You thought I was coming back for you,” she said. “But I came back because it was unfinished.”

“What was?”

“Me.”

That’s when I realized, the pod wasn’t just a machine. It was a mirror. Not reflecting what’s seen, but what’s missing.

She told me things that night. How she’d tried to escape it, the system, the cycle, the way every version of herself was meant to serve a purpose she didn’t choose. She said the pod wasn’t made to keep her alive; it was made to keep her contained.

And I? I was the anomaly, the dweller who stayed too close to something that shouldn’t exist in the world of the waking.

She reached out once, fingers brushing my face, and for a brief second, warmth returned, human, fragile, the kind you’d do anything to hold onto. Then it was gone.

“Do you still think this is good for you?” she whispered. “Being here? Being… one of us?”

The hum deepened. A low vibration filled the room. The walls seemed to breathe.

I wanted to tell her no. That I’d give anything to go back to being ignorant, to not knowing the sound of a pod’s heart. But my voice broke before I could form the words.

She leaned closer, her breath brushing my ear.
“You think you’re saving me, George. But you’re just feeding the loop.”

And then, like a recording ending mid-sentence, she stood up and walked toward the pod.

I watched her open it, light spilling out like liquid dawn. She looked back once, eyes softer now, and smiled. For the first time that night, it felt real.

“I wasn’t meant to stay,” she said. “But you are. For now.”

The hum swallowed her after that. The pod closed, sealing the silence.

And I stayed there, my reflection caught in the faint blue glow of the chamber. My hands trembled, not from fear, but from the understanding that maybe, just maybe—I was the one trapped, not her.

The hum continued.
Always there.
Hidden.
Alive.

Chapter Text

The pod hummed like it always did before a drop, a low mechanical prayer vibrating through my bones. Sometimes I thought it was learning to breathe, inhaling time, exhaling places. I had stopped asking it where it would take me. The pod never answered, only delivered.

That night, it spat me out into the dark.

The air was wet and heavy with the smell of mud and burnt sugarcane. I stumbled out, boots sinking in the soft earth, fireflies blinking like hesitant eyes. The horizon was nothing but black stalks of corn swaying in the wind, the sound of their leaves like whispers between teeth. The pod stood behind me, half-buried, its surface gleaming faintly under the moonlight. Humming, waiting. Watching.

Then I heard it.

A woman’s cry. Sharp. Muffled. Somewhere to my right.

My heart tripped. I froze for a second, thinking maybe it was just the wind. But no, there it was again. A pleading sound, low and raw, the kind of sound that tears through a person’s ribs and plants itself there. My feet were moving before I could think. The corn brushed my arms as I ran, the world closing around me, the sound pulling me deeper until the clearing opened like a wound.

There were men. Three of them.

And her.

She was on the ground, dress torn, hands pressed against the soil. Moonlight caught her hair, dark, tangled, familiar. One of the men was on his knees, gripping her arm while the other two laughed like it was a joke, like pain was a language they knew by heart.

For a moment I couldn’t breathe.

Something in me recognized her. Not her face exactly, faces change across timelines but her trembling, her voice breaking against the dark. The way she looked up at the sky like she wanted to disappear.

Sansorina.

No, not her. Not mine. Another version. Another time. But my body didn’t care. Instinct flooded me, a hot, blinding thing that took my breath.

I moved.

I didn’t shout. I didn’t warn. I just went for the one closest to her and pulled him back so hard he hit the ground. He swung, clumsy, reeking of liquor. My fist connected with his jaw; the crack echoed through the field like thunder. The others scattered, one tripping over his feet, the other fumbling for something in his pocket.

I grabbed the man’s collar and pressed my arm against his throat, shoving him down. He clawed at me, trying to speak, but I wasn’t listening. All I could see was the woman, dirt on her cheek, knees scraped, eyes wide with disbelief. My head was pounding with rage, my vision red and narrow. The man gasped under me, his pulse jumping against my forearm.

Then something slammed against the side of my head, hard, bright pain exploding. I hit the ground, stars bursting behind my eyes. I heard shouting, footsteps, then nothing.

When I opened my eyes, dawn had started to bleed into the horizon. The world smelled of rain and metal. I was lying by the roadside, wrists aching. A crowd gathered, voices, murmurs. Someone said, “Gising na siya,” and then I saw the uniforms.

They cuffed me without a word. I didn’t fight it.

In the police car, I asked the only question that mattered.

“The girl,” I rasped. “Is she— is she okay?”

One of the officers looked at me, tired and suspicious. “She’s alive,” he said finally. “You’re lucky she is.”

Relief hit me so hard I almost laughed. The rest didn’t matter.

At the station, they asked questions, where I came from, why I was there, what my relationship to her was. I said nothing. How could I explain a machine that eats time? That I wasn’t from this decade? That I only knew the face of that woman in dreams and parallel lives?

They called me the stranger from the field.

Days passed. A week maybe. The cell was small, the walls peeling, the air thick with sweat and boredom. I slept against the wall, listening to the hum of the fluorescent light. I almost forgot the pod existed. Maybe it had abandoned me.

Then one afternoon, a guard said, “Visitor.”

I expected an officer. Instead, it was her.

She stood there in a plain dress, hair pulled back, eyes tired but clear. A small bruise bloomed near her jaw. When she saw me, she smiled, a weak, uncertain curve of the lips.

“Sorry po,” she whispered.

I shook my head. “Don’t. Are you all right?”

She nodded, eyes glistening. “Yes. Because of you.”

I didn’t believe her, not really. But hearing it steadied something in me.

The next morning, the cell door opened. The officer told me I was free. The woman, her name was Carmen, had told them I was her boyfriend. That I saved her.

A lie, but one that saved me.

Her mother met me outside the precinct, her hands shaking as she held mine. “Maraming salamat, iho,” she said, voice breaking. “Kung wala ka ro’n… baka kung ano na nangyari kay Carmen.”

I only nodded, not trusting my voice.

Their house was small, tucked behind a row of coconut trees. Carmen stayed in her room, the curtains drawn, the air heavy with silence. She didn’t speak for two days. When she finally did, her voice was small.

“One of them was my classmate,” she said. “I thought he was my friend.”

She stared at her hands. “Anak siya ng mayor. Akala ko mabubuti sila.”

My chest burned. “We can report them.”

She shook her head violently. “No. Madadamay pamilya ko. Sabi nila ginusto ko din 'yon. Sabi nila—” Her voice cracked. “Pakiusap, 'wag.”

I wanted to argue, but her eyes stopped me. There was too much fear there. Too much knowledge of how the world worked in this time. She was only twenty. The world had already broken her in ways no one could see.

That night, I sat outside, watching the fireflies. The pod hummed faintly from the field beyond, a pulse waiting for me. I thought about how I always arrived too late. How every version of her ended up bleeding in one way or another.

Days blurred. Carmen began to eat again, talk again, though sometimes she would fall silent mid-sentence, as if her mind wandered somewhere she couldn’t follow. She’d wake up screaming at night. I’d hold her hand until she stopped trembling.

Sometimes she’d whisper, “I wish I’d never been born.”

I’d whisper back, “Don’t say that.”

But she’d only look at me with eyes that didn’t believe.

Then one morning, the news on the radio mentioned a party, the mayor’s son celebrating his birthday in a private club in Manila. I heard the laughter in the background of that broadcast, the same tone I heard in the cornfield. My blood went cold.

That night, I left.

I told the pod where to go, not in words, just in anger. It understood. It always did.

The club’s parking lot was half-lit, the air thick with perfume and gasoline. Laughter drifted from inside. They were there, the three men, drunk, loud, untouched by consequence.

I walked toward them.

The rest blurred, shouting, struggle, fear, the sharp sting of my actions. I don’t remember their faces clearly, only the sound of my heartbeat drowning everything else. When it was done, I looked at my hands and saw what I had become.

The pod waited. Humming softly. Like it pitied me.

I stepped in, closed my eyes, and it carried me back.

When I returned to Carmen’s house, she was sitting by the window. The light touched her face gently. She looked at me as if she already knew.

“Ikaw…?” she asked quietly.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. She looked down, tears slipping from her lashes, but not out of fear, out of something heavier. “Ayos na.”

“It’s over,” I said.

The next morning, the radio screamed headlines. Mayor’s son found dead. Corruption scandal unfolding. The whole town was in uproar. Carmen’s mother turned off the radio, her face pale.

Carmen came to me later that night. “You shouldn’t stay,” she said. “They’ll come for you.”

I nodded. “I know.”

She reached out, touched my cheek. “You don’t belong here.”

Neither of us said goodbye.

The pod opened like a wound in the air, the hum surrounding us both. I looked at her one last time. She smiled, faintly, the same kind of smile Sansorina used to give me when she was pretending to be strong.

When the pod closed, I sat there shaking. The hum was louder now, or maybe it was my own heartbeat echoing back. I realized I wasn’t saving anyone. I was only moving through time, collecting ghosts.

For the first time, I whispered to the pod, “Take me home.”

It didn’t answer.

Just the same low hum, like breathing.

Just the same promise that somewhere, somewhen, another version of her was waiting and that I would never stop bleeding for all of them.

The hum won’t stop.

It’s quieter now, softer, almost kind. But I can’t stand it. It crawls under my skin, filling the silence between my thoughts. The pod floats through the void, endless gray streaks of nowhere slipping past the glass. Sometimes I think it’s still that night, that I never left the cornfield. That Carmen is still trembling somewhere out there, dirt on her knees, praying for someone who shouldn’t exist.

My hands still smell like iron.

I try to scrub them against my pants, but the smell won’t leave. It’s under the skin now, it’s in me. The pod’s light flickers, casting shadows on my palms. They look like someone else’s hands. Someone dangerous. Someone I don’t recognize.

I used to think I was helping. That maybe all this, the traveling, the jumping between worlds, the endless loop of loss, was some kind of purpose. That I was meant to protect her, in every form she came in. Nica Mae, Rina, Rosette, Carmen. So many faces, so many names. All of them her. All of them breaking.

And me, always too late.

I press my head back against the cold glass wall. The pod hums again, low, patient. It’s waiting for me to choose another place, another version. I don’t. I can’t. I don’t even know what I’d do if I saw her again. My body would move, yes, I’d save her, hold her, fail her. The pattern is the same.

It always ends in blood.

I close my eyes and see her, the little girl, Rina, laughing with crumbs on her cheek as she fed the cat. The older one, Rosette, crying through her screen. The broken one, Carmen, hiding behind her silence. And the real one, my Sansorina—fading each day in the corners of my memory. They overlap now. Their faces blur, their voices mix. Sometimes I can’t tell who’s speaking in my head.

I try to breathe.

The pod dims its light like it’s trying to calm me down. It does that sometimes. It listens. Reacts. Learns. Maybe it pities me. Maybe it’s just mimicking emotion the way machines mimic life. Either way, I hate it for being so calm. I hate it for not hurting.

“Stop,” I whisper.

The hum lowers a pitch, almost like obedience.

I stand, pressing my palm to the glass. Outside, there’s no sky, no stars, just folds of light bending in directions my eyes can’t follow. Between those folds, I see glimpses, flashes of timelines. Faces. Lives. Like watching a thousand televisions all playing different tragedies at once.

In one of them, she’s laughing with someone else.
In another, she’s dying again.
In another, I’m the one holding the knife.

I slam my fist against the glass. The pod groans in protest.

“You show me everything,” I say. My voice cracks. “Everything except peace.”

No answer. Only that hum, gentle, steady, eternal.

My knees give out. I slide to the floor, chest heaving. The pod feels smaller, heavier. Like a coffin dressed in light.

I remember the first time I found her, the real Sansorina. How she looked at me like I was something more than I was. How she said my name as if it meant safety. And then how she looked at me the last time, eyes hollow, mouth trembling, whispering things I can’t forget. I told myself I could fix it. That I could rewrite it. That the next version of her would be better, freer, happier.

But they all end the same.
Because maybe the curse isn’t hers. Maybe it’s me.

Maybe I’m what follows her across timelines, her ruin, her punishment, her shadow.

I bury my face in my hands. My throat burns, but no sound comes out. The crying stopped months ago, maybe years. Now it’s just pressure. Pressure and noise. The hum fills the silence where sobs should be.

I think about Carmen again, the way she looked when I left her. The quiet understanding in her eyes. She knew what I’d done. She didn’t forgive me. She just accepted it. Maybe she saw what I’m only beginning to understand, that saving someone out of love can still destroy you.

The pod shivers slightly, like it’s reading my thoughts. Its lights pulse, forming faint outlines, coordinates. It’s offering me another jump.

“No,” I whisper.

The pod pauses, waiting.

“I said no.”

The lights flicker, uncertain. Then, slowly, the hum softens. For the first time, it feels… sad. Almost human. I wonder if it’s breaking too.

I lie down on the cold floor, staring at the ceiling. The pod’s glow paints my skin in silver. My reflection stares back at me from the curved metal, unshaven, eyes bloodshot, face gaunt. I don’t look like a traveler. I look like someone who’s been haunted too long.

“Why her?” I ask no one. “Why always her?”

The hum rises, not as an answer, but a heartbeat. A rhythm I’ve grown to hate.

I close my eyes and think of Pilar, my daughter. Her small hands, her sleepy smile. How she used to call me Papa when she was still learning to speak. I don’t even remember when. Time stopped meaning anything. Every version of Sansorina became a substitute for the family I lost, and now I’m not sure if Pilar was even real or just another branch of memory the pod created to keep me sane.

The thought splits me open.

“I’m losing it,” I mutter. My voice sounds foreign. “I’m losing myself.”

The pod whirs, and the floor beneath me warms slightly, a gentle pulse, like comfort. I should feel grateful. I don’t. I just feel trapped. The hum, the glow, the cycle, it’s not saving anyone. It’s a prison built from guilt.

And maybe I deserve it.

For all the timelines where I arrived too late.
For all the ones where I became the monster instead of the savior.
For every version of her I couldn’t save or shouldn’t have tried to.

I open my eyes again. The pod’s interface flickers to life in front of me, coordinates, temporal threads, alternate dwellings. One of them glows brighter than the rest. I can almost hear her voice, faint but familiar, calling from that light.

George.

I freeze.
It’s her. Or maybe just the memory of her.

George, stop running.

My hands tremble. “I can’t,” I whisper. “If I stop, I’ll disappear.”

You already are.

The lights dim. The voice fades. Silence.

The pod stops humming.

Chapter Text

I didn’t step out when the pod stopped this time.
The hum that once sounded like a heartbeat, steady, alive, now only grated at the back of my skull. I couldn’t even tell how long I’d been inside anymore. Time didn’t exist here. Just the endless rhythm of engines and the faint glow of coordinates burning on glass.

The pod always found her.
Always another version of Sansorina.

Each one broken in ways that left me gutted, too fragile to hold, too foreign to touch, too much like her but not her. One was angry, one hollow, one half-alive, one already gone. And each time, the pod hummed like it knew, like it fed on my unraveling.

It would hover over a field, a ruin, a city, a night that didn’t belong to me and wait. It would wait for me to step out, to play the same cycle again. To meet another version. To lose her again.

But I couldn’t. Not anymore.

For days, maybe weeks—I just sat here.
Didn’t eat. Didn’t sleep. Didn’t open the hatch.
The pod floated in silence, tethered to nothing but my pulse. I watched frost crawl over the glass, forming shapes that looked like veins, hers, mine, ours. The hum softened sometimes, like it was asking me to move. Begging me.

But I couldn’t.

“Stop,” I whispered one night, voice cracking. “Stop bringing me to her. Stop showing me what I lost.”

The pod answered with a low thrum, mechanical, almost sympathetic.
But I felt it, the intention beneath the sound.

It wanted me to keep going.
It wanted me to keep seeing.
To hover through every world, to drift until I forgot which version of her was real.

“No.” My hands trembled as I reached for the controls. My reflection in the black glass looked like a ghost—eyes red, face worn, tired to the bone. “I’m done being your passenger.”

The coordinates were still there, etched in my memory, carved into the back of my mind like a prayer.
The home I left. The Sansorina I left. The one who waited even when I didn’t come back.

I punched the sequence in.
Numbers blurred under my fingers, and the pod made a low, warning hum, as if disagreeing.

“I don’t care,” I said, voice shaking. “Take me home.”

The engines stuttered. The lights flickered. For a heartbeat, I thought it would resist, that it would lock me in this eternal detour.

Then, with a deep, mournful sound, the pod shifted.
Outside, the stars bled across the glass.
The hum changed—slower, softer, like it finally gave up fighting me.

I could feel the pull, gravity, real and familiar, tugging me down.

“To where I left you,” I whispered to the darkness. “Even if it ruins everything. Even if it breaks every law this damn machine believes in.”

I leaned back against the seat, eyes closing as the hum deepened into a low, comforting drone.
I could almost smell her hair again. The faint trace of warmth and lavender.

“I’m coming home, Rina,” I said, voice small but certain. “I don’t care if the future changes. As long as I’m with you, we can face anything.”

The pod hummed one last time, a sound like a sigh.
Then it dove into the coordinates.

Through the dark.
Through time.
Through every version of loss.

And I, for the first time in what felt like forever, stopped running.

The pod threw me in like it didn’t care anymore what was inside of it.
For a moment, I felt weightless, then the impact came, hard enough to make my ribs ache. The pod skidded on something outside, metal grinding against concrete, sparks briefly flaring past the glass. The lights flickered in bursts—blue, red, then darkness again, like the pod was having a tantrum.

I held on to the seat, chest pounding, breath shallow. The hum that usually guided me was gone, only a low growl remained. My fingers trembled as I pressed the manual release. The hatch hissed open, spilling a gust of dry, dusty air into my lungs.

It was dark outside.
For a moment, I thought I was still lost, that this was another trick, another cruel version of home. But then, faintly, I saw it: a flicker of light, yellow and trembling, ahead of me.

I stumbled toward it, every step heavy with disbelief. My hands brushed against cold walls, the floor beneath me cracked and familiar. When I reached the light, relief crashed over me so hard I almost fell to my knees.

It was our old warehouse.
The same one where the pod dragged me from, all those years or timelines ago.

I pressed my hand to my chest. Beneath my palm, I could feel it—the hidden weight I never spoke of, a quiet reminder of who I was, who I am, and who I belong to. My heart wouldn’t slow down. My legs were shaking so badly I had to grip the railing just to breathe.

Outside, through the dust and the dying light, I saw it.
My car. Waiting, exactly where I left it.

I climbed in, fingers tracing the steering wheel like I was greeting an old friend. I sat there for a long while, the silence almost suffocating. What if this wasn’t my world? What if it was another her? Another version, almost right, but not quite.

The thought made my chest tighten.
I didn’t think I could handle another Sansorina who wasn’t mine.

When I finally gathered myself, I turned the key. The engine groaned, then came alive. I drove slowly, careful, every turn deliberate, like I might shatter if I moved too fast. The sun was starting to drip behind the horizon, casting that soft, orange light that always made her skin glow.

When I saw our gate, my eyes stung. The old gardener came out to open it, just like before, nodding at me with that same puzzled kindness.

I didn’t even turn off the engine. I stormed inside, my feet knowing the path by heart. Every wall, every door, every faint creak of the floorboards guided me.

And then, there she was.

Sansorina. My Sansorina.

She was sitting inside my office, still wearing that quiet sadness. I knew that look, we had just sent off Pilar, and the silence that followed had swallowed her whole.

But for me…
For me, that moment was pure light.

I didn’t think. I ran to her and scooped her up, holding her so tightly I could feel her heartbeat through her chest. She gasped, startled but I didn’t care. I buried my face in her shoulder, in her scent, in the reality of her warmth.

She hesitated only for a breath before her arms wrapped around me too.
Her fingers pressed against my back, steady and soft.

“Did something happen at the station?” she asked, her voice gentle, fingers running through my hair.

I wanted to tell her everything, about the timelines, the pod, the other hers, the way I had been breaking piece by piece.
But I couldn’t.
I just shook my head.

“I just… miss you,” I whispered.

She smiled faintly, and I lifted her onto my desk, guiding her to sit on the edge. I took both her hands and pressed them against my face. Her palms were warm, steady, real. I closed my eyes, tears spilling before I could stop them.

Her thumbs brushed my cheeks.
When I opened my eyes, she was looking at me with so much tenderness that it hurt.

“You look tired,” she murmured. “Are you hungry?”

I nodded, like a child, still crying but smiling through it.

“I’m sorry if I neglected you,” she said softly.

“No,” I said right away, shaking my head. “No, I understand. Just… don’t leave me, please. As long as you’re here, I’m okay.”

Her smile deepened, small and loving.
And that broke me.

A sob tore out of my throat before I could stop it, years of holding it in across countless worlds collapsing into one single breath.

She leaned forward and kissed me.
Long. Gentle. Whole.

And just like that, all the pain, all the confusion, all the versions of her that had haunted me, dissolved.

Only this remained.
Her warmth.
Her breath against mine.
The hum of the world settling back into place.

For the first time in forever, I wasn’t lost.
I was home.