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The first time Sissel notices it, he’s staring at a reflection that isn’t supposed to exist.
A cat shouldn’t really understand mirrors, he’s pretty sure. He’s seen plenty of kittens at the shelter, bouncing off glass like it’s a personal insult. But Sissel sits there, calm and still on the windowsill of Yomiel’s apartment, looking at the city lights stitched across the water, and at the faint ghost of himself in the glass.
Red fur. Tail swishing. That’s normal.
The tiny, pale-blue flicker behind his own eyes?
That’s new.
“…Huh,” he murmurs, not with a voice, but with whatever you call the way ghosts talk when they’re not supposed to exist anymore.
For a second, nothing happens. A car passes below. Someone laughs down on the street. A siren whines in the distance.
Then, just for a heartbeat, the world… slows.
Not the big rewind. Not that tidal pull back four minutes from a corpse’s last breath. Just a soft hitch, like the universe has briefly forgotten which way time is supposed to go.
He blinks (cats can blink wisely; it’s a fact he’s decided is true), and the feeling fades.
Down on the floor, Yomiel looks up from his scattered photographs. “What’s wrong, Sissel?” he asks, in that careful, tender voice he’s still learning how to use on living things. “You see a bug?”
Sissel looks at him, then at the window again.
How do you tell someone that you think the rules of reality might be fraying at the edges?
…You don’t. Not yet.
He drops lightly off the windowsill and pads over to headbutt Yomiel’s arm.
“Okay, okay,” Yomiel laughs. “I get it. Break time.” He reaches for Sissel’s ears, scratching in that exact spot that makes Sissel’s spine melt. “I swear, you and that little Pomeranian have conspired against me. Always interrupting my editing hours…”
That’s the other thing that happens.
Whenever Sissel thinks of Missile, the flicker gets a little stronger.
Missile is, in a word, delighted.
“Master! Master, look!” he yips, paws tapping frantically on the tiles of the junkyard office. “I felt it again! I really did! I felt the tingle!”
Lynne clutches the cup of instant ramen she was slurping and somehow manages not to spill it all down her jacket. “Whoa, Missile! Easy, easy!” She puts the cup down and kneels to scratch behind his ears. “Okay, buddy. Start from the beginning. Slowly. You know how long my shift was.”
“It was very long!” Missile says, solemn. “Long, and full of injustice!”
“That’s… one way to describe paperwork,” Lynne mutters.
They’re half on-duty, half not. The “official” work day is over, but this office is still technically a crime scene from That Night, and paperwork loves to multiply in the dark. Lynne volunteered for the late shift so her colleagues with families could get home early. Also because she doesn’t sleep well on anniversaries.
On the wall, the big clock ticks toward midnight.
Missile sits as straight as he can, tail wagging like a metronome possessed. “I felt it when the car backfired outside!” he tells her. “You jumped, remember?”
“Yeah…” she says slowly, remembering the stab of adrenaline, the way her brain filled in gunfire where there was none. “Sorry you saw that, bud.”
“No, no! Not that. After!” Missile insists. “There was a shiver in the air. Like the first time we… we… did the thing.” He tilts his head. “The… ghost thing.”
Lynne’s hand freezes on his fur.
For a long moment, she doesn’t say anything. The fluorescent light above them hums. Outside, the junkyard is a black sea of piled metal.
“…That was a long time ago, Missile,” she says finally. Her voice is gentle but tight. “Another life. Another timeline. We don’t… have that anymore, remember?”
“But that’s the thing!” Missile whines. “I felt something like it! Maybe a little. Tiny! Like a crumb of a cookie you drop on the floor and then forget about, only later you find it and it’s still good!”
“Uh-huh,” Lynne says, trying not to smile. “So you’re saying reality dropped a cookie.”
“Yes!” Missile barks. “A ghost cookie!”
Lynne sighs, then scoops him up, pressing her forehead to his. “Okay, okay. Let’s say you did feel something,” she murmurs. “What do you think it means?”
Missile looks into her eyes, deadly serious.
“I think,” he says, “that tonight is special. I think someone is sad. And I think they might need us.”
Lynne’s throat tightens.
Because the thing is: she’s been trying not to think about the date.
Exactly one year since a bullet was supposed to take her life in this very junkyard.
Exactly one year since a stray cat with no memories changed everything.
Exactly one year since a ghost with her name on his heart chose to give up the night, the tricks, the power of rewinding death—so that they could all have a future.
“Okay,” she whispers, hugging Missile close. “Okay, little guy. One more ghost story. For old times’ sake.”
It starts with a phone call.
The landline in the junkyard office crackles to life, shrill and insistent, making Lynne jump again. Missile squirms out of her arms and races in circles.
“A call! A call! Important things! Justice!”
“Maybe it’s just the precinct,” Lynne mutters, crossing the room. “Or Inspector Cabanela calling to check if I’ve drowned in forms.” She snatches up the receiver. “Temsik Junkyard Office, Detective Lynne speaking!”
Static hisses in her ear. Then a voice.
“……nne… Lynne… can you… hear me?”
She goes cold.
She knows that voice. She hasn’t heard it in a year, outside of dreams. It’s impossible and completely, absolutely him.
“Sissel?” she breathes.
The static sputters, then clears just enough to make out words.
“Hey there, Detective,” he says, almost casual. “Long time no see.”
Missile explodes.
“SISSEL! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT WAS THE TINGLE!” He tears around her feet so fast he becomes a fuzzy blur.
Lynne grips the phone hard enough to creak plastic. “But—how—? You—” She swallows. “You’re… okay? I mean. Of course you are, we met you later, but you… you said…”
“I said I’d be watching from the other side,” Sissel says softly. “And I still am. Just… a slightly different angle than before.” A pause. “Listen, Lynne. I don’t have much time. And I don’t have my old reach. But I’ve got enough for one more trick tonight.”
The room suddenly feels smaller. The air, denser.
“One more…?” she repeats.
He doesn’t answer directly.
“Do you remember,” Sissel says instead, “how you felt the first time you died?”
Lynne grimaces. “You sure know how to open with a mood, don’t you?”
“Morbid is my brand.”
She hesitates. “I remember… confusion,” she admits. “Fear. And then… company. Someone there with me. Talking. Asking questions. Doing something. Giving me four more minutes I didn’t have.”
“And how did that feel?” Sissel presses.
“Like the world wasn’t… completely cruel,” she says quietly. “Like maybe fate could be… negotiated.”
“Good answer,” he murmurs. “Hold onto that. Because in about… let’s say… ten minutes?” The clock on the wall ticks. “Someone else in this junkyard is going to need that feeling. And I can’t reach them alone.”
The back of Lynne’s neck prickles.
“Who?” she demands. “Where? Is it a hit? An accident? Sissel, you can’t just tease me with this!”
Missile leaps onto the chair, paws on the desk. “Is there a new friend? Are they small? Do they like justice? Do they have snacks?”
“I don’t know who they are,” Sissel says. “That’s the problem. All I know is what the wind told me.” Another pause, then, almost apologetic: “…And by ‘wind’ I mean a panicked cat ghost who bumped into me muttering ‘oh no oh no oh no’ before dissolving.”
Lynne stares. “…Cats have ghosts?”
“Apparently,” Sissel says dryly. “Believe me, it was news to me too.”
Something in her chest shifts. A year of normal life has tried to stack itself neatly on her shoulders, but the cards tremble.
“I’m listening,” she says. “Tell me what to do.”
In a different apartment, not too far away, Yomiel drops his camera.
It’s a good camera. Heavy, solid, not cheap. He just… forgets his hands for a second.
“Sissel?” he whispers.
Because one moment, his living room was just that: a room. A clock. A couch. A cat sleeping on a folded jacket. A man sorting through photos of newly adopted shelter animals.
And the next moment, the familiar red-furred shape on the couch had gone still, eyes glowing faintly blue, tail rising like it had caught a scent.
Sissel hadn’t moved like that since before.
Then his body had slumped, soft and boneless, while something invisible stretched.
“Sissel!”
Yomiel is at his side in an instant, panic flaring, fingers hovering over fur. Sissel’s body is breathing—thank goodness—but his eyes are dull and unfocused, like he’s in a very deep sleep.
Yomiel’s heart lurches with a too-familiar terror.
Not again, he thinks wildly. I’m not losing you again. Not to bullets, not to rocks, not to ghost physics—
A breeze ruffles the curtains, though the windows are closed.
Yomiel looks around sharply.
“Who’s there?” he snaps. Old instincts turn his voice sharp; the memory of being a presence in the dark crackles in his tone.
The clock on the wall ticks.
The TV remote shifts a few inches all by itself.
And for the first time since the new timeline began, Yomiel feels it: the thin, weightless sensation of someone perched in the spaces between things.
“…Sissel?” he whispers again.
A distant voice curls through the room like smoke.
“Sorry,” Sissel says, and Yomiel can hear the strain in it. “Borrowing the body. Just for a bit. There’s—someone who needs the sort of help we used to give.”
Yomiel closes his eyes. The flood of conflicting emotions nearly knocks him over. Pride, fear, guilt, ancient obligation.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t—” he starts, then stops. Because that was never a promise. Just a hope.
Sissel hears anyway.
“I’m not going back to that life,” he says quietly. “I like being a cat. I like… you. This. But if there’s a choice between one night of doing nothing and one night of… maybe saving someone…”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to.
Yomiel opens his eyes. His gaze goes from the remote on the table to the framed photo above the TV—Kamila, Lynne, Jowd, all grinning awkwardly after the last cookout.
“Where?” he asks.
“The junkyard,” Sissel says. “One last time.”
Yomiel exhales slowly. His shoulders square.
“I’ll get my coat,” he mutters.
The junkyard is quiet tonight.
No police tape. No corpses. No conspiracies. Just heaps of scrap metal and the slow ticking of cooling engines under the moon.
In that calm, it’s almost easy to miss the danger.
He doesn’t see the loose stack of crushed cars shifting, ever so slightly. He doesn’t see the faulty chain on the crane jitter, unnoticed. He doesn’t see the kid.
Nobody sees the kid.
She’s maybe ten. Skinny, in a too-big hoodie, with a backpack that clinks faintly. She’s slipping through a gap in the fence with the wary familiarity of someone who has done this before.
Her name is Mina, though nobody in the junkyard knows that yet.
She’s here because her big brother once told her this is where the coolest junk is. Old radios. Weird toys. Metal scraps you can turn into anything. Robots, maybe. Armor.
He hasn’t had time to take her here himself in a while. He’s been working late, tired, distracted.
So tonight, on the anniversary of the day he missed a school play and promised he’d make it up to her, she decided to stop waiting.
She ducks under a hanging cable and drops into the heart of the junkyard, eyes bright.
And above her, very slowly, the chain on the crane begins to give.
Lynne and Missile arrive just as the air changes.
You’d think after all this time, after all the talking her way through otherworldly metaphysics, Lynne would have stopped doubting her instincts when it comes to the weird.
But there’s something about walking back into this place—alone, nearly midnight, with only a very determined Pomeranian and a disembodied voice on the phone—that makes her feel like a rookie again.
“Okay,” she mutters, pushing the door open. “You said ten minutes. It’s been… eight? Nine?” She checks her phone. “How precise is ghost timing, exactly?”
“Depends on the ghost,” Sissel says dryly. His voice doesn’t come from the phone anymore. It comes from everywhere—and nowhere—in the junkyard, carried in the rattle of loose metal.
Missile’s ears perk. “Sissel!” he barks. “You sound echoey! Are you in the fridge? That happens to snacks!”
“I’m a little more… spread out than snacks,” Sissel says. “But thanks for the concern.”
Lynne shivers. “I’d forgotten that feeling,” she admits. “The, uh… ‘person in my inner ear’ thing.”
“Let’s make it count, then,” Sissel replies. “Our target just slipped under the fence. Far side, near the crane.”
“What target?” Lynne asks, already jogging in that direction, flashlight beam slicing across shadowed heaps. “You said a cat ghost warned you, but—”
“I don’t know who she is,” Sissel says. “All I know is what I saw when I rode that cat’s memories. A girl. A chain. A crush in the dark. And a very small window.”
A crackle of panic spikes in her chest. “Crush?”
“Not the cute kind,” Sissel says grimly. “The fatal kind.”
Missile surges ahead, nose working furiously. “Human!” he yaps. “Small human! Smells like fear and… school glue!”
They turn a corner, weaving between towers of junk. Lynne’s boots crunch on gravel. The beam of her flashlight dances over twisted metal and piles of tires.
“Lynne,” Sissel warns. “Stop.”
She freezes.
The crane looms ahead, its long arm reaching over a teetering stack of crushed cars. The chain hangs slack, holding a flattened metal cube the size of a small room. And right beneath it, oblivious, a little girl is crouched over something shiny.
Lynne’s body reacts before her brain finishes processing. She opens her mouth to yell—
—and the chain snaps.
In the fraction of a heartbeat between sound and impact, something happens.
The world blurs at the edges. The light takes on that strange, underwater quality. The tick of the junkyard clock echoes louder than it should.
Time… slips.
“Lynne,” Sissel says. “I’ve got an open corpse. You know the drill.”
Her vision swims. Her knees go out.
The last thing she sees before the world folds in on itself is a blur of falling metal and a little girl’s wide eyes.
Then everything goes dark.
She wakes up on the ground.
That part’s familiar.
There’s the cold bite of metal under her palms, the distant city glow, the faint ache in her chest that isn’t physical but remembers something physical.
“Oh no, oh no,” Missile whimpers near her ear. “We did the thing again, didn’t we? I didn’t mean to! But also I did! But also I didn’t! But also—”
“Missile,” Sissel says. His tone is oddly gentle for a man whose first major act in the afterlife involved flinging telephones at mobsters. “It’s okay. This is us. Back where we started. Only… not exactly.”
Lynne pushes herself up on her elbows. She’s in the same spot—near the crane—but the cube is still suspended. The chain is unbroken. The clock on her phone, when she fumbles it out, shows a time exactly four minutes earlier.
She laughs weakly.
“Four minutes,” she says. “Funny how a number can start feeling like a friend.”
Missile bounces anxiously around her. “What do we do? Sissel, what do we do? I want the girl to live AND my friends to live AND no one to get crushed AND also snacks later!”
“Okay, listen up,” Sissel says, slipping into that old command cadence. “We don’t have the whole night. We’re riding one death. One timeline. We solve it, we move on. We fail, well…”
“Then we rewind again,” Lynne says.
Silence.
“About that,” Sissel says slowly. “I… don’t think I can. This isn’t like before. I’m stretching as far as I can just to anchor us here once. The Temsik shard changed, remember. The core power’s… sleeping. This might be a one-shot deal.”
Lynne’s stomach drops.
“Okay,” she says, voice thin. “So… no pressure.”
Missile plants his paws. “We’ve done this before,” he says fiercely. “We can do it again! For Kamila. For Miss Lynne. For everyone. And now for… for… small human! We’ll save her too!”
Lynne nods, drawing in a slow breath.
“Right,” she says. “Tell me where you are.”
“Everywhere,” Sissel says. “But specifically—” His voice jumps, and a nearby tire wobbles. “Here. I can hop from object to object around the crane. I can’t go as far as the fence, though. Lynne, I need you mobile. Missile, stick with her. We’re doing this old-school. Parallel play.”
Lynne pushes to her feet, dusting off her coat. “Talk me through it,” she says. “We’ve got four minutes. Let’s use them.”
They do what they always did best: improvise under ridiculous circumstances.
The problem is simple on paper: a crane with a compromised chain, a stack of cars balanced precariously, and a child who picked the worst possible spot for a treasure hunt.
The solution, of course, is anything but simple.
“First priority is making sure that cube doesn’t fall when the chain breaks,” Sissel says, hopping from a dangling hook to a control panel. The world of objects unfolds around him in that old familiar way—lines of possibility humming between things. It’s fuzzier than before, edges shimmering, but it’s there.
He slips into the control panel, tracing the ghost of current through ancient wiring.
“I can still manipulate the crane,” he reports. “But the motor’s old. It’ll stutter when the load shifts. I can maybe swing it away, but it’ll jerk.”
“Jerk how?” Lynne asks, jogging along the perimeter, eyes scanning for the girl.
“Hard enough that if everything’s not lined up just right, that cube’s going to go pendulum and smash something else,” Sissel says. “Like, say, the access ladder. Or the nearest tower of junk. We’re basically playing a very fatal game of billiards.”
“Great,” Lynne mutters. “I always loved that game.”
“I found her!” Missile barks. He darts under a low chassis, tail wagging desperately. “Hello! Hi! Small human! My name is Missile! You’re in danger and also I like your backpack!”
The girl—Mina—jumps, startled, then smiles despite herself. “Oh! Doggie!” she says, reaching out. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to save your life!” Missile says cheerfully. “Also, petting would be acceptable.”
To her, he just yips and wags and darts around her feet, trying to herd her away from the kill zone. She giggles and follows a step, but then her eyes catch on something gleaming in the pile: a wristwatch, half-buried.
“You’re a good boy,” she tells him distractedly. “But I just need one more thing…”
“Lynne,” Sissel warns. “She’s not moving fast enough. And we’ve already burned a minute.”
Lynne skids around a heap of scrap, nearly tripping over a hubcap.
“Mina!” she calls, guessing wildly but banking on the weird luck that governs these nights. “Hey! You can’t be in here, it’s dangerous!”
The girl’s head snaps up, eyes wide.
“How do you know my name—?” she starts.
A ping goes off in Sissel’s awareness. He dives into a nearby traffic cone, tipping it at just the right moment so Lynne stumbles—not forward, but sideways—knocking into a rusted signpost.
The sign clatters to the ground with a spectacular crash.
Mina yelps and scrambles backward, away from the crane’s shadow.
“Because I’m a detective!” Lynne yells, rolling with it, cheeks flushed. “And detectives know things! Also, did I mention it’s dangerous?”
Missile adds an anxious chorus of barks.
They’ve bought seconds. Not enough.
“Two minutes left,” Sissel says. “We need a way to either secure that cube or make sure that when it falls, it falls safe.”
Lynne looks up at the crane arm, eyes narrowing. “Can you rotate it?” she asks. “Swing it over a clearer patch?”
“I can try,” Sissel says. He slips back into the control panel, nudging switches, coaxing reluctant relays. The crane groans and shifts, inch by agonizing inch.
The cube swings out over a different patch of junk—just as precarious, but less densely packed.
“Okay, okay, that’s something,” Lynne mutters. Her gaze drops, scanning. “What if we… build a cushion?”
“A what now?” Sissel says.
“You know. Like in the movies. When stunt people fall on those big inflated bags?”
“We don’t exactly have OSHA-approved equipment lying around,” he points out. “We have totaled sedans and three refrigerators.”
“And tires,” Lynne says suddenly. “We have tires.”
Missile looks from one to the other, confused. “Is that good? Is that bad? I’ve never fallen on a tire on purpose, but I assume it would hurt less than concrete!”
Lynne bolts toward the nearest pile of rubber. “If we can get enough of these under where it’ll fall…” She grabs one, strains, manages to wobble it onto its side.
It rolls a foot, then wobbles to a stop.
They need at least ten. Maybe twenty. They have less than two minutes.
“It’s not enough,” Sissel says quietly.
Lynne grits her teeth. Sweat trickles down her neck. “Then make it enough,” she snaps. “You’re the one in the machines, remember? Jerk the crane. Drop the cube on its side. Something.”
“I can’t change the laws of physics,” Sissel retorts. “I can barely tug on its sleeves anymore. If I swing too hard, we might—”
He stops. A thought clicks into place.
“…Unless we cheat,” he says.
Lynne blinks. “I thought that was already implied.”
“No, I mean really cheat.” He scans the junkyard, eyes tracing lines between objects. “There’s a flatbed near the south fence, right? Old tow truck, still got its bed and some chains?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Lynne says. “Inspector Jowd was muttering about getting it hauled out at some point.”
“And near that,” Sissel murmurs, “is a stack of… oh, hey, is that a playground slide?”
Missile perks up. “I LIKE SLIDES,” he declares.
“Perfect,” Sissel says. “Here’s the plan. Lynne, you and Missile get Mina to the base of that stack. I’ll… borrow some leverage.”
“Leverage how?” Lynne demands, already moving. “That’s halfway across the yard, I thought you said—”
“I can’t reach that far,” Sissel agrees. “But I can push something that can.”
He hops from the control panel into a dangling hook. From there, to a loose coil of cable. From cable to an abandoned toolbox. From toolbox to—
There. The mobile crane cart. Rusted, but not dead.
He dives into its guts and prods awakening circuits.
The engine coughs, sputters, then roars to life.
Lynne and Mina both jump.
“The truck’s waking up!” Mina gasps. Her fear splinters under new, weird excitement. “Is it haunted?”
“Yes,” all three of them say at once, for different reasons.
The crane’s base lurches forward on creaking wheels, moving not toward the girl, but toward the far stack where the flatbed and slide await. Sissel steers with delicate nudges, just enough to put the cube’s future drop path where he wants it.
“You’re insane,” Lynne mutters, half horrified, half impressed. “I mean that in the nicest way.”
“I had a very strange afterlife,” Sissel says. “Three minutes down. One to go. Position them.”
Missile bounds to Mina’s side. “Follow me! Follow me! Adventure!” he yips, darting toward the south fence. “You’ll want to be over there when the big scary thing happens!”
“Big scary thing?” Mina repeats, but curiosity and the dog’s conviction override caution. She chases after him, clutching her backpack.
Lynne brings up the rear, heart hammering. The stack Sissel is aiming for is an absurd sculpture: a flatbed truck at the bottom, then a layer of tires, then—yes, unbelievably—a plastic slide wedged in like some junkyard god tried to build a playground.
“Okay, okay,” she pants. “We’re here. Now what?”
“Now,” Sissel says, “we do something very ill-advised.”
The chain points of possibility in his ghost-vision are burning white-hot now. His anchor to Sissel-the-body back home is thin, stretched, humming with strain.
He slips back into the main crane controls one last time.
“I’m going to swing the cube hard,” he tells them. “Right as the chain gives. It’ll fall onto the slide and flatbed instead of straight down. The slide will redirect the worst of the impact; the tires and truck bed will absorb the shock.”
“That sounds… borderline plausible,” Lynne says.
“It also sounds fun,” Missile adds.
Mina, to her credit, just nods, eyes shining. “Like one of those tricks on TV,” she says.
“No,” Lynne and Sissel say at once. “Do not try this at home.”
The clock ticks.
“We’re out of time,” Sissel says.
The chain snaps.
It happens twice.
Once, they watch it.
Once, they fix it.
The cube’s weight jerks free. The remaining chain links scream. Metal tears. Gravity, that old stubborn bully, grabs hold.
But this time, it doesn’t go straight down.
Sissel shoves with everything he has as the crane arm whips sideways. The cube swings like a wrecking ball, but instead of slamming into the pile near Mina’s old spot, it arcs outward, crashing down onto the wedge of plastic and rubber.
The slide explodes into shards, but not before redirecting the cube’s angle by a crucial degree. It slams into the tower above the flatbed, crushing junk, pancaking metal—sending a spray of debris—but the worst of the force goes into the heap instead of out toward open ground.
A shockwave of sound and dust rolls across the yard, stealing breath and words.
When it clears, the cube is half-buried in ruin, the crane arm dangling uselessly, the chain a twisted ruin.
And Mina, Lynne, and Missile are still standing.
Mina’s face is streaked with grime, eyes huge.
“That,” she whispers, “was. So. COOL.”
Lynne laughs shakily. “Cool is one word for it,” she says. “Another word is ‘reportable.’ In triplicate.”
Missile barks triumphantly. “We did it! We did it! Everyone’s alive and also there was a slide!”
Sissel floats in the wreckage, his awareness flickering. The strain of the trick is catching up to him. His voice is softer when he speaks again.
“We’re not quite done,” he says. “Lynne… get her out of here before any supervisors show up, yeah? I don’t think ‘ghost-assisted OSHA violation’ is in the manual.”
Lynne wipes her forehead and nods. “You got it,” she says. “Mina? Let’s get you home. Your parents are probably worried sick.”
Mina flinches, hugging her backpack. “They’re… not home,” she mumbles. “But my brother will be.”
Lynne’s heart squeezes. “Then he’s probably worried double,” she says gently. “How about we call him, okay? I’ll even let you hold my badge while I talk to him. Deal?”
Mina hesitates, then nods, eyes flickering to Missile. “Can… Can the dog come?”
Missile puffs up. “I will escort you,” he says solemnly. “For justice.”
Lynne grins. “Thought you’d say that.” She takes Mina’s hand. “Come on. We’ll go through the front gate. Like law-abiding citizens.”
As they walk away, Sissel rides a drifting bolt, watching them go. The four-minute distortion is already shrinking, the edges of time stitching back together.
“Hey, Sissel?” Lynne says suddenly, without turning. “Thank you. Again.”
He smiles, though she can’t see it.
“Anytime,” he says.
Then, carefully: “Actually… maybe not any time. My battery’s kind of at ‘low power mode’ now.”
She laughs softly.
“That’s okay,” she says. “I think… I think we’re supposed to do most of the living part ourselves, anyway.” She glances up at the stars. “You just… keep an eye on us, yeah?”
Always, he doesn’t say aloud. Because it’s already true.
Missile stops, looks over his shoulder, and barks once, bright and clear.
“I’ll tell Kamila about this,” he promises. “She’ll write a story. ‘The Night of the Haunted Slide.’”
“Tell her to give it a happy ending,” Sissel says. “Ghosts like those too, you know.”
Then the distortion snaps shut.
The world rushes forward.
Lynne, Missile, Mina, and the wrecked crane continue on, now part of a reality where an accident almost happened—but didn’t. A reality where a detective will call a worried brother, where a kid will get grounded and hugged and maybe taken to the junkyard again one day, properly, in daylight.
A reality where miracles look like “near miss” in the report.
Back in the apartment, Sissel’s body jerks.
Yomiel, who never left his side, startles so badly he almost drops his coffee.
“Sissel?” he breathes.
The cat sucks in a sharp breath, then blinks—once, twice, pupils dilating. He yawns, slow and offended, like someone just woke him from the coziest nap in history.
“Hey,” he says, in the silent, in-between way that Yomiel has learned to hear in the tug of their bond. “I’m back.”
Yomiel lets out a shaky laugh that turns, embarrassingly, into something like a sob. He scoops Sissel up, hugging him far too tightly for a creature with ribs.
“Don’t do that to me again,” he mutters into red fur. “Please.”
Sissel leans into the hold, purring. “No promises,” he says lightly. “But I’ll try to schedule any future temporal interventions in daylight hours. For your nerves.”
Yomiel squeezes his eyes shut, then pulls back enough to look at him. “Did you… help someone?” he asks.
Sissel thinks of Mina’s bright eyes, of Lynne’s strained laugh, of Missile’s victorious bark echoing against the metal.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “Just a kid. Just a night. Just four minutes.”
Yomiel’s gaze flicks to the photos on the table—the ones of Kamila, of Lynne and Jowd, of all the people whose lives now flow forward in a narrow, fragile, beautiful line.
“That’s all it ever was,” he says. “Four minutes at a time.”
Sissel curls his tail around Yomiel’s wrist.
“Funny thing about time,” he murmurs. “You change four minutes, you change a life. You change a life, you change a world. Even if nobody remembers the trick.”
Yomiel smiles faintly. “We remember,” he says. “We always will.”
On the coffee table, Yomiel’s phone buzzes. He picks it up, brows lifting.
“Text from Lynne,” he says, amused. “She says—and I quote— ‘Did you feel that?? Also your cat is definitely haunted. Also I owe you coffee.’”
Sissel snorts. “Tell her she’s just jealous I got to do the cool ghost stuff this time,” he says. “And that she should stop almost dying in junkyards. It’s becoming a hobby.”
Yomiel taps out a reply, shaking his head.
“Sometimes,” he says, putting the phone down, “I wonder how many of these little… ripples… are still happening out there. Tiny nudges. Almost accidents. Near-misses.”
Sissel stretches luxuriously in his arms, as if the entire evening has been nothing but a particularly vivid dream.
“Maybe more than we think,” he says. “Maybe less. Either way… it’s nice to know we still can. When it matters.”
Yomiel leans back on the couch, Sissel a warm weight in his lap, the city lights glimmering beyond the window like distant, patient stars.
“So,” he says. “What now?”
Sissel closes his eyes, content.
“Now?” he says. “Now we nap. Hero work is exhausting.”
Yomiel chuckles, fingers tracing absent circles behind his ears.
“Deal,” he says.
Outside, somewhere in the city, a little girl tells her brother an unbelievable story about a haunted junkyard. A detective files a report that doesn’t quite capture the way the air shivered. A Pomeranian dreams of slides and justice.
And in the quiet apartment, a man and his once-ghost cat rest.
Four minutes changed everything, once.
Tonight, four minutes changed one more thing.
It’s enough.
For now.