Red Thread

The hall was too long, the air too thin. Every step Mirei took felt heavier than the last, her own breathing louder than the distant classroom chatter. Her fingers curled into the hem of her sleeve, knuckles brushing the faint scars she used to trace absentmindedly.

Gale was there - just ahead, just out of reach, the same way he always was.

She should’ve turned back. Class had already started, her desk waiting, Aren probably glancing at the door wondering why she wasn’t there. But her feet kept moving, dragged forward by the same invisible thread that had been tied to her wrist for as long as she could remember.

He stood near the stairwell, bag slung over one shoulder, talking to someone she didn’t recognize. His voice was lighter than it had been in class, easy and unguarded, the way people sound when they’ve long forgotten the weight of the past. The way people sound when the person they’re talking to is someone new, someone who matters now.

Her footsteps slowed, then stopped altogether.

He glanced up - just for a moment - eyes brushing over her like the faintest breeze, like she was nothing but background noise in the middle of his day. There was no flicker of recognition, no softening of his expression. Just polite distance, the kind you give to classmates whose names you only half remember.

Her breath caught in her throat.

There were a thousand things she could have said - Do you remember? Do you know how much I missed you? Did I ever matter at all? - but none of them would come out. And in that silence, the thread between them finally snapped.

She didn’t chase him. She could've, but she didn't.

Not this time.

By the time she slipped back into class, the lesson was already halfway over. The teacher didn’t even pause, barely glancing her way as she slid into her seat. Aren gave her a look - part concern, part question - but Mirei only shook her head, tucking herself back into silence.

Her hands trembled under the desk, fingers reaching into her pocket, pulling out a small length of red yarn. It was frayed at the ends, uneven, cut and re-tied too many times to count. She looped it around her fingers, tugging it tight - so tight it dug into her skin, cutting off circulation, turning her fingertips pale.

She didn’t sew her hands shut anymore. That was too permanent.

This was temporary.

This was something she could control.

The red thread - the one people always said connected soulmates, the one that bound hearts together across lifetimes - it meant "I love you", didn’t it? That’s what all the stories said. Red meant love, right?

But this wasn’t love. Close, but not really.

This was grief - the kind that didn’t know where to go. This was longing with nowhere to land, a connection that had unraveled until it was just a tangle in her chest. This was the ghost of every almost, every maybe, every time she’d reached out and found nothing but empty air.

The yarn bit deeper, her fingers tingling with pins and needles, but she didn’t loosen it.

Red means "I love you", right?

So maybe if she tied it tight enough, the thread would remember for her - all the things she couldn’t say, all the versions of herself she gave away to someone who never even noticed.

She stayed like that until the bell rang, her hands hidden beneath her desk, her heart quietly bleeding into the thread.