Frayed Once Again

It was raining by the time Mirei stepped outside. Not a storm, not even heavy enough for an umbrella, but that soft, aimless drizzle that soaked into her hair and sleeves before she even noticed.

She didn’t go home.

Instead, she walked, past the school gates, past the convenience store where the fluorescent lights hummed loud enough to hear from the sidewalk, past the vending machines where her fingers used to fumble for spare coins. Her feet carried her without thinking, like they were following a thread she couldn’t see.

The streets were empty, washed clean in the dimming light. She didn’t mind. Sometimes it was easier that way, easier to walk through a world that didn’t know her name.

Her phone buzzed once in her pocket, but she didn’t check it. Probably Aren. Or maybe Caelis. Either way, she didn’t have the energy to answer, not when her thoughts were a knotted mess she couldn’t untangle.

Gale’s voice lingered in her ears, another girl. He liked someone else. Of course he did. She was stupid to think anything else. Stupid to think there was still a thread connecting them after all this time, after all the silence. Stupid to think memories were enough to hold someone in place.

She ended up at the park. The same park they used to run through after school, chasing each other around the rusted jungle gym, daring each other to climb the highest bars. It was smaller now, or maybe she was just bigger, but the ghosts of their laughter still clung to the air.

Mirei sat on one of the swings, the chain cold against her palms. She rocked back and forth, feet skimming the wet dirt, her heart aching in a way she couldn’t name.

She wanted to scream. Or cry. Or peel her face. Or rip out the seams she’d stitched over her skin and let herself unravel completely.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she took out a spool of yarn, the same red thread she always carried, and looped it around her fingers, knotting and unknotting, over and over, until her skin tingled and her fingertips turned cold.

Somewhere, in the tangle of loops, she imagined a connection. A thin, fragile line stretching across the years, from her hands to his, a thread too frayed to hold, but too stubborn to snap.

“Thought I’d find you here.”

She startled, fingers jerking, the yarn slipping loose. Caelis stood a few feet away, hands buried in his pockets, hair damp from the rain.

“You always show up when I don’t want you to,” she said, but there was no bite in it. Just tiredness.

Caelis shrugged. “Call it a talent.”

He didn’t sit next to her. He didn’t push her to talk. He just stood there, the quiet weight of his presence grounding her when everything else felt like it was floating away.

Mirei looped the yarn around her fingers again, tighter this time. “Do you think,” she said softly, “that people only hold on because they’re scared of what happens when they let go?”

Caelis tilted his head, considering. “Maybe,” he said. “But sometimes, holding on is the only way to remember who you used to be.”

Mirei swallowed, the knot in her throat tighter than the yarn in her hands.

“Then what if you don’t want to be that person anymore?”

Caelis didn’t answer right away. The rain kept falling, soft and steady, washing them both clean.

“Then you cut the thread,” he said. “And you start again.”

Mirei’s fingers trembled, but she didn’t let go. Not yet.

They stayed like that, two silhouettes against the rain, caught somewhere between holding on and letting go.