If you’re not too long, I’ll wait for you all my life

Rian froze for a moment after hearing the word “no.” Their breath faltered, and something inside them came undone like a vital spring had lost its tension.

“What…?” they whispered, barely audible.

“You said you’d grant my wishes. All three. No conditions.”

Their voice trembled—not with anger, but with the fear that’s born when a promise shatters along the deepest crack in the soul. They stood from the stool, taking a step toward him. Their expression still searched for reasons before it could fall into the abyss of pleading.

“You said you’d give me whatever I asked for… and this is the only thing I truly want! Just this! It’s not a trick! I’m not breaking anything!”

Al’Zip Oh looked down for the first time. He no longer floated lightly or swayed with excitement. Though still cloaked in impossible colors, his figure seemed heavier, more somber. He answered in a firm voice—but not a harsh one:

“It’s not that I don’t want to, Rian.”

The echo of his words lingered in the void before he continued.

“It’s that I can’t.”

Silence. Absolute.

“I don’t create connections. I… contain them. I encrypt them, yes. Freeze worlds in fragments of time and keep them in narrative loops. That’s the trick behind my magic. That’s why my games work. That’s why the worlds don’t break… until the players want to move on.”

Al’Zip Oh raised one hand, revealing between his fingers a suspended image of Elliot, smiling—captured in an instant, Rian recognized immediately. They looked at it… and something inside them cracked.

“I can’t maintain a link between universes. Not even I can cross realities with emotions intact. There’s no bridge. Only islands… and you’ve spent too long adrift between the waves.”

Rian clenched their fists, and their lips trembled. Their initial anger crumbled beneath the weight of much crueler sorrow.

“I don’t want to say goodbye to him,” they finally said, fractured words.

“I don’t want to… I can’t. I love him.”

The tears came silently at first, then shaken by the trembling of their chest. They hugged themselves, eyes squeezed shut as if holding on to every memory before the world tried to take them away.

That’s when Al’Zip Oh stepped closer. His tone was almost affectionate… but not quite. There was still that crooked glimmer of curiosity in it, the kind of playful friendship with razor edges.

“Then… maybe we can make a deal.”

Rian looked up, eyes still wet.

“A deal…?”

Al’Zip Oh nodded, bowing like an ancient merchant.

“I could send you to Elliot’s universe. Turn you into code. Migrate your entire existence. Not just your form… your story, your thoughts, your identity. Everything that makes you you. And live there. With him. Forever, if you wish.”

They stared at him, confused, hopeful… but he wasn’t finished.

“But there’s a… small consequence,” he added, his smile widening with delight that was all too familiar.

“What kind of consequence?”

“That by becoming part of that world… your existence here will be erased. Everyone will forget you were ever here. The system will restructure the past. Everything you were, changed, and touched… will be adapted without you.

And those who loved you… will live without ever knowing they did.”

Rian’s heart sank. Mario. Hannah.

Their faces appeared immediately in their minds: their laughter, their shared silences, the pain Rian had once helped ease, and the embraces that kept them from breaking.

Their lives before meeting Rian were gray and painful. Rian had been part of the light that helped them out of that.

“No…” they murmured.

“I don’t want… them to return to who they were. I know they weren’t happy. I don’t want them to suffer because of my selfish wish. I don’t want to save myself… by losing them.”

That was when Al’Zip Oh’s gaze ignited with genuine malice—not out of cruelty, but because that sentence… that pain… was perfect, real, complex. So human.

“Ohhh… now you’re speaking my language,” he whispered.

He spun in place, blooming a spiral of symbols behind his head. Then, I leaned toward them, like sharing a secret.

“Listen. There is a way. We can balance the data.

What if, instead of taking you with all your history… we only take yourself? No past. No legacy.

A new you in a world where you’ve never existed.

And to ensure your friends don’t forget you, we’ll compensate with another loss…”

Rian swallowed, their lip trembling, but they were willing to listen.

“What kind of loss?”

Al’Zip Oh narrowed his eyes in delight.

“You and the person you most wish to see… will forget each other.”

They parted their lips. A shiver ran through them. Forget Elliot… but still be by his side?

“The world won’t restructure to compensate for your absence, and they’ll remember you—because there won’t be an absence.

But you, a stranger, in a new story, in that other realm.

A blank page… completely fresh.”

The silence turned thick. Rian looked down at their own hands. They thought of Elliot. His laughter, his wounds, his voice.

They thought of Mario and Hannah… and that they would remember them, and their lives wouldn’t be destroyed.

They thought of what could be built… even if they forgot it all to begin again.

And then, with tears restrained but gaze steady, Rian looked up.

“Sometimes…” they thought,

“you have to lose a battle… to win the war.”

Al’Zip Oh grinned, delighted, as Rian nodded in silence.

“Ahhh, what a glorious sacrifice! What an exquisite tragedy! Rian, my little star… shall we proceed?”

Rian looked into the fearsome porcelain smile—and nodded once more.

And just like that, with a snap of his fingers, the universe folded in on itself, opening a door they would never remember… but one they would undoubtedly feel.

…

The ceiling was white and harmless, yet Rian couldn’t stop staring at it, struck by an inexplicable vertigo. Each blink seemed to rattle a memory—not clear but fragmented, whispers caught in fog. Their fingers clutched the sheets, their existence feeling freshly uploaded… like a program still booting up.

They remembered a goodbye:

Hannah’s arms hugged them tightly as if that alone could fight off forgetting.

Mario’s words, broken by tears, telling them everything—except that.

Except the love neither dared to name. They understood in silence. It didn’t need to be said.

Maybe it would’ve hurt more.

They said goodbye in trembling embraces…

in promises they didn’t know would survive the leap.

And then… a name they couldn’t remember, whispered into their ear like static—though it was their own voice. A line of code is erased after being executed.

A sharp pain pulled them from the memory. They slowly sat up in the hospital bed, raising a hand to their head. It hurt terribly—not like a wound, but as if pieces were missing. As if there were gaps inside them that weren’t supposed to be empty.

The door creaked open softly, and familiar faces hurried inside.

“Rian!” Sophia exclaimed with elegant relief.

“You’re awake,” murmured Victor, with a smile that couldn’t hide the exhaustion of his long vigil.

Leon and Edmund approached almost simultaneously, one holding a juice box, the other a notebook half-filled with sketches.

Serena lingered farther back, but her eyes spoke for her as she clasped her hands and bounced gently with joy.

Lysander, as always, was the last to enter—though it was obvious he’d been waiting just outside the door for the right moment.

Rian blinked several times. Each face looked familiar—close, even… but something didn’t click. There was an invisible distance between what they remembered and felt they remembered. They clenched their jaw lightly, and after a moment of hesitation, they whispered,

“What… day is it?”

Serena stepped forward with a gentle, measured smile. Relief was in her eyes, but she also had a deep understanding.

“It’s the twelfth day since Project Epiome entered its final phase,” she replied calmly.

She didn’t say it outright, but the meaning was clear: the loop had been broken.

Rian smiled in quiet relief before replying, but the words didn’t come. They felt like they knew them all… remembered them, loved them—their faces, their voices. But something else beat beneath it all—an absent presence, an echo they couldn’t reach.

And then, the door opened again. Elijah stormed in, holding his coat folded over one arm while dragging his brother with the other. Elliot grumbled like someone who’d been forced to attend a school play.

“I said I wanted to stay home and play! It’s not like someone’s dying!” he protested, glaring at the others.

Elliot didn’t get his friends. They barely knew this random volunteer and treated them like some legendary figure from an RPG.

Rian slowly turned toward him. They looked at him. Something in his eyes sparked something in them. But no memory. No image saying him.

But when their eyes met Elijah’s, their chest warmed. They did remember him.

The others exchanged uneasy glances. No one understood what was happening.

Rian felt fractured. They remembered voices and conversations, but their memory had blank spaces—missing files. And at the center of it all… a name without a face, a shadow that hurt without identity.

They brought a hand to their head. The pain pulsed with each attempt to remember. Tension thickened in the room. Everyone watched, worried.

Elliot, unsure of why everyone was reacting so strangely, crossed his arms. He thought for a moment, then cleared his throat dramatically.

“What does a black hole do when it loses a match? It collapses emotionally and creates a bug in the quantum reality!”

Silence.

Victor facepalmed. Serena sighed at the ceiling. Leon groaned. Edmund and Elijah rolled their eyes, and Sophia didn’t even try to pretend she understood.

But then, from the bed, a soft laugh broke the air.

Rian giggled—small chuckles, hand covering their mouth, as if surprising even themself.

Elliot stared for a second, baffled… and then grinned, wide and sly, glowing with joy. A canon event reserved only for when someone truly got him.

It didn’t matter for a second that they didn’t recognize each other. Because in that shared laugh—shared by no one else but the two—something new began to write itself.

And though Rian didn’t know why, in their chest, where the fragments of the past still ached, a tiny star began to pulse.

As if the universe, in rewriting itself… had given their souls a second first time.

…

The sun lazily pierced through the apartment curtains in the other world—the one Rian left behind. The air was crisp, the kind that seemed to invite closure… or remembrance.

Hannah and Mario stepped out together, as they had each morning since Rian was gone. They didn’t talk much about their absence—there was no need. They carried it like a warm shadow on their backs, a silent presence that never really left: the coffee brewed as always each morning, the buttered caramel popcorn for movie nights, the hot chocolate for cold evenings, and s’more waffles on every downcast day.

Since that day, they had chosen to live fully, just as Rian wanted. And they did—through every gesture, every shared routine. But neither of them forgot.

The front door clicked shut behind them. But in the kitchen, the window had been left slightly ajar. A breeze slipped in quietly, just enough to nudge the cracked door of Rian’s old room.

With a gentle push, the air coaxed the door open.

The room remained untouched, as if time had decided to freeze there.

The wrinkled flyer, which read “MISSING PERSON” in bold letters, was on the desk, still pinned by a slightly rusted tack.

Rian’s smiling face stared out from the paper.

Beside it, their phone lay resting—until it vibrated.

A video call was coming through.