CHAPTER 11 – LET ME FORGET YOU KINDLY

Soft, steady, just enough to blur windows and make the city feel like a film from another decade. Lana sat in her apartment, the red flower resting in a chipped glass next to her guitar.

It had wilted. Badly. But she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away.

She played the cassette again.
Side B.
The voice.
Her voice.

“If we meet again… please don’t wait this time.”

And still, they waited.

Xander stood in front of the red tree painting at the gallery.

It wasn’t the original photo. This was something new. Something alive.

He had painted it by hand—every branch, every petal, from memory that wasn’t quite his.

Someone had written a comment on the guestbook:

“It feels like the tree is grieving.”

He stared at it for hours.

Then he called her.

They met near the lake again. This time, under umbrellas.

They didn’t sit. They didn’t joke. They just looked at each other, as if bracing for a truth too sharp to hold gently.

“I remember more now,” she said. “Not just flashes. Feelings. Whole moments. The hollow tree. The castle. That dance hall.”

Xander nodded slowly. “I’ve seen them too. Woken up from them like I’d just left the room.”

Silence. Rain tapped like fingertips on canvas.

“I don’t think this is just déjà vu anymore,” she whispered.

“It never was.”

They walked slowly, past the same path they took weeks ago. But something had shifted. Not just between them — in them.

“When I’m with you,” Lana said, “I feel like I’m carrying every version of us.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t know. But it’s heavy.”

In his apartment, they sat across from each other like a conversation was a battlefield.

“I want to love you in this life,” she said. “Just this one. But it’s like I’m always waiting for something to go wrong.”

Xander exhaled. “Because it always did.”

She nodded.

He looked down. Then back up at her.

“I don’t want to be your curse.”

“And I don’t want to be your memory.”

She reached into her bag and placed the flower between them.

Its petals were beginning to curl inward.

“I think we were always meant to find each other,” she said.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “But not always meant to stay.”

They didn’t cry.
They didn’t scream.
They just sat there, holding the weight of goodbye without ever saying the word.

“Let me forget you kindly,” Lana whispered.

“Only if I can remember you gently,” he replied.

She stood first.

Walked to the door.

Paused.

“If the loop ends with us…”

“Then maybe that’s the point.”

She left.

The flower remained.

That night, Xander painted for hours.
Not the red tree this time.
But a girl standing beneath it —
not looking back.

[END OF CHAPTER 11]