He waited. He endured the loop until the house was empty once more. With a spectral fingernail, he picked at the paint, chipping away decades of grime until he reached the slip of paper. He pulled it out and read the words he had written to her when he was whole.
The white linen was no longer a bedsheet; it was a weight. Underneath it, C did not feel like a man, but like the memory of a smell—old cedar, floor wax, and the faint, metallic tang of a piano string. He waited
He saw himself—living, breathing, stubborn—moving into the house with M. He saw the moment he had tucked a small scrap of paper into a crack in the doorframe, a secret note she would never find. He pulled it out and read the words