The City is a place where everything resets after the lights have gone out: relationships, conversations, memories. Everything is inside an irreversible loop and no one knows it. All except for one girl.
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Jule, a resident of the City...
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It was like waking up from the cruelest nightmare.
Every day, I had to watch him try to make sense of what happened. I watched him look defeated, confused, and angry. I have seen him blame himself for everything that had happened. I have seen him condemn himself for my mistake.
All I could do was watch.
Like a lucid dream, I was aware of everything happening to me and my world. Somehow, I couldn't do anything about it. No matter how hard I fought, the pull of the world's routine calls out to me.
Was this what Rom and everyone else in this world felt?
If that's so, then it's no wonder they're so lifeless and so empty. Even if they spend a hundred years fighting this norm they wouldn't ever break out. They wouldn't be able to do anything because this was what the world dictates them to be.
That's why they need people who could remember, like me. That's why I needed Rom to break me out.
And he did, eventually. The memories came surging in my mind the moment he made me pause in my tracks. Like a wave of seawater, the memories of the days I spent in this miserable life came pouring back, as if they were being held back by some supreme force.
I made a mistake. I assumed that wishing to be able to forget would set the world in its right track. It turned out that it hadn't. It only made those around me lonelier, angrier, and more broken than before.
I've spent the days trapped inside my own mind, seeing what my life must have looked like before I started remembering. I had friends in Porter and Nicola. I was happy with them.
I had a great time in Trigonometry when I was praised by the teacher for my exemplary skills in solving sinusoidal functions. Mrs. Jones applauded my memory and my enthusiasm for the subject. Mr. Turner gave me an acknowledging nod that he never gives to just anyone in Arts class.
By the time school finishes, Porter, Nicola, and I would hit the Arcade and play a few games until dinner. Then I would walk home, greet my neighbors, and enter the house. I would eat dinner alone, with my food somehow always being boiled egg and mayonnaise. Then, I would wash up for the night, change my clothes, stress about my assignments, and plop into the bed to sleep.
Then it all repeats without failing.
It only changes when Rom enters my view, when he so desperately tried to make me remember. He kept reminding me to snap out of it, to reach into myself and realize that he wasn't a stranger. I spent those days proving to myself that I couldn't.
No matter how hard I fought against the reins in my mind, I couldn't stretch out my hands to reach him. He remained a distant voice at the back of head, forever begging me to fight, to break free.
It wasn't until he reminded me of my dream that I was finally able to claw my way out of the restraints. I stumbled out of my own mind, barely knowing what day or time I was currently in. I was myself again, I feel like myself again. I remember Rom.
