Chapter 2

The next morning, Arin found himself staring at the bookstore’s clock more often than usual.

It wasn’t as if he had anywhere urgent to be—the bookstore moved at its usual glacial pace, its handful of customers drifting in and out like dust motes in sunlight. But still, he kept glancing at the clock, tapping his pen against his notebook, pretending he wasn’t waiting for something.

Or someone.

Every time the bell hung over the door jingled, he looked up too quickly, only to be greeted by disappointment: a delivery man, a student with earbuds, a pair of tourists asking where the nearest subway line was. No Mira.

By late afternoon, he’d almost convinced himself it was foolish to expect her return. Maybe yesterday had been a chance—a girl caught in the rain, looking for shelter, who’d happened to step into the quietest bookstore in the city.

But then the bell chimed again, and there she was.

Mira Solis walked in as if she’d been coming here for years, her jacket dry this time, her steps light. She headed straight toward the counter without hesitation.

“Hey, bookstore boy.”

Arin froze mid-scribble. “…You came back.”

“Of course I did.” She leaned against the counter, her smile tilted. “You didn’t think I’d leave you alone with all these boring books, did you?”

Arin’s lips twitched despite himself. “They’re not boring.”

“Mm-hm. Convince me.”

Before he could answer, her wristwatch caught his eye. It was silver, delicate, but the glass was cracked and the hands frozen at 11:11. He realized she’d worn it yesterday too, only he hadn’t noticed it in the rain.

“Your watch,” he said, pointing. “It’s broken.”

Mira lifted her wrist, glanced at it, and shrugged. “Yeah. Stopped years ago.”

“Why wear it, then?”

“Because,” she said, her tone softening in a way that startled him, “time doesn’t matter if you decide it doesn’t.”

Arin had no response to that. He stared at her, struck by the odd mixture of playfulness and gravity in her words. She carried herself like someone who’d made peace with something he couldn’t even begin to understand.

---

They settled at one of the tables near the poetry shelf. Mira plopped herself into the chair and kicked one sneaker foot up on the opposite seat, ignoring the small “No Food or Drinks” sign taped to the table.

“So,” she said, chin propped on her hand, “tell me about you, bookstore boy.”

Arin frowned. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Wrong answer.” Her grin widened. “Everyone has a story. You look like the type who’s got a hundred of them, you just don’t say them out loud.”

“I… write them down.”

“Ah. A secret poet.”

“Not a poet.”

“Let me see.” She reached for the notebook on the table.

Arin snatched it back before she could touch it. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re unfinished.”

Mira leaned closer, her eyes glinting with challenges. “Then finish one. Right now.”

Arin stared at her, caught in the weight of her gaze. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t that simple, that words didn’t come just because someone demanded them. But instead he opened the notebook, pen hovering. He didn’t know if it was her grin, or the way she spoke as if she’d known him longer than a day, but suddenly the page didn’t feel as empty as before.

He wrote:

Some clocks break to remind us that every second is borrowed.

When he finished, Mira reached over again. This time, he let her take the notebook.

She read the line, then looked at him with something softer than her usual teasing smile. “See? Poet.”

Arin shifted uncomfortably. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing,” she said firmly, closing the notebook and sliding it back to him. “It’s proof.”

“Proof of what?”

“That you’re alive.”

The words lodged in his chest, heavy and sharp. No one had ever spoken to him like that before—like living itself was something you had to prove.

Before he could reply, thunder cracked outside, low and distant. The lights flickered once, then steadied. Both of them looked toward the window, where the faint shimmer of another Fracture rippled across the darkening sky.

Mira’s expression didn’t falter. She turned back to him, grinning again. “So. What are you doing tomorrow?”

Arin blinked at Mira’s question. “Tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” She said it as though it were the simplest thing in the world, even though outside the window the sky was still glowing faintly with fractured light. “Don’t tell me you’re busy.”

He glanced at his notebook, then at the shelves around them, then at the flickering light overhead. Busy? He’d spent the past year hiding in routine: shelving, scribbling half-sentences, walking home, sleeping, repeating.

But looking at her, he realized that “busy” had never been the right word. “Stuck” was more accurate.

“I… don’t usually make plans,” he admitted.

“Perfect,” Mira said, clapping her hands once. “Then you’ll make one with me.”

Arin frowned. “You don’t even know me.”

“Sure I do.” She leaned across the table, ticking points off on her fingers. “Your name’s Arin. You work here. You write in that little notebook like your life depends on it. And you pretend to hate attention, but your ears turn red every time I catch you staring.”

Arin’s ears burned exactly on the cue. He looked away, muttering, “That doesn’t mean you know me.”

Mira only smiled wider. “Not yet. That’s why we needed it tomorrow.”

---

The storm outside swelled, raindrops pelting the window like impatient fingers. The bookstore lights flickered again, this time longer, until Arin reached instinctively for the flashlight under the counter. But the power steadied before he needed it.

“Fracture storms,” Mira murmured, her gaze fixed on the glass. She sounded almost reverent, like someone admiring constellations. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

Arin followed her gaze. The cracks in the sky glowed faintly violet, spider webbing across the clouds. Streets below shone slick with rain, car headlights stretching like smudges of light in the watery air. Beautiful wasn’t the word he would’ve chosen. Unnerving, maybe. Fragile. Like the whole city was one wrong breath away from crumbling.

“You’re not scared?” he asked.

“Of what?”

“The world ending.”

Mira looked at him then, her expression unreadable. Slowly, she lifted her wrist, tapping the cracked face of her watch.

“It already did,” she said simply.

Arin stared at her. He wanted to ask what she meant, but something in her voice stopped him—the way it carried weight, a finality that suggested it wasn’t just a clever line. She lowered her hand again, eyes shining in the dim light.

“I just decided,” she continued, “that if everything can disappear at any second, then I don’t want to waste time pretending tomorrow is guaranteed.”

She said it with a smile, but there was something fragile behind it, like glass just before it shatters.

Arin didn’t push. He only asked, “So what exactly are you planning for tomorrow?”

“Anything but sitting alone,” Mira said immediately. “We’ll start with coffee. Not from across the street, though. I know a better place.”

Arin shook his head, incredulous. “You really trust strangers this easily?”

“Strangers?” Mira tilted her head, considering him. Then she laughed softly, though her eyes stayed serious. “No. Not strangers.”

---

The rain eased after a while, the glow in the sky dimming until it looked almost normal again. Mira wandered through the shelves while Arin finished tallying the register, her fingers trailing along the spines of books as if she were listening to them whisper. She pulled out random titles, flipped pages, put them back with a kind of careless reverence.

When she finally returned to the counter, she had one book tucked under her arm—a battered anthology of love poems. She dropped it in front of him.

“Here. Your homework.”

Arin blinked. “Homework?”

“Pick one poem before tomorrow,” she said. “Memorize it. Then recite it to me. If you mess up, you buy me dinner.”

He stared at the book, then at her. “That’s not how bookstores work.”

“Sure it is,” Mira said. “This bookstore, anyway. Special rules.”

Her grin was daring, playful, yet her eyes carried that same undercurrent from before—that urgent insistence on filling moments with something more than silence.

Arin looked down at the cracked watch on her wrist, then back at her, and for the first time in a long time, he felt the strange pull of a decision.

“Fine,” he said. “One poem.”

Mira beamed. “Good boy.”

The bell above the door jingled as she left a little later, vanishing into the night like yesterday. But this time, she left something heavier behind: not just an empty cup or the echo of her laughter—she left expectations.

Tomorrow.

And for once, Arin realized he wanted tomorrow to come.

That night, Arin couldn’t sleep.

He lay in bed staring at the ceiling, the city’s muted glow leaking through his curtains. Normally, the quiet was a comfort—a blanket of stillness he could wrap himself in to keep the noise of the world away. But tonight it pressed down on him, restless, charged.

Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Mira’s watch. The crack in the glass. Frozen hands. 11:11.

It was ridiculous, he told himself. She was just a girl he’d met yesterday. Twice, if you counted today. That wasn’t enough to matter. Not in a life like his, built carefully from routines and quiet corners.

And yet.

Her words repeated in his mind like an echo that refused to fade: Time doesn’t matter if you decide it doesn’t.

---

Arin sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. His notebook sat on the desk across the room, half-buried under books. He hesitated, then stood and pulled it out. The page he’d written on earlier—Some clocks break to remind us that every second is borrowed—was still open. He stared at it for a long time before flipping to a blank sheet.

The pen felt heavier tonight. He started writing without overthinking, without pausing to correct himself:

She walks into silence like she owns it,

turns the ticking of a broken clock into laughter.

Maybe she’s right—

maybe tomorrow is a lie we keep telling ourselves,

so we don’t have to admit

that every heartbeat is already borrowed.

When he stopped, his hand ached. But the ache was good. It was proof of motion, proof of something shifting inside him.

Arin closed the notebook, resting his palm on its cover. For the first time in months, maybe years, he wanted the sun to rise faster.

---

The next morning, he was awake before his alarm.

He moved on autopilot through his routine—coffee, bread, jacket—but everything felt sharper, charged. Even the air outside seemed fresher, damp with the scent of last night’s rain.

At the bookstore, he kept glancing at the door again, but this time it wasn’t with reluctant impatience. It was with something dangerously close to anticipation.

And sure enough, just past noon, the bell jingled.

Mira stepped inside, her smile immediate, like she’d been expecting him to be waiting. “Good boy,” she said again, teasing, “you showed up.”

“I work here,” Arin deadpanned, but his lips twitched.

“Excuses.” She leaned forward on the counter. “So? Did you pick a poem?”

Arin slid the book she’d left yesterday toward her. He didn’t say anything, just opened it to the marked page. His chest tightened, but he started reciting:

“I loved you first: but afterwards your love

Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song…”

The words felt clumsy on his tongue at first, but then something strange happened. Mira was watching him, and in her gaze the lines didn’t feel borrowed anymore. They felt alive. His voice steadied. The verse, once distant on the page, carried weight in the space between them.

When he finished, silence stretched. Mira tapped the cover closed with a fingertip, her expression softer than he’d ever seen it.

“You cheated,” she said finally.

Arin blinked. “What?”

“You didn’t just pick a poem,” she said. “You picked one that fit.”

He frowned. “Fit what?”

“Me,” she said simply.

The air between them tightened, heavy with something unspoken. Arin swallowed, suddenly aware of how close she was leaning across the counter, of the faint smell of rain still clinging to her hair.

Before he could respond, the ground shuddered.

It was subtle at first, like a subway rumble beneath their feet. But then the lights flickered, books rattled against their shelves, and the air itself seemed to hum with static.

Mira straightened instantly, her smile vanishing. She grabbed his wrist without hesitation. “Come on.”

“What—”

“No time.”

The floor trembled again, harder. Outside, people were shouting. Arin caught a glimpse through the window: the sky was tearing open in broad daylight, violet cracks spiderwebbing wider and faster than he’d ever seen before.

He froze. For all his quiet routines and carefully built walls, he’d never prepared for the one truth everyone feared: the Fractures weren’t slowing down—they were accelerating.

“Arin.” Mira’s voice snapped him back. She still had his wrist, her grip strong, urgent. Her watch gleamed between them, its frozen hands pointing to 11:11.

“Do you trust me?” she asked.

Arin stared at her. The bookstore shook again, dust sifting down from the ceiling. Outside, the world looked ready to rip apart.

And yet all he saw was her. The girl with the broken watch, daring him to step out of his silence.

He didn’t know why, didn’t know what she meant or where she wanted to lead him. But somehow, the answer came easier than breathing.

“…Yes.”

Mira’s smile returned, fierce and bright, as the windows cracked with the sky outside.

“Good,” she said. “Then hold on.”

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