"You’re being a very happy girl. Did you enjoy your anniversary, friend?"

Chapter 20: May II

The name came on its own, without me calling it.

The strange thing is that I didn’t remember her clearly. Not the way I remembered others. Mayo was an odd point in my memory — a figure with blurred edges, like a photo taken with too much movement.

"Mayo," I whispered again. "A year without seeing you, without hearing you." I tightened my grip on my bag, looking at her feet on the pavement — feet that disappeared when I looked up. "Why today? It doesn’t make sense."

I kept walking, almost as erratic as she had been.

"Was it a nice date?"

"What a great boyfriend Nolan is, friend."

"Shut up," I said, though I wasn’t sure who I was saying it to. "You were supposed to be forgotten. You’re not supposed to exist anymore."

The noise of her words seemed to grow — more static, more words, more laughter.

She was supposed to be forgotten. I had eliminated her existence entirely.

But there she was.

Walking beside me, talking to me, repeating words she had once said.

I tried to look at her. She wouldn’t let me.

She faded before I could manage it.

I only saw those ruined shoes — the ones I had wanted once, the ones she had bought and promised me. Neither her face nor her eyes existed in my memory.

She had been eliminated. Or at least, that’s what I wanted to convince myself.

I stopped at the corner by the hardware store.

I pressed my hand against the wall, breathing slowly.

Since Nolan’s death I hadn’t felt a trace of the noise — almost two weeks without it — and now this. A voice I hadn’t asked for, from someone who shouldn’t exist anywhere in my head, settled there with the familiarity of someone who had never left, only waited.

"Why today?" I repeated quietly.

No answer. Only the sound of her imaginary footsteps pulling away — those shoes I recognized better than her face, moving across the cold pavement with those irregular steps. The last ones I ever heard her take.

I kept walking.

But the noise didn’t leave.

"I’m glad — Nolan is a very good boyfriend."

"Are you two thinking about a wedding already? I am too — in a week I’m meeting my fiancé."

"Ryne, can I borrow your sweater? You have so many."

"Ryne."

"Ryne."

"Ryne."

"Ryne."

Plam.

I slapped both hands against my cheeks, painting them red again. The way I always did when something like this happened.

But to my misfortune, it didn’t work.

The noise of Mayo wasn’t like the usual noise. The usual one had a shape, had an origin — I knew why it arrived and how it left.

This one was different. Mine.

And that was worse, because I know where it was born. I was the doctor who caused that cesarean.

I arrived at the office four minutes early, with a full head.

The reception was empty. Even Elena was absent.

Only the empty chair and the lamp switched on, and the silence of a place that hasn’t quite finished waking up.

I knocked on the office door.

"Come in," said Dr. Roy.

I entered.

She was in her usual spot. Notebook open, pen in hand, the white lamp aimed at the sofa with that punctuality that never failed. The sunflower on the wall.

"Hello, Mrs. Roy." I held myself in the doorframe. "Today is going to be a different day."

She tilted her head. "Why is that, Miss Moore? Did something particular happen?"

"You could say so," I closed the door. "Today I don’t have a clear answer."

"Something not very common for you," she told me, gesturing to the armchair. "Take a seat, Miss Moore, and settle yourself a little."

"Of course, of course." I sat down.

I didn’t arrange myself the way I usually do — ankles crossed, hands on stomach. I sat straight, bag still on my lap, because I hadn’t fully decided to stay.

Dr. Roy noticed. I know because she took a second longer than usual before speaking.

"How was your anniversary, Miss Moore?"

"Good," I replied. "I enjoyed it quite a bit."

She wrote something down.

"I’m glad," she said. "Did you rest well last night?"

"Yes, you could say so. I slept at my father’s house."

She raised an eyebrow. "Your father? I didn’t know he lived here."

"No, no, no. When I say my father I mean Mr. Arrit." I tried to clarify. "I spent my anniversary with him playing board games. But I don’t want to talk about that today."

Another note. "And what do you want to talk about?"

I stayed quiet for a moment.

"You like these shoes," she laughed. "Maybe I’ll give them to you, friend."

I sighed, looking at the doctor. "I’m confused."

The doctor looked up from her notebook.

"Confused in what way?"

"In a way I don’t recognize," I replied. "There’s someone who shouldn’t be in my head and they’re there. And I don’t know why today — I don’t know what triggered it, I don’t know how to make it stop."

"Someone from the past?"

"Yes."

"Someone who caused you harm?"

I thought for a moment.

"Something," I said. "I don’t even remember her eyes — but I do remember her voice. I remember her words." 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

The doctor laced her fingers over the notebook with that posture of hers when she shifts modes.

"What you’re describing," she said, "that unexpected return of a figure from the past associated with a specific date — it has a name. It’s called involuntary memory of emotional activation. It occurs when the brain establishes a connection between a present stimulus and a past experience without the person consciously choosing it."

"I don’t remember anything that would have revived her," I said. "I just slept happily after losing at Monopoly and dreamed about her."

"And that triggered the memory?"

"Not the memory," I corrected her. "Her. It brought her to walk beside me."

The doctor paused for a moment, writing something in her notebook — longer than usual.

"How does that feel?" she asked, and there was something different in her tone. Something less clinical.

"Uncomfortable," I replied. "Not because it hurts to remember her. I just don’t like it."

"Selective repression of certain memories is a defense mechanism the brain uses to protect itself from information it associates with emotional conflict. It doesn’t mean the memory disappears. It means the brain hides it."

"She didn’t cause me conflict. She was just a nuisance."

"Are you sure?"

I didn’t respond right away.

I looked at the sunflower on the wall. Its crystal eyes shining in the light of the white lamp.

"Miss Moore," said the doctor, in that voice of hers when she’s trying to reach something specific. "Who was that person to you?"

I closed my eyes.

And I heard her.

Not her exact voice. But the sensation of her voice — that way she had of speaking that took up more space than it was entitled to, arriving before she did and staying after she left.

"She was my friend."

And the moment I said it, something in the office lost its shape.

I was no longer on Dr. Roy’s white sofa.

I was behind the café counter — a quiet Friday, with Nolan’s jazz playing from his phone and the sound of the neighbors filling the tables. The smell of coffee and spices, the warm glow of the decorative lamps, everything in its exact place.

And in front of me, leaning against the counter with that carelessness of hers, a dark-haired girl.

Her eyes completely black — like obsidian stones, bright and opaque at the same time. Her glasses clearing under the indoor light of the café, revealing that gaze.

She held her coffee with one hand and spun lightly on the stool, with that contained energy of someone who always has somewhere better to be but chooses to stay anyway.

"Good to see you again, RyneRyne," said Mayo, with that smile of hers that never asked permission. "You’re being a very happy girl. Did you enjoy your anniversary, friend?"