Chapter 4 - Fractured Self
Chapter 4: Fractured Self
The mirror didn’t lie, but it no longer told the truth either.
Julian stared at his reflection—same hair, same tired eyes, same faint scar above the left brow—but something beneath the skin had started to dissolve.
He used to recognize himself.
Now, he wasn’t so sure.
He woke with the notebook beside him, the pages dense with scrawl, some entries underlined twice, others crossed out entirely. Notes like code, like superstition.
Use the low lighting again. Ask about her brother. Smile only after she does. Don’t say “remember.”
He read it in silence, then closed it gently.
It was starting to feel like someone else had written it.
His friends began to notice.
At first, it was little things. He stopped replying to group chats unless someone asked him directly. Missed inside jokes he used to spark. Flaked on weekend plans with vague excuses about rehearsals.
One night, during a late dinner with Aaron and Myra, the conversation shifted mid-laugh.
“You’ve changed,” Aaron said, sipping his beer slowly. “You’re… too polished now. Like you’re rehearsing life.”
Julian shrugged. “Is that a bad thing?”
“It is when you stop being you,” Myra added. “You used to say the dumbest things just to make us laugh. Now everything you say feels like it’s been edited three times before it leaves your mouth.”
He smiled, tried to brush it off. But the words clung to him.
In truth, they were right. He’d grown calculated. Methodical. Each interaction now carried the weight of memory and possibility—what he’d tried, what had failed, what might succeed next. He was no longer living. He was curating.
Even his music felt that way.
And worse, he’d begun avoiding people who hadn’t changed. People who still laughed without thinking. Friends who still asked uncomfortable questions. Conversations that weren’t choreographed.
He found himself retreating—not out of bitterness, but fatigue. The energy it took to maintain the illusion of normalcy was exhausting. It was easier to be alone.
But the aloneness came with its own gravity. A slow drag.
There were days he would speak to no one but the app.
That night, when Siena arrived, she paused at the doorway longer than usual. He watched her hesitate, as if some invisible weight clung to the threshold.
She walked in anyway.
Their conversation felt warm. Predictable. Too smooth, like it had been polished over. He made her laugh again—but the sound didn’t land the same. It didn’t echo.
When she reached for her glass, their fingers brushed.
Julian felt nothing.
No spark, no ache. Just the dull awareness of having been here before. Of saying the right things, in the right order, and wondering why it no longer mattered.
She tilted her head. “You’re quieter tonight.”
He nodded. “Maybe I’m just listening more.”
It wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t the truth either.
Later, back in his apartment, he recorded a voice memo:
“Julian. If you’re hearing this, remember: don’t forget who you were before the rewinds. Before the edits. Before you started trying to build a better past.”
He paused.
“She loved you when you were flawed. When you missed the right chords. When you didn’t have a script.”
He saved the file but didn’t name it. Let it stay as just a whisper in a sea of static.
The next day, he tried not to use the app.
He sat by the window. Watched the clouds roll in. Listened to the creak of the old floorboards. For the first time in weeks, he let the quiet stretch without trying to fix it.
But the stillness only made the emptiness louder.
He scrolled through old photos—ones with grain and chaos and crooked smiles. Ones where he didn’t pose. Where laughter came before the flash.
And he wondered if the man in those photos was still somewhere inside him, waiting to come home.
Who was he without the rewinds?
Just a man who had failed.
Just a man who couldn’t let go.
And beneath all of it, the thought he wouldn’t say out loud:
Maybe she had been right to leave.