Chapter 3: Platform -0
Where beginnings blur into endings… and endings become strangers.
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Shyam and Raitha lived a quiet life after the hospital.
Sunlight spilled into their apartment every morning like a whispered promise. They made tea together, talked about the mundane like it was poetry, and sometimes just… existed, hand in hand, beneath the same sky.
One evening, Shyam looked over at Raitha, brushing her hair in the golden dusk, and whispered,
"This… this is what I was chasing through the stars."
Raitha smiled. "Then don't let it go."
But one rainy night, on his way back from work, a truck's headlights carved silence into the world.
Blackness.
---
He woke up.
Not in a hospital. Not in a station.
In a forest.
Sunlight filtered through leaves. He was young, maybe 12, his clothes muddy from a fall.
A voice giggled behind him.
Raitha—young too. Innocent. Wide-eyed.
They ran through the woods, chasing dragonflies, stories, and the rhythm of childhood.
Under a tree, Shyam turned to her.
"I think I want to marry you when I grow up."
Raitha blinked, then smiled shyly. "Then let's grow up fast."
And they did.
They lived a quiet village life. Raised goats. Planted rice. Fell asleep to the lullaby of cicadas and shared silence.
Until one day—blood tests.
Cancer.
It spread like ink through the pages of his life.
Raitha held his hand as he lay on a futon.
"Don't go," she said.
"I think I always do," he whispered.
And he closed his eyes.
---
He woke up.
This time, on a rooftop in a modern city.
Raitha stood beside him, both older now, both strangers to their pasts.
They were lovers again. They danced under neon lights, promised forever on apartment balconies.
They were happy.
Until—
A fall.
A fire.
An illness.
Each time he died, it tore a thread from his soul.
---
Fourth life.
A house near the sea.
Raitha painted, and he wrote poems no one read.
Peaceful.
Then gone.
---
Fifth life.
They never met.
He searched and searched. Only a voice on the radio, soft and familiar. Never reaching. Always out of tune.
He walked into the ocean that time, hoping the tide remembered her name.
---
He awoke on golden clouds.
Weightless.
Everything silent.
A Gate loomed ahead, glowing not with light—but memories.
He reached out.
The moment his hand touched it, a voice echoed—not from above, but within.
> "You lived through four happy endings. Now… bear the pain of sadness for once."
He staggered. "What do you mean?"
No reply.
Only silence.
Then—
Black.
---
He opened his eyes.
A tiny one-room apartment. Faint smell of instant noodles. Faint hum of city traffic. Rain on glass.
He blinked.
Who… am I?
His phone buzzed. A reminder: "Milk, eggs, batteries."
Routine.
He left for the convenience store.
It was evening. Orange sky. Cold air.
Outside the store, he saw a girl.
She wore a yellow scarf.
She looked… familiar.
She smiled at the cashier. Laughed softly. Held a book in her hand titled: "Timelines and Other Nonsense."
He froze.
His heart skipped.
He wanted to say something.
He felt something.
Like a memory without a shape.
But he didn't move.
She walked past him.
He turned.
She was gone.
---
Years passed.
He grew old.
Married someone else.
Lived fine.
Died quietly.
Never knowing the name that haunted his dreams.
---
The End.
Or the beginning no one remembers.