Chapter 3 #2
Augustine delivered the documents in silence, desperately hoping her mother wouldn’t notice her obvious discomfort. But her mother simply thanked her with a warm smile before returning to her emails, her own Silver Thread drifting lazily around her chair.
What the hell was going on? She felt as though she had slipped into a parallel reality that existed for her eyes alone.
Fighting a wave of panic, she said goodbye to her father and bolted toward the park of her childhood, a short five-minute walk away. Yet, every single person she crossed paths with possessed a thread of their own, as crisp and undeniable as her family’s. Silver threads were everywhere.
Sinking onto a bench in the plaza near her house, she pulled out her phone with trembling fingers and pulled up Google. It didn’t take long to unearth an entry that sent a sharp shiver down her spine:
“The astral Silver Thread is a spiritual concept representing the ethereal connection between the physical body and the astral body, or soul.”
Further down, the article detailed its deeper implications and folklore: journeys to other realms, soul-tethers bridging different lifetimes and dimensions, and accounts of individuals who, during near-death experiences, claimed to have observed their own bodies from the outside.
She looked up as the laughter of playing children drifted over, studying the passersby.
Everyone had a fine, shimmering Silver Thread.
But as she looked closer, she realized that beside some of these cords, a blurry silhouette—resembling rippling water—clung to the people, trailing them like a phantom.
Her fiercely logical mind rebelled against the esoteric explanation. Something was deeply, dangerously wrong with her.
Closing her eyes, she inhaled and exhaled in a steady rhythm, desperately trying to rein in her racing pulse before a full-blown panic attack could take hold. When she finally opened them, the world felt a little steadier. She cast her gaze up toward the brilliant spring sky, and froze.
A blurry, watery silhouette was standing right beside her.
Augustine didn’t scream. Not a single muscle in her face betrayed the violent shock rattling her inside. Forcing herself to look away, she adopted a neutral, almost bored expression, as though witnessing specters anchored by cords of light was just another part of her daily routine.
“Maybe they're ghosts and I'm seeing dead people, like that kid from The Sixth Sense,” she thought, a desperate edge of irony anchoring her sanity.
Then, a voice murmured beside her. It wasn’t clear enough to make out the exact words; it sounded like a badly tuned radio dissolving into a sea of static.
But if her senses weren’t deceiving her, the sound was coming directly from the silhouette accompanying her.
It was a faint, persistent murmur. It was trying to tell her something, though the meaning remained entirely lost.
Damn it. Am I actually having auditory hallucinations now?
She pulled out her phone again, determined to call for medical help.
Finding her mother’s number among her recent calls, her thumb hovered over the screen, ready to press dial.
But right then, the voice suddenly snapped into focus.
It was as if, all at once, the invisible radio dial had caught the exact frequency.
Augustine held her breath and sharpened her ears.
“...study. You have another exam coming up, you shouldn’t be wandering around here, sitting in the plaza as if you had nothing else to do,” the voice said.
It was a masculine tone, laced with a soft but insistent reproach.
“You’re going to stay up all night again, and tomorrow you’ll be too exhausted to wake up on time.
I really don't like it when you cross the street so distracted…”
Augustine’s eyes widened slightly. Her hallucination was, apparently, remarkably well-informed about her schedule. The voice sounded agonizingly familiar, like a piece of déjà vu she couldn't quite shape into a memory.
“Oh, fantastic. And here comes that annoying Milán,” the voice grumbled.
Augustine scanned the park until her eyes locked onto him. Sure enough, a few yards away, her classmate was marching toward her with an overly enthusiastic smile, moving with the eager speed of a puppy that had spotted its owner.
What on earth was he doing here? Irritation flared inside her the moment she realized he was heading straight for her.
“Augustine! I didn’t expect to see you around here,” he called out.
Augustine clenched her jaw. Lately, their paths had been crossing far too frequently. He arrived in two long strides and dropped onto the bench, plumping down directly into the exact space where the silhouette had been sitting just a second before.
Augustine jolted, but the blurry figure moved seamlessly, stepping back to stand right in front of Milán.
She forced a polite smile onto her face.
“And what does this one want now?” the voice muttered, dripping with pure disgust. “He always sticks to you like a leech. Honestly, Augustine, I hope you realize this creep is just trying to find an angle.”
She had to bite her inner cheek to keep from laughing out loud.
The blunt, brutal frankness of her invisible companion was unexpectedly amusing.
Deep down, he wasn't voice-printing anything she didn't already know; she simply lacked the heart to say it out loud.
She didn't want to be cruel to Milán just because she couldn't return his feelings.
Milán lingered for quite some time, chattering about mindless everyday gossip, mentioning a new movie premiere, and inviting her to join him that evening. Augustine declined with gentle politeness, using her exams as an excuse. Finally, Milán offered a parting smile and walked away.
“It was about time,” the silhouette snorted.
This time, when Augustine turned her head toward him, she was no longer staring at a watery blur.
Sitting beside her was the perfectly defined figure of an incredibly attractive young man with snow-white hair and striking gray eyes.
Her heart leaped into a frantic sprint, and this time, she knew it wasn’t out of fear.
She stared at him out of the corner of her eye, recognizing him instantly: he was the boy from her dream.
How was any of this possible?
Here in the waking world, stripped of distorted dream logic, the pull of attraction was devastatingly intense.
She had never seen anyone so breathtakingly handsome.
In her dream, his appearance had felt perfectly natural, but now, she could barely look at him without feeling her entire face catch fire.
“Let’s go now, Augustine,” he said, looking at her. “Come on, come on, come on,” he urged, his voice carrying the playful, stubborn impatience of a small child.
He was utterly adorable. A nervous, breathy laugh escaped Augustine’s lips.
“Do you always talk to me like that, even though I can’t hear you?”
The young man's eyes snapped wide, and he went completely rigid, staring at her in mute shock for several seconds. Then, letting out a long breath he seemed to have been holding, he burst into a rich, relieved laugh.
“Wow, that actually terrified me! For a split second, I genuinely thought you were speaking to me.”
Augustine remained silent, letting the melodic sound of his laughter wash over her. But deep down, she decided she preferred the raw expression of shock she had captured just moments before.
“I was talking to you, Alderian.”