A devastating fire left me in a coma from severe oxygen deprivation. When I woke up, my vision was badly damaged — and i had retrograde amnesia. Back home, a handsome, gentle man took my hand and told me he was my fiancé. That we have been together for three years. Wedding photos covered the walls. A thick journal full of love letters sat on my nightstand. Even my parents sang his praises — almost desperately so. I almost believed him. I almost convinced myself I'd simply forgotten the true love of my life. Then one night, I was feeling my way down the hallway to the bathroom when I reached out toward the full-length mirror — And felt another pair of hands pressing back from the other side of the glass. 0I walked home with bandages over my eyes and a white cane tapping the ground ahead of me — back to the place I hadn't seen in six months. Six months ago, a fire tore through my apartment building. It didn't just destroy my studio. It burned away the last three years of my meories. Severe carbon monoxide poisoning, the doctors said. It caused retrograde amnesia and damaged my optic nerves. Right now, My vision is so limited that I can barely see anything beyond a blurry shape half a meter away. The whole world looks like a frosted window — everything reduced to heavy, shapeless smears. I pushed open the front door. A familiar scent of sandalwood hit me immediately. I took a slow, deep breath. Some of the tension in my shoulders eased. At least that hadn't changed. "Claire, slow down — there's a step right here." A low, gentle voice sounded close to my ear. Then a pair of large, warm hands settled steadily at my waist. My body went rigid. I instinctively pulled back. "What's wrong?" A carefully measured note of hurt crept into his voice. "Still not get used to me touching you?" I bit my lip. I didn't know what to say. His name was Sebastian. My parents had introduced him as my fiancé. They said we'd been together for three years, that we'd been planning to get our marriage certificate next month. But I had twenty-six years of memories — the ones before the fire, at least — and in every single one of them, I had been completely, firmly, anti-marriage. I remembered screaming at my parents over it, remembered packing my bags and moving out on my own just to get away from the constant pressure to settle down. So how did I suddenly have a fiancé I'd been with for three years? "Sebastian, Claire just got out of the hospital — her mind is still foggy. Please be patient with her." My mother's voice drifted in from the living room, carrying a strange, careful quality. Like she was walking on eggshells. "Don't worry mom." Sebastian let out a soft laugh and gently took the white cane from my hand. "I'll take good care of her." He guided me inside with one arm loosely around me, then eased me down onto the couch. "Mom — where's Dad?" I looked around, seeing nothing but a few vague blobs of color. "Your father is... he's resting in the bedroom. He hasn't been feeling well lately. Gets tired easily." Her voice sounded dry. Tight. There was a faint tremor underneath it. A soft clack — the sound of glass meeting a hard surface. "Mom, you filled it too high." Sebastian's voice stayed warm, but I caught the sharp way my mother sucked in her breath. "Sorry, sorry — I'll get you another one." She hurried away, footsteps quick and uneven. I sat on the couch and felt the wrongness settle deeper into my chest. My mother had always been a strong woman. Demanding, critical, hard to please. Every friend I'd ever brought home had fallen short of her standards. So why was she acting like this around a man who was supposedly about to become her son-in-law? Why did she seem almost afraid of him? "Claire. Here." Sebastian pressed a glass of water into my hand. His fingers brushed slowly across my knuckles — deliberately, I thought. My skin crawled. "Thank you." I lowered my head and drank, using it as an excuse to hide my face. "The doctors said your vision will come back gradually. Don't be scared." He sat down beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his breath near my ear. "Until then, I'll be your eyes." I didn't answer. I just held the glass tighter. The doctors had said that. My optic nerve damage was temporary — once the pressure from the swelling went down, my sight would return. What I hadn't told anyone was that since yesterday, the blur had already started to lift. I could almost make out Sebastian's face now. The shapes were sharpening into features. It was a strikingly handsome face. And it was completely, utterly, a face I didn't recognize. 0
Dinner was eaten in near silence. The only sounds were the faint clinks of forks and bowls. "Claire, have some ribs. The rib steak used to be your favorite — whenever I made it." I poked at the piece of meat with my fork. My stomach turned for no reason I could name. "I… I don't really want anything too heavy," I said, trying to deflect. "Be good. You're too thin — you need to eat." His voice was still soft, but there was something underneath it that left no room for refusal. I instinctively glanced toward my parents, hoping one of them would bail me out. But they both kept their heads down, mechanically picking at their spaghetti, not to look at me even once. "Mom, Dad — why aren't you having any?" I asked carefully. My father's hand jerked. His fork clattered against the table with a sharp ring. "His hand slipped." My mother quickly picked it up, her voice stretched tight as a bowstring. "We're eating. We're eating." The unease inside me kept growing. After dinner, Sebastian walked me back to my room. "I've been cleaning it every day," he said, pushing the door open and turning on the light. "Everything's exactly the way you left it." I squinted, letting my eyes adjust to the brightness. The layout was the same — that much I could tell. But the smell was wrong. It wasn't the fir-wood perfume I always wore. It was something faint and foreign, like medical disinfectant mixed with some kind of chemical. "What's wrong?" He noticed me hesitate. "Nothing. Just tired." "Get some rest, then. I'm right next door — call me if you need anything." He pressed a cold kiss to my forehead, turned, and pulled the door shut behind him. Click. The sound of the lock catching. I stood there, cold all the way through. He had locked my door from the outside. 0
I sat in the dark for a long time. What kind of normal fiancé locks his sick girlfriend in her room? I felt my way to the door, grabbed the handle, and twisted it hard. It didn't move. I pressed my ear against the wood. Outside was completely silent. Not a sound. And then I heard it — a faint, dry rustling. It wasn't coming from beyond the door. It was coming from… inside the wall. Like something crawling through the space between the walls. Like fingernails dragging slowly across concrete. I stumbled backward in fright, my back hitting the wardrobe. The sound lasted maybe ten seconds. Then it stopped. I stood there heaving, cold sweat soaking through my shirt. Mice？ It's just mice. This house is old — of course there are mice. I kept telling myself that. I felt my way to the bed, climbed in, and pulled the covers over my head. That night, I barely slept. My dreams were full of fire — everywhere — and a man I couldn't quite see, standing in the middle of the flames, staring straight at me. "Claire… you can't run from me…" I woke up screaming, drenched. It was already light outside. A knock at the door. "Claire? You up? I'm coming in." The lock clicked. Sebastian stepped inside. He walked in with a tray of breakfast, a flawless smile on his face. "Slept well?" he asked. "Pretty well," I said. I pushed the fear down and kept my voice casual. "Sebastian — did you… hear anything last night?" His hand paused over the soup bowl. "what was that?" "Like — mice in the walls, maybe." He smiled and handed me the bowl. "Old house. Bound to happen. I'll buy some mouse poison today. Eat up — I want to show you something after." 0
After breakfast, Sebastian set a thick metal tin in front of me. "You've been questioning what's between us," he said. "So — here. This is proof of everything." I pried the lid open. Inside was a stack of photographs and several thick notebooks. "That's from our trip to Hawaii," he said quietly, pointing to each one. "That's our one-year anniversary. And that one… that's the day we tried on wedding dress." I held a photo close to my face. My vision was still blurry, but I could make out the shapes clearly enough. It was me. Me and a man. We were hugging on a beach, kissing in a restaurant, laughing together in a bridal boutique. The girl in the photos was smiling — genuinely, warmly. There was no trace of anything forced. "And this." He flipped open a notebook. "This is your love diary. You always said you had a bad memory, so you wanted to write down every day we spent together — something to read back when we're old." I ran my fingers over the handwriting on the cover. It really did look like mine. Even the way I connect the letters in certain words — exactly the same. Inside, the diary recorded everything in detail. How we met. How we got to know each other. How we fell in love. April 5, 2023. It rained today. He waited for me outside the office building with an umbrella. His shoes were completely soaked. In that moment, I suddenly thought — maybe getting married wouldn't be so bad. August 10, 2024. He proposed. I cried like an idiot. I finally have a home. Every single line was full of love. I stared at all this "ironclad evidence," and my temples began to pound. Had I really been wrong about him? Had I really forgotten my own fiancé — the man I deeply loved — just because of the fire? "Claire, don't force yourself to remember." Sebastian pulled me into a hug, his voice soft with concern. "It's okay that you forgot. We can start over. As long as you're still by my side." His arms were warm. But I felt no sense of safety in them at all.
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