“Where is my counterpart?” Linn demanded, meeting Helix’s gaze without flinching.
“Tell me!”
“I said deal with it.” Helix turned to leave, but Linn stepped forward, stopping him.
“I have the right to know!”
“You do not get to demand rights here.” His voice was low and dangerous.
“You are not some citizen with legal privilege. You are an anomaly, sheltered by an outlaw network. Remember that.”
Silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
Then he added, “You have no idea what you are digging into.”
Ting.
The sound rang inside her head—sharp and sudden, like two glasses clinking together before the vibration spread behind her eyes.
The world blurred for the briefest instant.
A dog squatted on the sidewalk.
Right in her path.
“What the hell?” Linn muttered as reality snapped back into place.
“I am not some dumbass who would step on dog shit that carelessly.”
Rolling her eyes, she dismissed the ridiculous image and continued toward campus.
She still had a morning class to teach, and she refused to let another one of those stupid hallucinations slow her down.
Whatever those flashes were, they had become an annoying part of her daily routine—brief, random glimpses that made absolutely no sense until they somehow did.
She had barely taken another dozen steps before her shoe landed on something soft.
Splat.
Her entire body froze.
Very slowly, she lowered her head.
Brown.
Wet.
Unmistakably dog shit.
“…No.”
A horrified gasp escaped her as she jerked backward, nearly losing her balance while the smell reached her a second later.
Several pedestrians turned toward her in confusion as she lifted one foot into the air, staring at the disaster clinging to the sole of her shoe.
“Screw this stupid vision thing!”
She spent the next ten minutes scraping dog shit off her shoe with a discarded popsicle stick while questioning every life decision that had led to this exact moment.
By the time she arrived on campus, she was already ten minutes late for class and spent the entire lecture quietly wondering whether the smell was still clinging to her shoe—or if paranoia had finally become another one of her medical conditions.
That unfortunate soul was Linn.
Twenty-six years old.
Frequently mistaken for eighteen.
Mostly because of her youthful face.
Being five-foot-two did not help.
“Hey, kid!”
Linn stopped walking and turned toward the student who had shouted.
“Who are you calling a kid?!” she shot back immediately.
“I am twenty-six! I am five-two! That is average-ish! What department are you from?! I am reporting you to your dean!”
The student paled.
“You are… a professor?”
Unfortunately, this happened often enough that even the campus security guards occasionally asked for her student identification.
Still…
There were advantages.
“Excuse me,” Linn said, handing her receipt back across the counter.
“I think there has been a mistake. The total is lower than it should be.”
The cashier smiled politely.
“We applied your student discount, miss.”
Linn blinked.
Then, before the cashier could change his mind, she grabbed the receipt and the discounted meal she technically did not deserve.
Perhaps looking youthful was not entirely a curse.
But the universe, apparently, was not finished embarrassing her.
One day, the familiar sound echoed inside her head again.
Ting.
Her wallet resting on the cashier’s counter.
Someone else’s hand picking it up.
She frowned.
“My wallet?”
Instinctively, she reached into her bag.
Still there.
She checked five minutes later.
Still there.
Ten minutes later.
Still there.
By lunchtime, she had checked at least fifteen times, becoming so paranoid that even her colleagues started asking if she had lost something.
“No,” Linn answered while patting her bag for the sixteenth time.
“Just making sure I don’t.”
Convinced that the vision had been nothing more than a false alarm, she stopped worrying and continued with the rest of her day.
Late that afternoon, she stepped out of a convenience store after grabbing a quick drink.
She reached the sidewalk.
Stopped.
“…My wallet.”
Her expression slowly collapsed.
She spun around and sprinted back inside.
It was still sitting neatly on the counter.
The cashier looked up as Linn grabbed it with both hands, looking absurdly terrified.
“You almost left it behind, miss.”
“…”
Linn stared at the wallet.
Then at the ceiling.
“…Coincidence.”
The cashier gave her a puzzled look.
Linn nodded to herself.
“Definitely coincidence.”
By the following days, Linn had almost forgotten about the wallet incident.
As she left the bookstore with a paper bag tucked beneath one arm, the familiar sound returned.
Ting.
The last bus pulling away from the terminal.
Linn stood several meters behind it, watching helplessly as it disappeared down the road.
The image vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
She glanced at the time on her phone before snorting.
“As if.”
The bus was still twenty minutes away.
Even if she somehow got distracted, there was no way she would miss it.
She had already learned her lesson after the dog shit incident and the wallet fiasco.
Well, not “learned” exactly.
She simply refused to let another stupid hallucination inconvenience her.
Confident enough to ignore the vision, she continued toward the terminal at an unhurried pace.
Halfway there, she noticed an elderly woman struggling to lift two heavy grocery bags onto the sidewalk.
Linn stopped.
She looked at the bus terminal in the distance.
Then at the old woman.
“…Damn it.”
With an exaggerated sigh, she walked over anyway.
“Grandma, let me help.”
By the time she finished carrying the groceries to the woman’s destination and hurried back toward the terminal, the familiar sound of an engine reached her ears.
She rounded the corner just in time to watch the last bus pull away.
“…”
Linn stood there in complete silence, one eye twitching as the taillights gradually disappeared into the distance.
Several minutes later, she found herself sitting inside a taxi she absolutely could not afford.
She stared blankly out the window before letting out another defeated sigh.
“…Still a coincidence.”
The driver glanced at her through the rearview mirror.
“Did you say something, miss?”
“I said…”
“…”
“…the universe has a personal grudge against me.”
Life settled into an irritating rhythm.
A vision.
She ignored it.
A consequence.
She blamed coincidence.
Repeat.
Several days passed that way until one unusually vivid dream jolted her awake before sunrise.
This time she saw herself losing her job.
Not because of poor performance.
Not because of budget cuts.
Because of the one co-worker she disliked the most.
Linn sat upright in bed before letting out a relieved breath.
“Thank God.”
She rubbed her face.
“It was just a dream.”
By the time she reached work, the dream had faded enough for her to laugh at herself.
During lunch break, she finally vented to a friend through her phone after weeks of swallowing every irritation.
“That witch has two personalities.”
“Plastic in meetings.”
“Plastic outside meetings.”
“Consistency is admirable.”
“I hope she steps on dog shit thrice a day.”
“Forever.”
Feeling considerably better, Linn pressed send.
Then stared at the screen.
The message had not gone to her friend.
It had gone directly to the co-worker herself.
“…”
“…No.”
“…No no no no no.”
Two hours later…
She lost her job.
Exactly as the dream had predicted.
Losing her job should have been enough to make her reconsider every vision she had dismissed.
It was not.
She updated her résumé, submitted applications, and convinced herself that the next opportunity would be different.
Then the visions started again.
Ting.
An interviewer shook his head.
Rejected.
Ting.
Another application marked unsuccessful.
Rejected.
Then another.
And another.
After that, the visions and rejection emails blurred together until she could no longer tell which came first.
Leaning against the apartment gate with another unsuccessful application sitting unopened inside her inbox, Linn stared blankly at the evening sky before letting out a long, exhausted sigh.
At this point, she no longer questioned why those stupid visions kept coming true.
She simply refused to believe they meant anything.
Because accepting the alternative meant accepting something far more absurd.
That somehow…
She could see the future.
And if that were true, then those visions had never been meaningless.
They had always been trying to show her something.
She let out a humorless chuckle, trying to convince herself that tomorrow would be different.
Still, a small, nagging voice lingered at the back of her mind, quietly asking whether she would ever catch a break.
Then the familiar sound returned.
Ting.
Everything around her dulled.
The apartment gate, the passing traffic, the evening breeze—they all faded into the background as another vision forced itself into her mind.
Men.
A door bursting open.
Shouting.
Panic.
Blood across the room.
One roommate slammed against the wall.
Another collapsing into a spreading pool of blood.
A scream cut short.
Red palms.
Hers.
Fingers clamping around her wrist.
Her feet scraping helplessly across the floor.
The apartment growing farther away.
One final glimpse of her roommates…
…lying motionless in spreading pools of blood.
Darkness.
Unlike every vision before it, this one felt disturbingly complete.
There were no vague impressions.
Every image arrived with unbearable clarity, unfolding one after another until only a single certainty remained.
This was not something that might happen.
It would happen.
Tomorrow.
The world snapped back into place.
Linn sucked in a sharp breath, her pulse racing as she pressed a trembling hand against her temple.
“What the hell was that?” She forced out a laugh that sounded far less convincing than she intended.
“I seriously need more sleep.”
She wanted to dismiss it the same way she always did.
Stress.
Exhaustion.
An overactive imagination piecing random thoughts together.
There had always been another explanation.
But as the evening wore on, the images refused to fade.
Every time she blinked, flashes of blood and terrified faces resurfaced behind her eyes.
Every attempt to distract herself only brought the vision back into sharper focus.
It did not feel like another inconvenience waiting to embarrass her.
It felt like a warning.
By midnight, sleep had become impossible.
Unable to endure another minute staring at the ceiling, Linn quietly climbed out of bed and surveyed the dim apartment.
Her roommates slept peacefully, completely unaware of the dread tightening around her chest.
She considered waking them.
The thought disappeared almost immediately.
How was she supposed to explain that she had seen tomorrow?
She barely believed her own visions despite how often they came true.
Telling everyone would accomplish nothing except panic them over something she could not even prove.
Her gaze drifted toward the apartment door.
If the vision was real, then whoever was responsible could already be nearby.
Watching.
Waiting.
A chill crept down her spine.
Security cameras.
The idea surfaced only to collapse almost immediately.
She neither had the time nor the money to install proper surveillance.
Then another idea occurred to her.
It was reckless.
Expensive.
And significantly more believable than claiming she could see the future.
The following day, Linn forced an excited smile as she clapped her hands together.
“Girls! Guess who just won a raffle?” she announced.
“Free overnight stay! Room for eight at Hotel Eterna!”
Several heads turned toward her almost instantly.
“No way!”
“Linn, seriously?”
She laughed and nodded as naturally as she could.
“Pack your things.”
It was a lie.
There had been no raffle.
No prize.
She had spent the last of her savings paying for the rooms herself.
Not for comfort.
Not for a vacation.
Simply because she refused to ignore this vision the way she had ignored all the others.
Just in case.
Hours later, while her roommates settled into a movie marathon inside the hotel room, Linn remained hunched over her laptop.
“Shit,” she muttered beneath her breath.
The girls looked over.
“You okay?”
She forced a smile without lifting her eyes from the screen.
“Yeah. Lost the game.”
No one questioned it.
They returned to the movie.
The two old phones Linn had secretly left inside the apartment—one overlooking the entrance, the other hidden deeper inside the unit—had both disconnected from the video call at exactly the same time.
She refreshed the connection.
Nothing.
Again.
Still nothing.
Her heartbeat quickened.
Internet outage?
Possible.
But the timing felt wrong.
She considered calling the landlord before immediately abandoning the idea.
If the vision was real, involving someone else would only place another innocent person in danger.
Linn closed the laptop.
“I left something in the apartment,” she said, already reaching for her bag.
“I’ll be right back.”
Several of the girls frowned.
“We’ll come with you—”
“No!”
The word escaped far more sharply than she intended.
Silence settled across the room.
Linn exhaled slowly before forcing herself to smile again.
“I’m sorry.” She adjusted the strap of her bag.
“There is really no need. I’ll grab it and be back before the movie ends.”
The uncertainty on their faces remained.
She hesitated before adding quietly, “And it’s getting late.” Her gaze moved from one roommate to another.
“Please don’t go outside while I’m gone.”
The room fell silent again.
“Promise me.”
After a brief exchange of confused glances, they nodded.
“…We promise.”
Only then did Linn smile.
It barely reached her eyes.
Without another word, she turned toward the door, hiding the fear on her face before anyone could see it.
A Note Before You Proceed to the Next Chapter: If this novel could speak, it would ask you: “Are you a mixed-signals enjoyer?” “Are you here to laugh or to suffer?” If your answer is yes, this novel would simply say: “Welcome, emotionally masochistic bitch. Enjoy me.”