For the longest ti, she had dismissed them.
It was easier that way.
Easier to call them nightmares. Easier to bla exhaustion. Easier to turn over in bed and pretend the ache in her chest was just anxiety.
But now that she had stopped running from them, the truth felt painfully clear.
They were not haunting her.
She had been avoiding them.
It was not fate that dragged her toward destruction in that life. It was not destiny that pushed her into choices she later regretted.
It was her.
Her pride.
Her greed for control.
Her obsession with winning even when the cost was love.
She had ignored every warning sign. Every mont that could have been salvaged. She had chosen ambition over connection and power over humility.
And when everything collapsed, she had acted surprised.
Now, standing here in this life, with clearer eyes and a softer heart, she understood sothing she had never allowed herself to admit before.
It had not been the world against her.
It had been her against herself.
She had been selfish. Not in a loud, obvious way. But in quiet decisions. In the way she dismissed feelings that inconvenienced her. In the way she convinced herself that the end justified the ans.
And that selfishness had led her to her end.
The realization did not crush her this ti.
It steadied her.
Because if the destruction had been her doing, then so could the rebuilding.
She inhaled slowly, feeling the weight of that clarity settle in her bones.
The dreams were not punishnts.
They were reminders.
And this ti, she would not look away.
This ti, she would not chase things that glittered only to burn everything else in the process.
She had been given awareness.
And awareness, she now understood, was not a curse.
It was responsibility.
As her thoughts slowly settled, Kathrine beca aware of sothing else.
Ethan had not said a word.
No dramatic reaction. No philosophical speech. No heavy silence.
He was just... standing there.
Then suddenly he squinted at her, pulled back slightly, and rubbed his chin like he was solving a puzzle.
"Wait," he muttered.
Kathrine stiffened.
"Where was I the whole ti?"
"...What?" she blinked.
He clicked his tongue lightly, narrowing his eyes at her as if mildly offended. "You said this isn’t your first life. So tell sothing. Where was I in that life to miss the chance of dating such a beautiful woman?"
For a second, her brain stopped functioning.
That was not the response she had prepared for.
She stared at him, trying to process whether he was serious.
He looked serious.
Suspiciously serious.
"You’re worried about that?" she asked slowly.
"Of course I am," he replied, straight faced. "If I missed you once, that’s tragic."
Her lips parted slightly.
She had expected doubt. Confusion. Maybe even distance.
Not this.
Not playful jealousy over a hypothetical tiline.
But as his words replayed in her mind, sothing shifted.
Where was he?
Her thoughts began scrambling through fragnts of mory.
Flashes of news headlines.
Red carpets.
Crowds screaming his na.
He had been famous. Incredibly famous. The heartthrob who ruled the entertainnt industry. Every magazine cover. Every trending headline.
She rembered seeing his face everywhere.
But she had never paid attention.
Not really.
Her life back then had been consud by power struggles and ambition. Entertainnt gossip had been background noise.
And then—
Her breath caught.
There had been a headline.
A sudden wave of mory crashed into her.
Breaking news.
Late night.
The shock that rippled across dia.
His suicide.
Her eyes widened abruptly.
Ethan noticed imdiately. "Hey," he said, half amused, half concerned. "Why do you look like you just saw a ghost?"
She could not answer right away.
Because she had.
Not in front of her.
But in mory.
How could she have forgotten that?
How could she rember her own downfall so vividly yet overlook sothing so significant?
In that life, he had died.
Alone.
Publicly mourned.
Privately broken.
And she had barely registered it beyond a passing comnt about how tragic it was.
The realization twisted painfully inside her chest.
"You..." she whispered.
Ethan tilted his head. "What?"
"You were... famous," she said slowly, her voice unsteady.
His brows lifted. "Oh? Was I at least successful?"
She almost laughed, but the sound died in her throat.
"You were everywhere," she murmured. "The whole country knew you."
"See?" he said lightly. "Missed opportunity. I should have found you."
Her expression did not match his tone.
He noticed.
"What happened?" he asked more seriously now.
Kathrine swallowed.
"You died," she said quietly.
The humor faded from his face.
"How?"
She hesitated.
"Officially?" she continued carefully. "It was called suicide."
Silence fell again, but this ti it was different.
Not heavy.
Not explosive.
Just... still.
Ethan blinked once.
"That’s... dramatic," he said softly.
Kathrine’s chest tightened.
"It shocked everyone," she added. "People said you had everything. Fa. Money. Influence."
"And apparently no Kathrine," he said, trying to keep the air from thickening too much.
But his voice was quieter now.
She looked at him properly.
In this life, he stood steady. Present. Warm.
In that life, he had been a distant figure on a screen. Soone she never thought about beyond headlines.
And sohow, their tilines had never crossed.
Or maybe they had, and she had been too self-absorbed to notice.
Ethan watched her drift again.
Her eyes had gone distant, like she was watching sothing only she could see. Sothing heavy.
"Ahem."
His voice was gentle but deliberate.
"It’s too much for today."
Kathrine blinked, pulled back from wherever her thoughts had taken her.
He wasn’t dismissing her. He wasn’t shutting her down.
He was steadying the mont.
Ethan was still trying to process everything she had told him. Rebirth. mories. Regret. His own death in another tiline.
It should have sounded absurd.
But it didn’t.
Not when she spoke.
For him, there had been no flicker of deceit in her eyes. No dramatics. No attempt to impress or manipulate. Just raw honesty and fear.
So he accepted one thing without question.
She believed it.
And that was enough for him to take it seriously.
When she told him he had died back then, sothing inside him had shifted.
Not fear.
Curiosity.
’How?’ he wanted to ask loudly, but he didn’t, because he knew if he say that, she would stress herself more.
And that was the last thing he wanted Kathrine to do tonight.
Kathrine, on the other hand, blinked and nodded in agreent with his suggestion, and they both decided to go to bed.
However, one thing was clear: neither of them had a happy ending in their previous lives.
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