The hallway lights buzzed faintly overhead, that sterile hum only found in corporate buildings where dreams were slowly eaten by time and fluorescent bulbs. Ren rolled quietly down the corridor, his laptop balanced on one knee, his mind still swimming with fragmented data from the system audit. The whistleblower's report had dug up more rot than expected—code injections, unauthorized log entries, backdoor exploits buried so deep only a paranoid ghost would've found them.
And Ren had. Because that's what he did. He disappeared into servers and logs, became a shadow behind firewalls. It was safer that way.
Except now, he wasn't so invisible.
He could still hear the voices from yesterday's meeting, thick with resentment after Aika had dismantled their entire defence in three precise sentences.
"His data and report narrow down the cause of the issue" she had said, coolly leafing through printouts.
"You mean that useless cripple?" one of the executives had mumbled under his breath.
The room had stilled.
Aika had looked up, her eyes like polished obsidian. "Say that again. I dare you."
The man had gone pale.
And Ren—Ren had sat there, heart hammering, silent and still as stone. Not because he was afraid. But because he couldn't breathe with her in the room. He couldn't speak while every word she uttered brought back memories he had stitched into the pages of his notebooks.
She still didn't recognize him.
She didn't need to.
She was still her.
And that, somehow, made it worse.
It was 7:42 p.m. when he rolled his chair into the server wing. The hallway cameras flickered. A harmless power loop, he thought—common during the daily cycle reset.
He wheeled toward the backend stack, past unused cubicles and half-lit screens. The entire floor was nearly empty except for the soft whirr of the machines and the familiar smell of dust and cables.
He was already inside the server room when the door slammed shut.
The lights clicked off.
At first, he thought it was a glitch.
Then came the sound.
Click.
Lock engaged.
His fingers paused over the keypad.
"No..."
He tried the emergency button.
No response.
The door refused to budge.
That's when the panic began to rise.
The room was cold—far colder than it should've been—but the sweat on his palms said otherwise. His breaths grew short. Compressed. Like the air was shrinking around him.
It was happening again.
The panic attacks.
The ones he hadn't had in months.
Somewhere in the distance, Aika was still in the building.
She never left on time—always combing through another document, cross-checking another timestamp. That night, she was following up on the inconsistencies Ren flagged. A few numbers weren't adding up. And she wasn't the kind to leave loose threads.
Her heels echoed down the hallway as she approached the server wing, expecting to find Ren near his usual console.
But the hallway was empty.
Her brows furrowed.
She checked the staff logs. His badge had last pinged in… the restricted rack room?
The red light on the access panel blinked steadily. It was locked.
From the outside.
Her pulse skipped.
Aika typed in her override code.
The door hissed open.
What she saw hit her like a punch to the chest.
Ren was crumpled against the far rack, wheelchair jammed at an angle, his hands trembling uncontrollably. His breaths came in short, shallow gasps—chest heaving, eyes unfocused. The light from a nearby monitor cast a flickering blue halo across his pale skin.
"Aika—" he tried, voice barely audible.
She didn't hesitate.
She crossed the room in three long strides, crouched low, and grabbed the wheelchair handles, pulling him gently out into the corridor.
"Hey. Hey, you're okay," she murmured, guiding the chair to a clearer patch of hallway. She knelt in front of him, checking his eyes. "You're safe. Breathe with me."
He tried. Failed.
Then he heard her voice again.
Soft. Low. Steady.
She was grounding him. Just like before.
"Inhale… Exhale…. Inhale…. Exhale…"
He matched her breath.
Slowly, the world steadied.
The panic ebbed.
Colour returned to his cheeks.
Only then did she look around and mutter, mostly to herself, "What the hell happened here?"
She scanned the hallway. Empty.
Aika's eyes narrowed.
She would find out. She always did.
But for now, she reached down, adjusting the lap blanket over Ren's knees with surprising gentleness. He looked up at her, eyes glassy, throat tight with unsaid things.
He wanted to say it. It's you. You saved me then… and now.
But all he managed was a nod.
She stood, brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, and turned the chair toward the elevator.
She pushed it forward with one hand, her pace casual, almost as if this was just another day, just another fire she'd put out without blinking.
And as they rolled into the dim hallway—
She muttered under her breath, "You again…"
She didn't notice the way his eyes widened.
She didn't hear the echo of memory crashing through his heart.
But he did.
Because twenty years ago, on a rooftop bathed in sunset, she had said those very same words.
How many times can you be saved by the same person before it stops being coincidence and becomes fate?