Chapter 6: Rain and Realizations

On my way back to campus, heavy rain pours down. I don’t have an umbrella.

Rainwater streams down my hair, soaking my clothes, chilling me to the bone.

But compared to the cold outside, the chill in my heart is even more suffocating.

I finally understand—Matthew has also been given a second chance.

He must have come back earlier than me.

So he changed the script and remade "Spring Song" for Julia.

It feels like I should run to question him.

Why did you do this? Why didn’t you come find me? What about everything from our last life?

But what right or confidence do I have? In everyone else’s eyes, Matthew Carter and Natalie Rivers are still just strangers who haven’t even met.

Yes, the love that once seemed unbreakable—belongs to the past life.

Matthew just wants, in this life, to choose a different path.

A path without me.

I pass the student union, neon flyers plastered on the windows, rain pooling around the bike racks. I squelch down the dorm hallway, water dripping from my hair onto the linoleum, blending with the muddy footprints of students rushing in from the storm. Lightning flashes outside, thunder grumbling like the sky itself is mourning something lost.