Chapter 11: The Weight of Remembering
The days started blurring.
Maybe because of the weather. Maybe because of her. Maybe because I'd stopped keeping track of time — and only counted in moments now. In breaths beside her. In silences shared under the streetlamp.
She remembered more lately. Small things. A gesture. A word. A laugh. It was never predictable. Some nights she'd meet me like we were strangers again. Other times, she'd pull me in before I could even say hello.
I lived in the in-between.
---
It was late when I found her again. The air was heavy with summer.
Cicadas buzzed somewhere in the distance.
She was barefoot, standing in the middle of the road, arms stretched toward the moon.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
She turned, and this time — this time she smiled like she knew me.
"I wanted to see if it could carry me," she said.
"The moon?"
She nodded.
"Feels like everything else forgets. Maybe it doesn't."
---
We walked in silence for a long while.
No music. No jokes. Just our feet against the road and the hum of memory between us.
"Do you remember the first time we talked?" I asked quietly.
She tilted her head.
"I don't know. But I feel like… I knew you before I met you. Is that strange?"
"Not to me."
---
We sat at the river again. That same bench, now ours. She leaned her head against my shoulder. Her hand found mine without hesitation.
"You said I once told you the river keeps secrets," she murmured.
"You did."
"Then tonight, I want to give it something. Just in case I forget again."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded page — crumpled at the corners, edges softened by time. She stood and walked to the edge of the river.
I watched her whisper something to the paper before letting it go.
The current pulled it gently away.
"What was it?" I asked.
She turned to me, her eyes glistening.
"A promise."
---
We began talking more.
She started asking about the past.
"What was I like before?"
"You were quiet, but your eyes said everything," I answered. "You laughed too hard at your own jokes. You were always cold. You hated tea but drank it anyway. You called the stars your 'witnesses.'"
She nodded, soaking it in like sunlight.
She asked me again the next night. And the next. And I answered every time.
It didn't get easier.
But it became more sacred.
---
She began keeping a notebook.
Not filled with memories — that was too fragile.
But filled with questions.
Each page was a new night.
"What do you think happens when we die?"
"Do you think love can grow back after being forgotten?"
"If I forget everything — who am I?"
Some pages, she left blank.
"I want you to answer those," she told me.
So I did.
In my own handwriting, next to hers, I filled them in.
"You're still Spring. Still the girl who stopped the night from feeling empty. Still the one I'd walk 400 meters to see every time, even if I knew you wouldn't remember me."
---
One night, I arrived and she wasn't there.
The streetlamp was still on. The bench still dry.
But no Spring.
I waited an hour. Then another.
Called her phone.
No answer.
I walked back slowly. The weight in my chest deeper than I'd ever felt.
At my doorstep, I found an envelope.
No name. Just a pressed flower taped to the front.
Inside, a single sentence:
"I remembered too much today."
I sat on the steps until morning.
---
She returned three days later.
Tired. Eyes rimmed red.
"Sometimes it hurts," she said. "To remember everything all at once. Like the weight of it all crushes me. I forget to breathe."
I didn't ask what she remembered.
She didn't offer.
But she took my hand and placed it against her chest.
"Just remind me how to stay here," she whispered.
So I did.
---
We began recording things.
Not on video.
Not with pictures.
But with voice.
Little tapes. One for each day.
Her voice. My voice. Saying simple things.
"Today, we fed birds by the bridge. You laughed when one stole your sandwich."
"Tonight, you said the stars blink slower when you're with me."
Each one ended with the same line:
"If you're listening to this, you're still loved."
---
She started carrying one in her pocket at all times.
Sometimes she'd listen to them when I wasn't around.
Once, I caught her sitting on the bench alone, crying.
She didn't notice me.
My voice played softly from the recorder:
"Even when you forget, I will remember for both of us."
---
The next morning, she showed up at my door.
"Move in with me," she said.
I blinked.
"What?"
"Not forever. Just… for the nights I forget. I want you to be the first face I see. I want home to be something I can hold onto."
We moved her things that week.
She gave me half the closet.
I didn't take much.
Just a toothbrush, a book of poems, and a blanket that smelled like her.
---
We had good days after that.
Even great ones.
Nights where she remembered the sound of my laugh before I even said anything.
Mornings where she kissed me without hesitation.
We even danced once. On the rooftop. Under a storm.
"Even if I forget this," she said, spinning barefoot in the rain, "don't you dare."
I never would.
---
But nothing lasts unchanged.
The forgetting returned stronger.
She started waking up in panic.
Didn't know where she was. Who I was.
Some mornings, she screamed.
Others, she cried.
I stopped sleeping much.
But I stayed.
---
And then came the day.
She didn't know me at all.
Not a flicker.
Not even a pause.
She looked at me with polite confusion.
"Are you my doctor?"
That broke me.
I nodded, left the room, and cried so hard I forgot how to stand.
---
But that night, as I sat beside her bed, just breathing quietly — she reached for my hand in her sleep.
And whispered my name.
So maybe, somewhere deep inside, I was still there.
And I would keep showing up.
Until the very end.
---
Quote from Spring (Chapter 11):
"Sometimes it hurts — to remember everything all at once. Like the weight of it all crushes me. I forget to breathe."
Quote from the Protagonist (Chapter 11):
"Even when you forget, I will remember for both of us."