No More Saving Him

When Soren came back, it was already late at night.

I was still sitting on the sofa, replaying everything over and over, trying to figure out exactly where things had gone wrong and when his heart had changed.

"Why aren’t you turning on the lights? What are you sitting here spacing out for?"

His voice was as gentle as ever. He sat down beside me and naturally reached over to wrap an arm around my waist, so normal that it almost felt as though what I’d seen earlier had been nothing more than a dream.

I dodged him on instinct.

The atmosphere stiffened.

A trace of cool detachment surfaced in Soren’s eyes. He had clearly noticed something was off. Nevertheless, as if already annoyed, he didn’t ask anything. "I’m going to sleep first. You should rest early, too."

That night, I slept terribly. Even though Soren was right beside me, my mind kept flashing back, again and again, to the moments of his death.

In the first life, he died in a car accident, instantly. Blood spilled from his body, soaking through my blouse.

In the second life, we got married. We didn’t go on a honeymoon, so the car accident never happened.

Instead, fate arrived in an almost ridiculous way. When he came to pick me up after work, a billboard overhead suddenly crashed down. It hit him squarely.

I watched with my own eyes as that tall man was crushed until nothing remained, as if heaven itself had decided he had to die.

I refused to believe it. So there was a third life.

In that life, I quit my job. After we got married, I stayed glued to his side, barely leaving him for a moment, terrified that the slightest lapse would lead to another accident.

We made it all the way to his 28th birthday without incident.

That day, candlelight lit up his eyes, bright and shimmering. In the halo of light, he confessed to me, his eyes damp, "Sloane, it's so wonderful having you in my life."

My heart was racing. His smile seemed to grow fainter, his face blurring before my eyes.

A powerful sense of unease nearly overturned me completely.

Then Soren suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood.

Maybe too much time had passed. Maybe my panic left no room for any other memories.

I can’t remember the name of his illness. It was something rare, some obscure diagnosis. His life ended just like that—abruptly, almost absurdly careless.

My final memory stopped in a stark white hospital room.

In the deathly silence, only the machines by my ear blinked faintly, their relentless beeping sounding like they were draining away his last trace of life.

I wasn’t willing to accept it. How could I?

Soren and I met when we were young. Back then, I was a country bumpkin, an unsophisticated nobody. I happened to be fairly pretty and had a dance talent that drew envy. Several girls in my class began targeting me, subtly at first.

I endured it. I endured it right up until the day they overturned my grandmother’s waffle stall.

Amid the mess scattered across the ground, I held back tears as I helped Grandma up. The girls stood there, polished and radiant, laughing from above, their voices sharp.

They called me Waffle Girl, told me to go home and sell waffles instead.

Grandma was mute. Her lips trembled as she gestured, wiping the grease stains off my clothes for me.

Their laughter only grew louder.

That was when Soren appeared. He was holding a camera. With a single phone call, he summoned the school administrators.

He was a top student, and his family had some money. In our small town, that already made him someone impressive.

It was evening. The sky had been gloomy all day, yet somehow, at that moment, sunlight broke through layers of clouds and poured straight down onto Soren.

He reached out his hand. In his palm was a clean, neatly folded handkerchief.

The first thing he said was, "I’m sorry. I wanted to photograph the evidence first, so I didn’t help you right away."

Even now, I still remember how my heart pounded that day.

Fierce. Steady.

It was that heartbeat that carried me alone through countless cycles, through endless worlds where he died again and again.