Chapter 2 The Second Petal

Victor couldn't stop thinking about her.

There was something in Evelyn's voice-soft, like rainfall over glass-that had stayed with him. It wasn't just her words. It was the way she said them. As if she was confessing to something sacred. Or dangerous.

"Maybe in another life."

He replayed the phrase over and over as he walked across the campus green. The words fit her-old-fashioned, poetic, a little eerie. And yet... comforting.

As if some buried part of him agreed.

That evening, he wandered back to the quad where the blossoms had first appeared. It was quiet, painted gold by the fading sun. He stood under the cherry tree and waited.

For what, he didn't know.

But nothing came. No Evelyn. No strange petals.

Only a breeze. And silence.

Still, he didn't leave.

Evelyn was watching from the library window.

From the third floor, with the lights behind her dimmed, she could see him clearly. The light wind tousled his hair as he stood beneath the tree, still and thoughtful, like a memory she hadn't lived yet.

Her chest tightened.

It wasn't supposed to feel this way.

She didn't do infatuation. She'd sworn off that kind of distraction years ago. While other girls ran after boys and heartbreak, Evelyn buried herself in Dante, Yeats, and forbidden Japanese love poems. She wasn't built for whirlwind romance.

She was a "good girl." Disciplined. Predictable.

But Victor was making her feel unpredictable.

And worse-familiar.

He came back the next day.

And the next.

And on the third day, she was there, seated on the bench beneath the tree, a paperback in hand. It was intentional-she wouldn't admit it, not even to herself, but her heart raced when she saw him.

Victor approached slowly, like he didn't want to scare her off.

"Don't tell me you live here," he said.

Evelyn looked up, eyes unreadable. "Don't tell me you're stalking me."

Victor grinned. "Only in the literary sense."

She raised an eyebrow. "There's a literary way to stalk someone?"

He sat beside her without asking. "You show up where they do. Learn their favorite books. Quote sonnets until they fall for you."

Evelyn gave a soft laugh. "That only works on tragic heroines."

"Then I'm halfway there."

She glanced sideways at him. "Why halfway?"

He shrugged. "I already have the tragic part."

There was a silence then-soft, strange, charged.

Evelyn stared at him. "Do you always flirt like a ghost?"

Victor blinked, caught off guard. Then smiled. "Only when the girl feels like déjà vu."

And with that, Evelyn closed her book, stood, and left without saying a word.

But she was smiling.

Victor stood in the shower that night, letting the hot water run down his back, and tried to wash away the chill that always came after he saw her.

It wasn't a bad chill.

It was just... wrong. In a way he couldn't explain.

Evelyn made him feel like he was supposed to remember something. Something he'd buried deep.

And the petals... they were back. Not on the tree, but in his dreams.

Crimson. Falling like tears from a sky he'd never seen. Always accompanied by whispers-faint, distant, impossible to translate.

He wiped the steam from the mirror and stared at his reflection.

For a moment, it wasn't his own.

Just a flicker-but enough to make his heart skip.

He didn't sleep well that night.

Evelyn dreamt of drowning.

Not in water.

In sound.

In screams. In wind that spoke her name. In fingers reaching through centuries.

She stood at the edge of a temple-ancient, cracked, covered in moss. Cherry blossoms rained from a sky of fire.

Victor stood across from her. Dressed not in modern clothes, but in something ceremonial-robes of white and red, stained with something dark.

He held out a hand.

She couldn't move.

When she looked down, blood bloomed across her chest like a flower.

She woke with a gasp, sheets twisted around her legs, throat tight with unscreamed panic.

The dream faded fast-but the scent of smoke lingered.

And so did the feel of his hand reaching for hers.

Campus rumors were beginning to spread.

Victor and Evelyn had been spotted under the cherry tree again. Third time that week. Some said they were dating. Others said they were just "talking." A few swore they'd never seen Victor this quiet around a girl before.

Lina teased Evelyn about it constantly.

"I thought you didn't do distractions," Lina said as they walked toward the café courtyard. "Now you're bench-flirting under cherry trees?"

"It's not flirting," Evelyn said.

"Okay. Let me rephrase: now you're soul-exchanging eye contact with the hottest guy on campus under a blood-colored cherry tree."

Evelyn gave a low laugh. "It's not even in bloom anymore."

"Doesn't matter. The legend's already started."

Evelyn paused. "Legend?"

Lina grinned. "You haven't heard? The Crimson Tree. They say couples who meet there are connected from a past life. Romantic, right?"

Evelyn stiffened.

Then quickly masked it with a shrug. "Just stories."

But her pulse was racing.

That night, Victor found something strange in his mailbox.

A folded sheet of rice paper, no return address. On it, a single line of handwritten script:

"You've been here before. So has she."

He looked around the dorm hallway. No one.

He unfolded it further.

On the back: a brush painting of a cherry blossom tree. The petals were crimson. The trunk was split down the middle. Flames burned at the base.

He felt his chest constrict.

A memory-no, a hallucination-pressed at the edge of his vision.

Evelyn.

Crying.

And whispering: "We weren't supposed to meet again."