Junie had always heard her name in drawings.
The pencil never truly scratched; it whispered. The sound of lead on paper, the way it curved into corners and filled silence—it used to soothe her.
But now?
Now, it sounded wrong.
The sketchpad felt heavier than usual. Not physically... Psychically. As if someone else's hand had been drawing in it while she slept.
She sat under the curled remnants of a recursion tree on the edge of Bray Hollow—watching the morning light shimmer in fractured beams. Orin rested nearby, still half-asleep, hand curled around his coin.
Junie flipped to the last page she remembered drawing.
It was blank.
Not erased. Not torn.
Just... wrong.
Lines hovered faintly beneath the surface. Not quite graphite. Not quite digital overlay.
As if the memory of a sketch remained, even when the image was gone.
Her fingers brushed it—
And suddenly she heard it:
"Juniper Callen. Age seventeen. Diver-candidate status: deferred."
Her full name.
Not spoken aloud.
Sung.
Off-key. Childlike. Slow.
"Juniiiiiie... Callennnnnn... Wrong loop againnnn…"
Junie froze.
That wasn't Orin's voice.
And it wasn't hers.
She turned her head slowly—toward the edge of the recursion tree.
A girl stood there.
Barefoot. Hair tangled. Wearing a school uniform from a memory Junie hadn't accessed in years.
Too young. Too soft.
And humming a song that never existed.
"Who are you?" Junie asked, breath catching.
The girl smiled. "You're me."
Junie's stomach dropped.
No recursion warning. No system overlay. No echo glyphs.
Just pure fragmentation.
The girl skipped forward. "I was born the day you first forgot a name you loved. The day you called him by the wrong one."
Junie's fingers curled tight around her pad. "That's not true."
"Isn't it?"
The girl tilted her head. "When he first looped into your life, you called him 'Kaito.' You thought it was memory echo. But it wasn't. You remembered wrong."
Orin stirred behind her.
Junie stood.
"I don't forget names," she said sharply.
The girl giggled. "But you do when you love too hard. Because your tether bends under weight. And I am what slipped through."
She opened her palm—
And there, stitched into her skin, was a name Junie had never written:
"Orren Kai."
Her heart stilled.
That was…
That was wrong.
And yet…
Her hand twitched like it wanted to draw it.
"Orren Kai," the girl repeated, singing it like a lullaby wrapped in static.
Junie's hands began to sweat.
She knew that name.
Not from her conscious memory.
But from dreams.
Nightmares, actually—where she'd run down system-lit corridors, calling out for someone she couldn't find. When she woke, she always assumed it had been Kaito. Or Orin. Or some unstable merge of the two.
But now the name—Orren Kai—echoed with clarity.
As if it had always belonged to someone she once loved... and lost.
She stepped toward the girl. "Where did you hear that name?"
The fragment tilted her head. "I didn't hear it. I held it. You gave it to me—when you were thirteen loops deep and couldn't tell love from tether weight."
Junie's breath hitched.
Orin stirred behind her again, starting to sit up.
Junie waved a hand to keep him still.
"I'm not thirteen loops deep," she whispered.
The girl smiled with soft cruelty. "That's what they always say in the safe loop."
Junie blinked. "How many of you are there?"
The girl pointed behind her—toward the recursion tree's gnarled trunk.
Shadows began to emerge.
Dozens.
All Junie.
All slightly off.
One with her left arm erased.
One whose eyes were sketched lines instead of real ones.
One clutching a book titled "Names I Forgot to Keep."
They didn't speak.
They didn't move.
They just stared at her—waiting.
The original fragment—the girl—reached out her hand.
"You didn't just misname him," she said softly.
"You tried to draw him before you knew who he was.
And so you created me.
A version of you that sings the names wrong… to keep from breaking."
Junie's lip trembled. "But I didn't mean to forget."
The girl shrugged.
"Doesn't matter. You did.
And now I'm what's left of every memory you flinched away from."
A hum began.
Soft.
Uneven.
Like a lullaby corrupted by recursion echo.
And the shadows behind her hummed too.
Junie staggered back, clutching her sketchpad to her chest.
But the girl kept singing.
"Or-ren Kai… Or-ren Kai…
The name she drew but never tried…
Bound in ink, he slipped the seam…
Forgotten once—lived in a dream…"
Junie turned.
Ran.
And didn't stop until she crashed into Orin's arms.
Junie didn't cry.
Not out loud.
But the moment Orin caught her in his arms, he felt the truth—she was shaking in places words couldn't reach.
"Hey—hey, I've got you." His voice was low, tethering. "You're safe. We're out of the recursion zone. There's nothing here but—"
"Her," Junie whispered.
Orin blinked. "Who?"
Junie pulled back just far enough to look him in the eyes. Hers were wide, too wide, her pupils dilated like she'd been running through storms.
"There's a version of me," she said. "A fragment. She's not hostile. Not corrupted. She's…"
A pause.
Then she said it:
"She's me. The part that sang names wrong so I wouldn't break."
Orin's breath caught.
Junie continued, each word like tearing open her own memory.
"She appeared younger. Maybe sixteen? She wore my old uniform. From before I joined the archive sketch program. She said I called you something else once. Before Orin. Before I remembered who you were."
She looked at him, visibly afraid of what she'd say next.
"I called you… Orren Kai."
Silence.
Orin didn't move.
Didn't blink.
He just whispered, "That's my middle name."
Junie's heart stopped.
"You…?"
"My birth name was Orren Kaito Nivara. Only one loop ever kept it. The others—each time I diverged or was rewritten—I lost pieces of it. The system shortened it. Flattened it."
He swallowed.
"I haven't heard that name in…" He trailed off.
Junie sank to her knees.
"I'm sorry," she said, voice breaking. "I must have known it once. And I drew it. Wrong. Half-wrong. But instead of facing that guilt—my mind made her. The girl who sang the names wrong."
Orin dropped beside her.
"No," he said quietly. "You didn't erase me. You held on—in fragments. Even if the name cracked. Even if the melody was off-key."
He touched the sketchpad she still held tight.
"Show me," he said.
Junie hesitated.
Then opened it to the page she'd drawn right before the fragment appeared.
It was faint. Just a name, half-rendered, in looping script.
Orren—
And beneath it, nothing.
She had never finished it.
Orin smiled gently. "Then let's finish it now."
He guided her hand.
Together, they wrote it:
Orren Kai.
And the sketchpad glowed.
Not from system interference.
But from integration.
The sketchpad glowed.
Faint. Golden. Not system-born, but something older. Emotional memory made visible.
Orin and Junie sat in silence, watching the name they'd finished together settle onto the page like a newly anchored truth.
Orren Kai.
No red system interference.
No recursion glyphs warning of corruption.
Just… acceptance.
Junie exhaled slowly.
"I don't know if she's gone," she murmured. "The girl who sang the wrong name."
"She doesn't have to be," Orin replied gently.
Junie glanced at him.
"She's not broken," he said. "She was you. The part that protected you when remembering hurt too much."
Junie's hand shook slightly as she turned the next page.
Another sketch was forming—without her drawing it.
The fragment girl was there again. But now, she wasn't standing in shadow. She sat cross-legged in a field of graphite lilies, sketchpad in her lap. Watching.
Waiting.
Still humming.
But this time?
The tune had changed.
"Juniiiie… called him by name…
Held his thread… through all the pain…
Orren Kai… a loop once missed…
Now returned… in ink and twist…"
Junie stared at the page.
"She's rewriting," she whispered. "Not just singing wrong names anymore. She's remembering them right."
The fragment's eyes on the page lifted.
And for a split second, she smiled.
Soft. Tired. Free.
Orin touched the page. "She's anchoring too. Your tether didn't just protect you. It protected her. That means she's a stable echo now."
Junie blinked back the burn in her eyes. "So… she doesn't have to disappear?"
"She doesn't want to," Orin said. "She just wants to be heard."
The page shimmered once more—
Then closed on its own.
The sketchpad dimmed.
And the air fell still.
As if the memory echo, once discordant and fragmentary, had found harmony.
Junie leaned against Orin's shoulder. "That's the scariest part of remembering, isn't it?"
"What is?"
She looked up. "Admitting the versions of us we tried to forget were just as real as the ones we kept."
Orin didn't answer with words.
He just nodded—and held her closer.
The sketchbook no longer glowed.
It simply rested.
Soft and worn in Junie's lap, pages gently curved from time and use. Not haunted. Not rewritten. Just—real.
Junie ran her fingers along the closed edge. No pulse. No lingering static. Just the weight of memory accepted.
"She's quiet now," she whispered.
Orin nodded. "Because she was heard."
They sat beneath the recursion tree until morning filtered in fully—rays slanting through the broken bark, washing the field in gold.
Junie hadn't realized how heavy she'd been carrying that silence.
Not just the echo.
But the guilt of all the names she'd ever half-remembered.
All the sketches she'd never finished.
All the people she couldn't save.
"I thought," she said slowly, "that if I drew the memories fast enough, I could keep ahead of the forgetting."
Orin looked at her gently. "But you never forgot. You just… paused."
She smiled faintly. "And I left her behind. The girl who paused with me."
Orin offered his hand.
She took it.
As they stood, the sketchpad shifted slightly.
A final page turned on its own.
A drawing revealed itself—
—The girl fragment, no longer alone.
She sat with Junie now.
The same age.
Same eyes.
Same tether thread looped gently between them.
And beneath the image, a simple inscription drawn in their shared hand:
"Together, we remember better."
Junie didn't cry.
Not out loud.
But she smiled.
And for the first time in dozens of loops, she felt whole.
Have you ever met the part of yourself that kept the memories you were too scared to hold?
She didn't disappear. She integrated. The girl who sang the wrong name was never wrong—she was early, and loyal, and true. Junie faced her, forgave her, and finished the song.