TIME OF LOVE

THYME'S POV (Age 7, Year 2014)

The house smelled of heavy heat and the thick, cloying sweetness of pandan cakes cooling on the counter.

I sat on the polished hardwood, tucked into a corner where the air felt still. A square of hot sunlight pooled around me, warming my bare legs and making the dust motes dance. In my lap rested the book. It had a dark, uncolored cover, smooth and heavy like old velvet.

The pages were supposed to be blank.

Grandma claimed it once belonged to her sister, my Great-Aunt Khunying. She told me Khunying had a way of knowing quiet, mysterious things—things that didn't like to be shouted. A blank book holds many secrets, little sprout. That was her warning when she gave it to me last week.

But it wasn't empty.

I squinted hard, leaning my face close to the grain. As the glare of the sun shifted, faint gray lines surfaced beneath the thick paper. It wasn't ink. It looked like smoke trapped beneath the page, swirling in slow, lazy circles. The moment my finger tried to touch the words, they shimmered and dissolved, hiding themselves again. Dozens of different handwritings crowded the paper—rushed, uneven scripts, words desperately trying to hide from the light.

The floorboards creaked behind me.

"What hidden things have you found today, little sprout?"

Grandma lowered herself beside me, her movements slow and soft. Her smile matched the warmth of the sun on my skin, and a chilled glass of chrysanthemum tea clicked against the wood near my knee.

I gripped the velvet cover tight, pulling the book closer to my chest.

"I saw something, Grandma. Right here." I pointed at the shimmering gray, my heart thumping. "There are notes in it. Like a secret diary. I think lots of different people wrote in it."

She leaned in, a faint wrinkle forming between her brows. Her fingertips brushed the dry paper, searching for something the wind might have left behind.

"Oh? I see nothing but nice blank pages, little sprout. Tell me what the notes say."

I sat up straighter, feeling important. I traced a thin, angry-looking scrawl near the top corner, the smoke-letters pulsing under my touch.

"This one says, 'I, Metharaj Chaiya, mocked love in 1990.' He calls love a weakness." I frowned, my finger tracking the phantom smoke down the page. "But right next to it, the handwriting changes. It gets soft. He says he met a boy—a boy like a ghost who disappeared. Now he says, 'I can’t exist without his love,' and the ink looks like it was smeared by something wet."

I looked up at her.

"He sounds really sad, Grandma. He says he's writing this book in his 'final moments' so it can find the boy in another time."

I flipped another page, the paper rasping against my skin like a dry scale. A sharp, determined script cut across the page, the ink biting deep into the grain as if the pen had been forced through the paper with a desperate, trembling pressure.

"This one is signed Khun Ahan Yimgin. The year is 2034."

My breath hitched, catching in my throat like a physical stone. 2034. That wasn't a year yet. That was the deep, shimmering future, a place that shouldn't be reachable by ink, a distance that felt too far for any hand to reach back from. The impossibility of it ground against my seven-year-old logic, making my head spin as the numbers blurred into a jagged line. A heavy, sickening thrum beat against my ribs, a low-frequency vibration that felt less like a heartbeat and more like a warning from something buried deep in the floor.

"And my name is also Khun Ahan Yimgin, Grandma."

My fingers trembled, hovering over the smoke-ink that seemed to swirl and coil beneath the surface of the page. "He writes that he's cursed, but it will be his 'key'. He says, 'Let my hands be stained with blood; let my very existence be erased. I will pay any price.' He wants to fight the things that pull him away, because he remembers the heat of a hand and the scent of skin that other people have forgotten."

I flipped the page again.

The smoke-ink didn't just shimmer this time; it surged. A dark tide of gray flooded the paper, blurring the dates. I saw a name—Khun Ahan Yimgin, 2025—but the words beneath it were a frantic, overlapping mess, as if two people had written over each other in a panic.

I leaned closer, squinting. Whom do I choose?

I didn't understand the question. My finger hovered, then pressed tentatively against the swirling ink.

A flash of blistering heat seared my fingertip.

For a split second, the sunlit kitchen vanished. I wasn't sitting on the hardwood floor. The sweet smell of pandan was obliterated by the sharp, ozone scent of a violent storm. Cold rain lashed against my skin. I saw a man's face, split right down the middle—two versions of the exact same eyes fighting for the same space, screaming silently in the downpour.

I jerked my hand back. The vision snapped shut.

"Grandma, the book just bit me."

I clutched my finger to my chest. The skin was red, throbbing with a phantom burn.

Grandma’s smile dissolved. The glass of chrysanthemum tea hit the counter with a sharp, panicked crack. She didn't offer a gentle explanation about people changing. Her eyes darted to the page, wide and fearful.

"Don't touch it again," she breathed, her hand hovering over mine, afraid to make contact with the paper.

"But they are angry."

I turned the page using only the very edge of the thick paper, terrified of another burn. My face twisted in a sudden flash of dislike.

"This letter is just nasty."

I pointed—careful not to touch—at a prickly, violent scrawl. It looked carved into the paper with a nail, the ink jagged and hot.

"No name. Just anger. They say, 'I watch you. Thorn in my side.' They are mad because I... wait." I paused, a sudden chill creeping up my spine, making the small hairs on my arms stand on end. "They say 'you relentlessly block my happiness.' Like they are speaking directly to me."

A cold draft hit the back of my neck, though the windows were shut tight and the heavy curtains were drawn. I shivered, pulling my shoulders in, feeling small and exposed under the weight of the words.

"They say 'he will be mine' and they will 'destroy any barrier.' They say, 'This time, I will prevail.'"

Grandma’s hand tightened on my shoulder. Her fingers pressed into my skin with a sudden, visceral fear.

I looked up. The book suddenly felt impossibly heavy in my small, sweaty hands, as if the weight of the ink itself had added a physical burden to the velvet. It felt like the book was pulling on my arms, trying to drag me down into the floor.

"Grandma, why is my name in here? How can it have notes from the future? Is Great-Aunt Khunying magical?"

I stared back at the dates, my eyes tracing the sharp, jagged lines of 2034. It felt like a trick of the light, a smudge of the mind, but the ink sat there with a stubborn, dark permanence. It didn't look like a joke. It looked like a warning that had been waiting for me to find it.

Grandma stayed quiet for a long, agonizing moment. The silence stretched between us until it felt like a physical thing, heavy as a wet blanket. She looked from the dark velvet cover up to my face.

Her expression was tight. Terrified. It wasn't the look of a wise elder; it was the look of a woman who had just found a venomous snake in a crib.

"It is just an old, ruined ledger, Thyme," she lied. Her voice shook, cracking harshly on my name. She wiped her trembling hands furiously on her apron, refusing to look at the smoke-ink again. "People write stupid, mean things when they are hurt. It has absolutely nothing to do with us. Leave it alone."

The shrill, piercing scream of the telephone violently shattered the silence, the sound jarring and metallic. We both jumped, the sudden noise echoing against the wooden walls and rattling the teacups on the counter.

Grandma walked toward the receiver, her footsteps fast and cautious. I looked down at my lap, my gaze locking onto my own name, surrounded by hauntings, blood, and futures not yet lived. This did not feel like fiction; it felt like a maze, a dark, terrifying pull in the center of my chest, like a memory of a place I had never been, pulling me toward a ghost I didn't know.

"Thyme!"

Grandma’s tone sharpened from the kitchen, the edge of her voice yanking me back from the edge of the pages and the strange world within them.

"Drink your tea. We have to get ready soon. We are heading to your mother’s place today. It’s her birthday."

The sweet, comforting smell of pandan vanished from my nose, replaced by a sudden shift in the air. A cold, leaden weight dropped directly into my stomach, sinking deep. Mom’s house lacked the warmth and safety of this room; it was a place of white walls and echoing halls, sterile, quiet, and devoid of magic.

And cold.

I slowly pushed the heavy velvet cover closed, the fabric sliding shut with a muted thud. I watched the secret notes hide again behind the blank paper, the ink receding like a tide. The phantom writing shimmered one last time—like smoke trapped beneath glass—before vanishing into the cream-colored void.

I didn't want to leave the mystery behind, or the feeling of something huge waiting to be found. I didn't want to leave the ghost-boy and the man who fought against the crushing weight of his own life. But I swallowed the cold, bitter tea and stood up.

I had to go.