Time passed, but it didn't move.
The hours folded into each other. Mornings bled into dusk without shape. I ate when the halls emptied. Slept when the light failed. I spoke only when I had to.
I returned to my routines, but they didn't return to me. My body sat through lectures. My hand took notes I never read. I smiled when I was expected to and answered when I was addressed. But the words had no texture. They slid past me like steam on glass.
Something essential had been left behind in Weißer Hirsch. I could still feel the wind in the orchard. Still see the way Clara turned her head before she looked at me. The way the silence between us had held more weight than words.
Now that silence had followed me back. And it was no longer gentle.
Clara had vanished. Not in the literal sense—she still existed, I was sure. But something—or someone—was keeping her from me. Holding her at a distance I couldn't cross.
It wasn't logical. It wasn't evidence-based. But it pressed at the edge of my thoughts like pressure building in a sealed room.
I couldn't explain it. But I could feel it.
***
It started small.
A note I left for myself vanished from my desk drawer—a quote from a lecture I didn't want to forget. At first I thought I had misplaced it, or thrown it out by accident. Then, a journal page—torn and crumpled—appeared in my coat pocket, though I didn't remember putting it there. The ink was smeared. The date didn't make sense.
One morning, I found the tram schedule in my bag rewritten. The times I had circled were gone, replaced with tiny notches in the margin I hadn't made. As if someone had corrected me.
I told myself it was fatigue. I was distracted. Unwell.
Then I found the photograph.
I didn't know where it came from. Folded neatly inside of my philosophy textbook, tucked between Kant and Kierkegaard like it had been waiting for me. A black and white print of a hillside chapel. Familiar. Faded. The image was soft at the edges, as though printed from an older negative. The kind you don't remember taking, but can't forget.
Clara was in the corner of the frame. Barely visible. Her profile turned, one hand raised as if waving to someone off-camera. Blurred, as if she moved mid-shot. But it was her. I didn't need clarity to know.
I turned the photo over. There was nothing written—no name, no date, no location. Just blank card stock. But the paper smelled faintly of pine.
Like the forest she had walked through.
Like the place I had left her.
***
That evening, I walked the streets of Charlottenburg without direction. I passed cafes I used to sit in, shops I used to browse, parks that had once been quiet places of thought. But now everything felt artificial. The city moved with too much precision, as though someone had wound it too tightly.
The lamps hummed too evenly. The cobblestones were too clean. Every voice I heard from the street corners sounded rehearsed. Like the city had become a stage, and I was the only one who hadn't been given a script.
I didn't go to the clinic. I didn't go to Eberhardt. I didn't want her voice in my head.
I went home.
The door to my apartment stuck slightly before opening—a fraction of resistance I hadn't felt before. Nothing was disturbed, but I checked anyway. The drawer. The wardrobe. The windows.
Everything was in its place.
Still, I locked the door twice behind me.
I opened my journal.
What do you remember?
The words hadn't shifted, but something beneath them felt different. Like pressure. Like silence waiting to become sound.
Beneath it:
You looked at me like you remembered.
I stared at the page for a long time before writing the next line.
Someone is trying to erase her.
The ink bled slightly, as if the paper resisted it.
I closed the journal slowly.
And placed it under my pillow.
***
That night, I dreamt of a corridor.
It stretched far beyond the reach of the candle in my hand—stone floor, smooth walls, and clocks. Dozens of them. Hung in uneven rows, ticking at mismatched intervals. Some too fast. Others slow, as if time inside them had bronze mid-thought. A few had shattered faces, their hands dangling uselessly.
And in the middle of the hallway stood a figure.
Not Clara. Not Eberhardt.
A man—taller than me, his posture upright and heavy, like someone who carried something far older than his frame. His face was hidden in shadow. His coat moved slightly, but there was no breeze.
He didn't speak with his mouth. But I heard something. Not a word, not a sentence. Just a pressure, like the space between moments had pushed forward to greet me.
When I tried to step closer, the ground underfoot gave a soft echo—as if I had stepped into memory.
He lifted one hand slowly.
And pointed behind me.
I turned, but the corridor was empty.
I looked back.
He was gone.
But the clocks continued ticking—out of rhythm, louder, then softer, then not at all.
I woke before the hour could strike.
My hand was still on the journal.
And the window was open.
I hadn't opened it.
The scent of pine drifted in like a whisper I couldn't catch.