“Other versions…. Of ourselves?”

“Yes.”

Shera sat there, silent, gobsmacked. She wondered why he was telling her all this, right now. But somehow, in the back of her mind, she could feel that something was not quite right. She couldn’t deny that she believed him.

“Do you….” Shera hesitated, as the words she was about to say felt really alien to as her, even though it was coming off her own tongue.

“Do you have another version of yourself?”

His eyes widened. There was a pause that felt like hours.

“What?”

“Ah-” Shera couldn’t say anything. In her surprise, he suddenly seemed more confused than she was.

Her face flushed as blood flowed into her brain, trying to figure out what was going on. “But I thought you said…. That you knew about… other versions of yourself…”

He pulled himself closer to Shera, his face still in shock. “You saw another me? Really?”

He looked like a child enquiring about Christmas presents. Shera stared down at his hand, still latched onto her wrist. It was suffocating, and she was starting to sweat from her raised body temperature.

She had hoped that he would let go, but he didn’t. Instead, her refusal of a reply made the grip on her arm stronger.

“Uh…” Shera mumbled, starting to run out of energy. She had never spoken to a stranger this long before.

The young man turned his gaze towards the ground. “I have another version of me… Somewhere in your world.”

He smiled to himself in a way which Shera didn’t understand. She couldn’t follow the conclusion he seemed to have gotten to in his head.

“Wait, I don’t understand! What do you mean, ‘my world’? Aren’t we both in the same world right now?”

“Yes, we are.”

He flashed a smile so sweet that made Shera’s skin crawl. Her face flushed a deep pink as she jerked her arm away from his grip. She couldn’t take it anymore. She wanted to sleep, or pass out, whichever came first.

“Arghhh” Shera grunted, squeezing her eyes shut, her head still spinning. “Just please…. Tell me what’s going on.”

She looked down at his shoes. He hadn’t moved an inch, and his feet were still in their usual position. Shera inwardly cursed at herself for being the only one who wasn’t composed.

Peering back up at him, she saw that his face had returned to a neutral expression. “What has happened” he began, “Is that you’re not in your world anymore. You’re in my world”.

He paused, the corners of his lips creeping up into a smile again. “And I think our worlds might be connected.”