“A single thought rose, and regret grew with the years.
What I thought was only my mistake… later learned I had rewritten others' fates.
So let the heart choose—but choose with deep care.”

…

“Julie? Julie Clar?” Lu, a man about forty, asked.

“Here! Here!” exclaimed a male voice somewhere in the crowd, surprising Lu, who was searching for a woman. “She is weak; she needs your energy right now,” the man added.

Lu finally spotted them. 

They were both in their thirties, or a bit younger. That was not uncommon, as they mostly cured people who were as old as she was. 

The Disruption did not leave any people over a certain age alive.

“I feel so lonely,” Lu suddenly thought. “I really do. I also feel unworthy to be still alive when so many have died.”

Lu approached the couple as these thoughts passed in a blink.

“Sir, can you move so I can see the patient?”
Usually, the healthy were more nervous than the sick.
Not this one.

The man moved aside without a comment or urgency. His face remained stone-cold as he turned his head toward Lu.

Lu appeared old, but it was impossible. During the Disruption, people matured quickly—far too fast, and none lived longer than forty years. Lu was quite young, even if his face suggested old age.

“Which was, again, a thing in my case,” Lu said to himself and noticed that his attention was drifting away too often that day. “Focus,” he added in his thoughts, and then he noticed who the patient was.

His brain went blank.

“Jul?” Lu’s voice was trembling. “Jul, is that really you?”

The other man continued looking at Lu without any change in his facial expression, but his eyes visibly darkened.

“Lu?” 

The patient’s voice was barely audible, yet Lu knew.

It was Jul. 

His savior, his mentor—his everything from the old times.

“Have mercy; why is she in such a state? She is not thirty yet; she should have at least a few years of normal functioning before the Disruption’s effects kick in. And Jul is gifted! She should be like me!” 

Lu’s thoughts were spiraling.

“I assume you know my wife,” said the man.

For a moment, Lu forgot he was also there. 

A wife… in Lu’s imagination, their next meeting had always shown her happy and better off without him. And now this—her, in such a state.

“En?” Jul looked at the man, who said nothing more. Then she looked at Lu and gave him her hand to check.

Jul truly was weak. 

Very weak. 

It was not the Disruption, though. It was something else, something connected to the gift.

“And I can help,” Lu said to himself. “The problem is that I dare not.”

 ...

// LOG: [PAST] 11 ACD-5-22 THE CITY