It was not a dream.
Aarav could feel the faint pressure of air around him, hear the soft echo of his own breath, and yet… the world around him didn't move. Everything was white. Endless, textureless white. Like he was floating in the blank space between existence and memory.
He stood, his feet making no sound. No floor. No ceiling. Only stillness.
Then, without warning, the silence cracked like thunder.
[Echo System Booting…]
User: Aarav Malhotra
Emotional Sync: 81%
Cognitive Lock: Broken
Regrets: 12 Detected
Beginning Playback: Regret 1
His heart jolted. A strange warmth filled his chest, like someone had just lit a candle inside a frozen cave.
"Playback…?"
Before he could speak again, a whisper crawled into his mind.
"You still remember her, don't you?"
It wasn't a question. It was a wound reopened.
He didn't reply. He couldn't. The name echoed inside him on its own.
Ananya…..!!!!!
And just like that, the void shattered.
The white peeled away like torn pages, revealing walls painted with faded blue. The buzz of tube lights. A broken window blind flapping weakly in the wind. Chalk dust floating in the air. And in the middle of it all — him. Sixteen. Sitting alone on the last bench. Watching her.
She was laughing. Talking to someone else.
Not him.
Aarav gasped. He looked down at his own hands smaller, familiar. No scars. No weight of years passed. His school uniform, the scratches on his old watch, the pen he always chewed the cap of… it was all back.
He was inside the moment.
Inside the memory.
Inside the regret.
[Objective: Understand the moment you broke.]
[You cannot interfere. Only witness.]
His eyes followed Ananya. Her hair tied up the way she used to when she didn't want to impress anyone. Her smile not perfect, but the only thing that ever calmed his mind.
He remembered this day.
The day he should've said something.
But he didn't.
Not when she looked sad. Not when she waited for someone to ask why she wasn't smiling. Not when her voice cracked while reading in class.
And when she walked out of his life three months later without a goodbye, he had told himself: "Maybe she never wanted me to stop her."
But deep down, he knew.
She had waited for him to say something.
And he never did.
He watched his younger self glance at her, then quickly turn away. Hiding. Overthinking. Afraid of being seen as weak, or worse — too late.
The memory flickered.
She looked at him once. Just once. Her eyes held something heavy.
But he had already looked away.
The bell rang…."
And just like that, the regret snapped shut like a mousetrap.
[Regret 1: Incomplete.]
[Emotion Captured: 92%]
[Next Attempt Unlocked After System Sync.]
He collapsed to his knees as the classroom vanished again. The white void returned — colder this time.
"Why… why show me this? What does it change?" he whispered.
"Nothing changes until you do."
The voice again.
It wasn't human. It wasn't AI. It was… him. A version of him he didn't want to meet. The one that never gave up. The one he buried under years of silence and guilt.
"Your regrets are echoes. Each one is a death you lived but never buried. This system won't let you go forward until you return to every version of yourself that died inside."
Aarav's fists clenched.
Tears welled up in his eyes not because of her.
But because he had forgotten how it felt to care. And now, it all came rushing back like a wave he couldn't outrun.
"I was just a scared kid…"
"So was she."
And that truth… that simple, brutal truth… crushed him.
For years, he thought silence was safety. But now he knew silence was surrender.
He stood slowly, wiping his face, breath heavy.
If this system wanted him to relive his pain, fine. But he wouldn't let it destroy him.
One regret at a time, he'd fix everything.
Even if it killed him again..