The recording skipped. Suddenly it was lunchtime. The canteen. Leo saw himself— himself , sitting at the far table with his earbuds in, scrolling through something on his phone. He was wearing the grey hoodie with the torn cuff. The same one he had on right now, in his bedroom, at 2:30 AM.

And his voice, younger and rougher and honest in a way Leo hadn’t been in years: “Yeah. Obviously.”

But he had a corner shop. He had a low wall. He had a pen she’d never given back.

He typed: Hey. I know it’s late. You won’t believe what I just found.

Then a girl walked into frame. Sana. Year 10 Sana, with her too-large blazer and the fringe she’d cut herself two weeks into term. She wasn’t looking at the camera. She was looking at someone off-screen, laughing at something Leo couldn’t hear. She looked happy. She looked alive.

Leo’s stomach turned over. Sana had transferred to a school in Manchester last December. Her dad got a new job. They’d promised to keep in touch, sent three texts, then nothing. He hadn’t thought about her in months. But here she was, walking past the water fountain that always tasted like rust, on a date that hadn’t happened yet.

He watched Sana borrow his pen. Watched Mr. Davison confiscate her phone in fourth period. Watched the two of them walk home together—same route Leo still walked every day—except in the video, they stopped at the corner shop and bought two slushies, and Sana’s was blue and his was red, and she said something that made him laugh so hard he snorted.