Chapter Two-Hundred-and-Thirty-Five
When Adam awoke, Kat was still in his dimension, sleeping right next to him in the bed they’d shared. She looked peaceful just lying there.
He thought back to Emelia and his time spent with her.
Just like her, I’ll never see this version of Kat again after this loop.
From his own experience, he knew that the ‘Scale of Remembrance’ was not something that overwrote memories, and while it had made him change how he saw Emelia, he was also aware that it was borderline brainwashing.
I don’t know if I want to be that kind of person.
Love feels fake if it’s not something that grows organically, but is forced on a person by having them experience a past they never lived.
What he and Kat had wasn’t love, but it still felt wrong to impose those memories on an alternate version of her. Even if he stayed within the same universe when he looped, it would still not be the same.
And repeating the steps that led us here also feels subtly manipulative. Like knowing all the answers to a quiz before taking a test.
Adam would use all the knowledge he collected to beat the Trials of Defiance and truly free humanity, and he was more than willing to cheat, exploit, and take any shortcuts possible for that goal to manifest itself. But to do the same with personal relationships…