Cycle I · “The Hidden Voice” · 12

She’s not supposed to be watching a three-minute Dracula clip in the middle of the night, but here she is, phone sideways, brightness low, captions on. She tells herself she just likes the costumes, the drama, the score. Then that line hits again: “I have crossed oceans of time to find you.”

Her chest does that painful little tighten it always does when fiction says the thing real people never quite manage to say right. She isn’t in a castle. She’s in a small room, in an ordinary life, with laundry in a half-folded pile and a notification banner lighting up the top of her screen. Someone has messaged: “you feel like mine already.”

She doesn’t answer. Not yet. She scrolls back to the quote in the post instead, rereads the way devotion gets framed as destiny, and catches herself wondering which part she wants more: the man who would cross oceans of time, or the feeling of being the one someone would cross them for. For now, she settles for replaying the clip one more time, letting the line sink in like a secret she might admit to herself later.

Cycle I · “The Hidden Voice” · 12

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