It was my second week at Sakuraba High School, and I still hadn't figured out where I was supposed to look when someone mentioned dating.

At my old school, I could at least predict the conversations. Here, people talked about crushes so casually that I never knew what to do with my face. Someone would mention a confession in the hallway, another person would ask who they liked, and suddenly I'd be staring at my desk like it had become extremely interesting.

I hated how nervous it made me.

The worst part was something I'd carried since I was born.

My ability.

My parents discovered it when I was very young. I could see things about people's romantic futures. Not everything. I could see relationships, feelings, people they hadn't met yet. They taught me early not to talk about it.

So I learned a simple rule protocol:

Don't stare. Don't ask questions you already know the answer to. Don't tell someone who they'll fall in love with. And, most importantly, don't let anyone find out.

There was another rule that bothered me more than all the others.

I couldn't see my own future.

Maybe that was a good thing.

I had joined Sakuraba's Computer Science team partly because it gave me somewhere quiet to spend my afternoons. Computers made sense. Programs followed rules. Becoming best friends with Shouta and blending in.

I sat near the edge of the room during the period, listening to teachers, assignments, yet, the students here were awful.

Students kept somehow breaking lab computers, arguing over whose code had broken the program, almost nobody knew about artificial intelligence, busy on their phones.

One morning, after the first bell had rung, I was in a nearby class.

I kept thinking about my ability.

I'd spent years knowing that it could show me other people's romantic futures. I'd seen relationships that hadn't started yet, people falling for someone they hadn't even met, and endings that the people involved couldn't possibly know were coming.

But never mine.

I had always assumed that was simply the limit of it.

That morning, I wondered what would happen if I tried anyway.

I activated it on a close student called Guest

The vision appeared—

I was older.

A different year and a different place.

The same person.

Guest.

He was older too, but it was unmistakably him. He wasn't just appearing beside me once. He was there through different parts of my life, at university, living together, standing beside me during moments that felt far too personal and familiar to be explained by friendship.

Guest had somehow become my lover.