THE RELATIVITY OF YOU Time bends. Love doesn’t.
CHAPTER 1 — “THE CLOCK THAT FELL IN LOVE” Arin had always believed time was simple—tick, tock, forward forever. Until the night he saw the woman who wasn’t supposed to exist. It was raining in Dubai, the rare kind of rain that sounds like static from another universe. Arin walked home from his late shift, shoulders tired, mind heavy. Streetlights flickered, reflected in puddles like broken portals. Then he noticed her. A woman stood beneath a lamppost, drenched yet untouched by the water, like the drops bent around her. She wasn’t glowing, but somehow brighter than everything around her, as if reality sharpened when she moved. She looked at him with eyes full of galaxies—not metaphorical ones. Actual spirals of light swirled faintly within her irises, like reflections of stars that shouldn’t be visible on Earth. Arin froze. “Do you know me?” she asked softly. “No… but it feels like I should.” She smiled sadly. “That’s the problem,” she whispered. “We always start like this.” She steppe...
