Episode 3beveik istorija šalia futurizmo0000 knyga spėjusi analitiškai protą savo idėjas esu super policija

The bus was hot and smelled of wet wool and grape gum. I sat in the back, the book in my lap, and opened it to a page I had memorized. The words were still there, patient and hungry. Super policija. I whispered it under my breath, and the girl in front of me turned around. Her name was Lina, and she had a habit of pulling her hair over one eye.

"What are you reading?" she asked.

I closed the book. "Nothing."

"It doesn't look like nothing." She reached for it, but I pulled it away. Her hand hovered in the air, then dropped. "You're weird, you know that?"

I knew that. I had known it since the summer the words started leaving, since the mirror leaned closer, since the lamp became a skeleton. But hearing it from Lina felt different—like a confirmation I hadn't asked for. I tucked the book into my backpack and stared out the window. The trees blurred into green smears. The sky was a pale, exhausted blue.

At recess, I found Nikita by the swings. She was alone, which was unusual. She usually had a cluster of girls around her, laughing at something she had said. But today she sat on the rubber mat, drawing circles in the dirt with a stick.

"Hey," I said, sitting beside her.

She didn't look up. "Hey."

"I brought the book."

"The one about the real world?"

"The one about the world behind this one."

She finally lifted her eyes. They were red, as if she had been crying. "My mom says I have to stop talking to you."

The words hit me like a stone to the chest. "Why?"

"She says you're going through a phase. She says I shouldn't let you drag me into it." Nikita drew a deeper circle in the dirt, then erased it with her palm. "She says you're making up languages because you're lonely."

I wanted to tell her that the languages were not made up. That they had always existed, just beneath the surface of everything, like the roots of a tree you could not see. But the words were leaving again. I opened my mouth, and all that came out was a sound like wind through a broken window.

Nikita stood up. "I have to go."

She walked away, and I watched her go, my hand resting on the book in my backpack. The leather was warm, as if it had been holding the sun. I pulled it out and opened it to a random page. The text was different now—not the manifesto I had read before, but something else. A list. Names, maybe, or places. Each one was crossed out with a single line, and next to each was a word in a language I did not recognize but understood.

Jumoro tadzika. I said it aloud, and the air around me seemed to tighten. The swing set creaked. A bird flew overhead, and its shadow passed over the page like a thumbprint.

I closed the book and looked at the school building. It was a rectangle of beige brick with windows like dead eyes. The door was propped open with a stone, and inside, the fluorescent lights hummed a note that was almost a word. I stood up and walked toward it, not because I wanted to go back inside, but because the book had begun to pulse in my hands, and I needed to know what it wanted.

The hallway was empty. Lockers lined the walls like ribs. I walked to the end, where the janitor's closet was, and stopped. The door was ajar. Inside, a single bulb buzzed. I pushed the door open with my foot.

The closet was small, filled with mops and buckets and bottles of bleach. But on the floor, in the center, was a notebook. It was identical to the one I had been carrying all summer—the same spiral binding, the same blue cover. I picked it up. The pages were blank except for the first one, where someone had written in careful, blocky letters:

beveik istorija šalia futurizmo

I turned the page. The next one was filled with my own handwriting. Not the handwriting I had now, but the handwriting I had when I was eight, before the words started leaving. It was a list of words I had forgotten: pavasaris, saulė, motina, tėvas. Spring, sun, mother, father. I had written them in a language I no longer spoke, a language that had been buried under the stampede.

I sat down on the floor of the closet, the two notebooks in my lap, and I began to cry. Not because I was sad, but because the world behind this one had opened a door, and I had walked through it without knowing I had been knocking my whole life.