I See You -2019- — Tested

Leo’s heart seized. Mia used to say that when they played hide-and-seek. “I see you, Daddy,” she’d giggle, before he turned around. He flipped the card. Nothing else. No return address. No plea for ransom. Just the date stamped in the corner:

“The years, Daddy. They’re not like walls. They’re like… water. Sometimes you can see through to the other side. The lady found me after I followed the red balloon. It went into a hole in the air. I didn’t mean to go so far.”

It began, as these things often do, with a whisper no one else could hear.

Leo sat on the edge of Mia’s bed and wept. But when he finished, he felt something he hadn’t felt in months: a future. He walked to the window. The snow was covering the street, white and new. Somewhere, in the cracks between 2019 and everything that would come after, a little girl was laughing. And a lonely year was watching him through the glass of time, hoping he would be okay. i see you -2019-

Leo’s mind raced. A hole in the air. The red balloon. A woman who lived between years. “Mia, is she hurting you?”

I see you -2019-

“What lady? What cracks?”

He showed it to Detective Rivas, who sighed and said, “Could be a copycat. Could be a sick joke.” But Leo noticed how Rivas’s eyes lingered on the dash before the year. Those hyphens. Like a frame. Like someone had carved a moment out of time.

In 2019, the world was still loud with its own noise—politics, pop songs, the pre-pandemic hum of crowded trains and open-plan offices. But for Leo, the world had gone quiet three months ago, when his daughter, Mia, vanished from a playground in broad daylight. The police had followed every lead into a brick wall. The news vans had packed up. Only Leo remained, a ghost haunting the gaps between hope and despair.

The lady shook her head. “Bodies don’t travel well. Thoughts do. Memories do. That’s how she sees you. That’s how you heard her. But if you try to come here—you’d scatter. You’d become a million moments of yourself, none of them whole.” Leo’s heart seized

“I’m in the long now,” she said. Her voice was small but not scared. “The lady says you can’t come here yet. But she says I can see you. Through the cracks.”

Leo started carrying the cards everywhere. He’d sit in Mia’s empty room, turning them over and over. I see you. Not “I have her.” Not “If you want to see her again.” Just… I see you. It felt less like a threat and more like a confirmation. A reassurance. As if someone on the other side of reality was holding up a mirror and saying, She’s still here. She’s just… elsewhere.

“Teach me to see her,” he said. “Not through a crack. Through the wall. Show me how to live in 2020, 2021, all the years after, and still know she’s in the long now. Still know she sees me.” He flipped the card