The Girl Who Collected Time

The Girl Who Collected Time

By [waseem khan]

Nobody noticed the jars at first.

Lina had always kept to herself, a quiet shadow moving between lockers, sketching clocks in her notebooks while others whispered, danced, laughed. She wasn’t strange—just invisible in that way lonely people sometimes are. But if anyone had entered her room, they would have seen the truth stacked neatly on shelves: glass jars, each one labeled with a thin strip of parchment, each one softly glowing.

"October 4th – First Rain, Coffee, Aunt Lena's Hug."

"March 12th – Alone on the Roof, Dad’s Song, Hope."

"June 18th – His Smile, and That Terrible Goodbye."

Each jar held a moment. Not just a memory—something more. The air inside them shimmered. When Lina uncorked one, she could feel the memory in her skin: the warmth of a hand, the smell of burning leaves, the sound of a voice that no longer called her name.

She discovered her ability at thirteen. The first time it happened, her cat had died. Lina had been holding him, crying into his fur, when a sudden pull in her chest made her reach for an empty perfume bottle. Without thinking, she exhaled into it, and when she looked down, the glass glowed faintly. When she opened it again, her cat’s weight returned to her lap for one fleeting second.

After that, she began collecting time—good moments, small treasures, and even heartbreak. The more intense the feeling, the brighter the jar glowed.

But when she turned seventeen, she began to notice something was… wrong.

One afternoon, she reached for the jar labeled “February 21 – Snowfall, Mom’s Voice on the Phone”, only to find it dim. Almost… empty. She frowned. She remembered that moment so vividly. Her mother had laughed, a sound like windchimes. It had warmed her for days.

But now, when she opened the jar—nothing. Just cold air.

She checked the others. One by one.

“August 9 – First Kiss (Stupid, Perfect)” — faded.

“April 30 – The Day I Forgave Myself” — gone.

Someone was stealing her time.

At first, Lina thought she was losing her mind. But when she tested a fresh jar by sealing a recent sunset and checking it each day, she found the same thing: it dimmed, slowly, as if leaking away.

So she set a trap.

She placed her brightest memories—the rare ones, the golden ones—on a single shelf and slept with one eye open. On the third night, the air shifted. She awoke to the sound of glass clinking.

A figure stood at her shelf.

Tall. Hooded. Gloved hands touching the jars gently, like they were sacred.

"Stop!" Lina gasped, scrambling out of bed.

The figure froze. Slowly, they turned.

Beneath the hood was a mirror—no face, just reflection. And in it, Lina saw… herself.

But not the self she was now.

The reflection flickered: her as a child, laughing on a swing. Her at sixteen, crying into a journal. Her older, maybe twenty-five, eyes hollow, reaching back for something she'd lost.

“You’re me,” Lina whispered.

The figure didn’t speak. But her reflection changed again—to an even older version. Worn down. Lonely. Empty.

"You’re stealing my memories," she said. "Why?"

The figure finally spoke, its voice like wind through dried leaves.

"I’m not stealing. I’m surviving.

You locked away your joy, your pain, your truth. I am what’s left when you’ve lived a life collecting time instead of living it."

Lina stood still, heart racing.

She had always thought bottling her best moments made them safe. Eternal. But maybe... it had only made her hollow. Protected memories are not the same as shared ones. Lived ones.

"I don’t want to become you," she whispered.

"You already are," the figure said. "Unless you let go."

And just like that, the mirror-self vanished.

The next morning, Lina took down the shelves.

One by one, she opened the jars. She let the scent of spring, the sound of laughter, the weight of grief—all of it—rush back into her. It hurt. It healed. It felt real.

Some memories brought tears. Others filled the room with light.

Her room was no longer a museum of bottled time.

It was full of life.

From then on, Lina still treasured her moments, but she stopped sealing them away. She learned to share them—with friends, with paper, with open skies and strangers on buses.

Because some things are meant to be felt, not preserved.

Because even heartbreak deserves to breathe.

And because time, when held too tightly, forgets how to move forward.