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But the world outside Julian’s lab didn’t share his vision. Funding bodies grew impatient. Colleagues distanced themselves. Whispers turned to warnings — about mental health, about professional misconduct, about obsession gone too far.

When the university finally shut him down, Anna could still remember how still he had gone — standing there in the empty lab, staring at all his unfinished work like a man attending his own funeral.

“Do you think I’m wrong?” he asked her quietly, without looking up.

Anna hesitated. The question was heavier than it sounded.

“I think you’re early,” she said.

And maybe that was true.

Then — just like that — Julian disappeared from academia. No goodbyes. No explanations. Gone like a ghost.

Anna finished her degree. Got her life together. Moved on.

She worked at a physics research lab now — a perfectly respectable position at a quiet private institute in Cambridge. The work was stable, the hours predictable, the people polite in that distant academic way. It wasn’t thrilling, but it was stable.

For a long time, Anna told herself this was what growing up looked like. No late-night blackboard wars. No impossible theories that kept her awake until dawn. Just clean data, measured results, published papers, and a future she could actually plan.

And yet — some nights, when the lab lights dimmed and the corridors emptied — she’d catch herself staring out the window, remembering Julian’s ridiculous rants about the universe, or the way his eyes lit up when an idea hit him like lightning.

Part of her hated that she missed it.

Part of her hated him for making her miss it.