I did not return because of the device.
At least that is what I believed at first.
I returned because I found a folder.
It was buried among unnamed documents, inside a directory I did not remember opening.
The folder was simply called:
“lime.”
It did not look important.
I opened it.
Inside were screenshots.
Dates.
Fragments of text.
Annotations.
Nothing extraordinary.
The strange part was that I recognized them immediately.
As if I had spent months looking at them.
As if part of me had remained there while the rest continued into another life.
I closed the folder.
Went back to work.
Twenty minutes later I was trying to remember the third image.
Not the first.
Not the last.
The third.
As if it contained something I had forgotten to lose.
I opened the folder again.
That was when I found a note.
I did not remember writing it.
It was my handwriting.
Or something disturbingly close.
It said:
“You have already been here.”
Nothing else.
The room was silent.
Not ordinary silence.
Accumulated silence.
The kind that seems to have been waiting for years to be noticed.
I checked the time.
Looked away.
Checked again.
Less than thirty seconds had passed.
I was certain it had been much longer.
I kept going.
The screenshots showed repeated fragments.
The same sentences.
The same paragraphs.
The same names.
But the dates did not match.
Some were separated by weeks.
Others by months.
One appeared to be nearly a year old.
I did not remember seeing any of them.
And yet I knew exactly where to look.
As though I were reviewing instructions I had already studied.
Then I found another note.
This one embedded inside an image.
A single line.
No context.
“Do not look for the first time.”
I stared at it.
Trying to understand what it meant.
Then I realized something worse.
I was not trying to understand it.
I was trying to remember it.
As if I had already read it before.
The lime room began there.
Not as a place.
As a sensation.
The impression that all of this had happened previously.
The screenshots.
The notes.
The folder.
Even the decision to open it.
Everything felt part of a sequence older than my memory.
I found a text file.
Empty.
Or nearly empty.
It contained only one sentence:
“When you return, pay attention to your neck.”
I sat up.
There was a faint tension at the base of my skull.
Nothing serious.
Nothing alarming.
Still, I remained motionless.
Because I could not remember when it had begun.
I kept reading.
Older records appeared.
More folders.
More screenshots.
More annotations.
Each seemed written by a different version of me.
The words were familiar.
The way of thinking was familiar.
Yet something refused to align.
As if they all belonged to the same author and, at the same time, to different people.
The final note appeared near the end.
Alone.
Undated.
Without explanation.
Just one line:
“You already moved your neck.”
I stared at the screen.
Trying to remember.
I could not remember doing it.
The strange thing was not the note.
The strange thing was the immediate certainty that this was not the first time I had found it.
And for the first time the question stopped being what I was looking for.
The question became how long I had been returning.
Because some obsessions do not behave like doors.
They behave like footprints.
And a footprint always means someone passed through before.
I have to move my neck…
