The cold wind outside battered the window glass.
The morning sun shone faintly. Grayish light filtered into the unlit room. The air grew still, as if frozen.
"Huh, huh…"
Her face pale, her forehead slick with cold sweat, Haruno panted heavily. Her pupils shrank to pinpoints. She stared straight at her disheveled reflection in the mirror. Her lips trembled as she muttered:
"This is the truth…? The thing I've always wanted to uncover was actually memories from that time?"
Thirty-three days—the time from their meeting to their parting.
She clutched her forehead. Memories of the present and past tangled together. Her consciousness was chaotic and incomprehensible, like a dyeing pool. She couldn't calm down at all, and it even felt like a dream.
The composure she once had was now fragile as paper. Haruno took several deep breaths, but her trembling fingers couldn't steady. Her whole body was covered in goosebumps, as if someone had doused her with a bucket of cold water while she was drowsy.
"Something like this can happen… Heh, is this a joke from the gods? Or did I receive memories from another world? Were those all things that happened in a parallel world?"
Still able to crack jokes like this, Haruno was proud of her mental strength.
She forced herself to close her eyes and firmly knocked her head twice with her fist. Only with pain and darkness could her mind calm down.
After all, those memories weren't fiction.
Without needing to seek evidence, even though the process was strange and bizarre, Haruno would believe from the depths of her heart that this was a reality she had lived through, only now revealed.
Because even without her memories, in November, she unknowingly fell in love with Tenkuji Yuu—how could a troublesome and heavy woman like her fall for someone else just because she lost her memories?
"Then let's sort out the situation one by one."
Rubbing her forehead with her fingers, Haruno muttered to herself with her eyes closed: "First, why did I care so much about a junior I'd never met and feel heartbroken seeing him interact with other girls?—that question's answered."
"Because Yuu was my boyfriend."
"Next, why did I lose my memories… No, rather than losing memories, it's more accurate to say the entire world was reset once."
As those words came out calmly, her confused and fearful expression receded like the tide. The aura of a relaxed, unflappable strong woman gradually returned to her.
Haruno briefly reviewed her memories and found there were two versions—
One was her sweet and bitter love story with Yuu until August 25th.
The other was Yuu's complete absence. At the sports center, eating curry, at the amusement park, and at the hotel, she was alone, on a lonely and quiet journey, unaware anything was wrong.
Thinking of this, a bitter and frustrated feeling suddenly rose in her heart. Her heel unconsciously tapped the floor, but she quickly stopped.
Refocusing her thoughts, after examining the differences between these two versions, Haruno couldn't help but take a deep breath.
"It's like a script already written, where someone who was supposed to be in it was suddenly erased, but the story still had to make sense. It's too forced…"
But something felt off.
It was as if the fog hadn't fully lifted, and she was only seeing the surface layer. This feeling made Haruno think hard for a long time, but she couldn't find a way through.
She could only set aside this hunch for now. For further confirmation, she grabbed her phone from beside the bed.
She opened the messaging app, instinctively wanting to find her boyfriend's chat, but realized his name wasn't there. His number wasn't in her contacts either.
"Only my memories were restored, but everything that happened is just gone?"
Haruno clearly remembered. Though she once deleted all his contact info, on the amusement park date, she added Yuu back to her LINE friends and phone contacts. She even changed his name to [My Most Beloved Little Boyfriend], planning to show off to Yukino someday.
No way to go back…
Frowning, Haruno shook her head. Now wasn't the time to be sad.
She still remembered his number. But after weighing it, she didn't call Yuu for now. Instead, she found a name she'd almost forgotten at the bottom of her contact list.
The busy tone rang for about twenty seconds before being replaced by a lazy, listless male voice.
"Hello? Who's this…"
"This is Yukinoshita Haruno. Sorry for waking you. There's something I want to ask you." Her voice was friendly and cheerful, but Haruno used a commanding, impolite tone.
"Yuuki, answer me as fast as you can. On the day we went to Karuizawa, did my boyfriend come looking for me?"
The man on the other end seemed half-asleep, or maybe he just lacked a brain. Yuuki Kouichirou answered in confusion: "Huh? Your boyfriend? Since when do you have a boyfriend? That's really—"
Before he could finish, Haruno thanked him curtly and hung up. Then, she called her mother downstairs.
"Haruno? You're upstairs. Why call—"
"Yeah, I'm a bit busy. I'll explain later…" Saying this casually, Haruno asked seriously, "Mom, I want to ask, why did I go to the amusement park on August 24th and not come home all night?"
"August 24th? Amusement park?" Her mother thought for a moment and answered hesitantly, "To show off to Yukino. And you didn't come home because you were too lazy to take a taxi at night. Why are you asking this?"
"Then why did I start pursuing a free marriage?"
"You said you wanted to expand the business overseas after graduation and could find a better partner with your own judgment. Most importantly, you didn't like the Yuuki family's son."
Her mother answered smoothly. Then her voice turned serious, tinged with worry.
"Haruno, is your head okay? Should we see a doctor?"
Haruno's cheek twitched slightly. She burst out laughing: "Next time, please use a gentler approach, dear Mom."
(Yuu-chan often used this way of talking to tease people too!)
(Goodness. My boyfriend's like my mother-in-law. My stomach's going to hurt sooner or later…)
She put down her phone, and the chaotic thoughts faded too. Haruno's expression turned serious again. She crossed her legs at the edge of the bed. Her fingers gently pinched her chin, showing the thoughtful look of a detective solving a case.
"Besides me, no one else remembers those times?"
Including her former self, everyone fully believed the false memories that replaced the real ones, automatically ignoring some illogical details.
For example, without Yuu's existence, Haruno wouldn't have rejected her parents' arranged marriage, even if the guy was an otaku classmate she didn't like—the motivation wasn't enough. How could it have turned out like this?
Even her mother, who understood her personality so well, didn't question it. So clearly, some mysterious force was interfering, making them completely forget that person was actually part of it all.
"Most importantly, in the end, it's you… Yuu-chan."
With a soft sigh, Haruno put on a grim face. She desperately wanted to grab Yuu and interrogate him for a day and night in her room. After all her questions were answered, she'd take back everything lost during these three months.
The shattered and vanished wooden comb, the memory changes like magic, and his strange expression when he saw that comb…
All the answers to all the questions lay with her little boyfriend, who'd vanished for three months!