The stairwell is a strange, self-contained world. The five of us—two drenched teenagers, a stern student council president, a frantic older brother, and a preternaturally calm school nurse—are a tableau of crisis and its immediate aftermath. The raw emotion from my outburst still hangs in the damp air, a tangible thing.
Nurse Shidou is the first to break the silence, her voice cutting through the tension with medical precision. "Right. That's enough drama for one night. Tsukimi-san, you're hypothermic. Haruto-san, we need to get her home to a warm bath immediately. Kisaragi-kun, you're not much better. You'll both have pneumonia by morning if you stand around like this."
Haruto rushes forward, his face a mask of worry, and helps me to my feet. The dry coat he brought feels like the most luxurious thing in the world. I'm leaning on him, utterly spent, but my eyes are still on Reo.
Mirei Saionji takes a step toward him. Her expression is no longer accusatory; it's tactical. "Kisaragi-kun," she says, her voice low and firm. "My office. Tomorrow morning before classes. Bring any documentation you have. We will formulate a strategy. The student council does not tolerate the misuse of its official reporting systems for personal grievances."
The message is clear. She believes us. She's on our side. The report Itsuki filed has just backfired on him spectacularly.
Reo just nods, his face still pale. He's looking at me, his gaze so intense it feels like he's trying to memorize the moment before it's stolen from him. Before it's stolen from me.
The journey home is a blur. Haruto's car, the heater blasting, the rhythmic swish of the windshield wipers fighting the last of the rain. Reo sits in the front seat, silent, while I'm bundled in the back, wrapped in a blanket Nurse Shidou produced from a well-stocked emergency kit. I don't think we exchange a single word the entire ride, but the silence isn't empty. It's full of the night's events, a shared experience so profound that words feel inadequate. We survived a storm, both inside and out.
Back in my room, after the longest, hottest bath of my life, I feel almost human again. Haruto brings me a steaming mug of honey ginger tea and fusses over me like a mother hen before finally leaving me in peace. A few minutes later, there's a soft knock on my door.
It's Reo. He's changed into a dry t-shirt and sweats borrowed from Haruto, his dark hair still damp and curling at the ends. He's holding a small thumbtack in his hand.
"One of your photos fell," he says quietly, gesturing to the floor. "From the storm."
I look over. It's the candid picture he took of me, the one where I'm smiling, unaware. It's lying face-up on the floor, as if waiting to be restored.
He walks over to the corkboard, picks up the photo, and carefully pins it back in its place. He smooths the edges with his thumb, his touch incredibly gentle. The simple, quiet act of him restoring this piece of my memory, of putting my fragmented world back in order, makes my throat ache.
"What were you going to say?" I ask, my voice a whisper. "Back there, in the stairwell. Before everyone came. You looked like…"
He turns from the wall to face me, the soft light of my desk lamp catching the tired lines around his eyes. He looks impossibly vulnerable.
"I was going to say thank you," he says, his voice raw. "No one has ever… stood up for me like that before. And for you to do it… the you who just met me this morning… It was the bravest thing I've ever seen."
His sincerity is a physical blow. Me, brave? The girl who woke up convinced she'd been kidnapped? The girl who had to follow a ghost map just to find her way to safety? But in that moment, in the stairwell, I hadn't been scared. I had been angry. Angry on his behalf.
"I wasn't brave," I say, shaking my head. "I just… told the truth. What she said was wrong."
"Still," he insists. He takes a hesitant step closer. "I know tonight was terrifying for you. But, Arisa… your body remembered. The routine, the path, the safe place… it worked. Even when everything else failed, you still found your way."
He says my name again, and this time, it doesn't feel like a secret I've overheard. It feels earned. It feels right. He's not just talking about the path to the school. He's talking about the path to him.
He knows he should go, that my brother is likely pacing outside the door. But neither of us moves. The space between us is charged with the day's entire history. The fall, the club fair, the storm, the rooftop, the rescue, the accusation, the defense. It's too much for one day to hold. And in a few hours, for me, it will be gone. The unfairness of it is a sharp, physical pain.
"I'm going to forget this, aren't I?" I whisper, the question a confirmation of a death sentence. "I'm going to forget all of it."
Reo's expression tightens with a familiar, weary sadness. "I know. But I won't." He pauses, his gaze unwavering. "And I'll be on the roof in the morning."
After he leaves, I'm left alone in the quiet hum of my room. His blazer is still hanging on the back of my desk chair where Haruto put it to dry. I pick it up. It still smells faintly of him and of rain. I hug it to my chest, a tangible piece of the night's impossible events.
I know what I have to do. The postcard. Tonight's message is the most important one I will ever write.
I sit at my desk, the blank card in front of me, the pen feeling impossibly heavy in my hand. How do I distill a hurricane into a paragraph? How do I convince a stranger—a terrified stranger—to trust the boy who waits in the rain?
Good morning, I begin, my hand shaking slightly. I know you are going to wake up confused. More confused than usual. Don't trust your memory of last night. There wasn't one. The power went out.
I detail the story in short, clear sentences. The terrifying darkness. The panic. And the breadcrumb that saved me.
You wrote a note for yourself: "When all else fails, the roof." Your body remembered the way there, even in a storm. And he was there. Reo was waiting for you.
I describe his drenched uniform, his frantic relief, his blazer over my shoulders. I tell myself about Mirei Saionji's accusation, and I write down, word for word, my own defense of him. You told her he was the only reason you knew your own name.
I write about Itsuki Kurobane and the folder, explicitly labeling him as the source of the report. The warning must be clear.
I finish the card with a plea, a command to the future me who will have nothing but these words to cling to in the morning. Don't doubt him. Not for a second. The other students might call him a prince, but you will know the truth. He's not a prince. He is your anchor. He is the boy who waits for you in the rain. Trust him completely.
My task is done. The day is chronicled. But as I set the pen down, my gaze falls back on the class roster I'd pinned to the wall, the one with Itsuki's name circled on it. The cold, prickling sense of wrongness I associate with him is as strong as ever. And acting on an impulse, a final twitch of my body's secret knowledge, I pick up the pen again.
Next to the dark circle around his name, my fingers, guided by that same ghost in the machine, begin to draw. It's a small, specific shape. Not a doodle, but a symbol. Two overlapping squares, with a single, sharp diagonal line cutting through them. It's a logo I've never seen, for a company I don't know, yet my hand draws it with perfect, practiced confidence. And a single, meaningless word flashes in my mind: Prometheus.