Reo's words echo in my head long after the disastrous rehearsal is over. Your instincts knew where to find the truth. It's a sliver of hope in a sea of anxiety. Itsuki had tried to use the script to corner me, but my own body, that secret keeper of unconscious truths, had betrayed his narrative. It had sought out its anchor.
The knowledge steels me. The nightly postcard I write is no longer just a summary; it's a strategic briefing for the girl who will wake up tomorrow. The play is a mind game, I write. Itsuki will use his lines to manipulate you. But Reo says your instincts are your best weapon. Trust what you feel, not just what you read on the page.
The next week of rehearsals becomes a strange, silent battlefield. Itsuki is a master of subtext, infusing his charming lines with a possessive, controlling edge that isn't written in the script. He'll block a scene so that he's physically standing between me and Reo. He'll "accidentally" skip a line of Reo's, disrupting the flow of the dialogue. They are micro-aggressions, so subtle that only Reo and I seem to notice them. Haruka-senpai just sees it all as brilliant character work, praising Itsuki's "menacing charisma."
Reo, in turn, becomes a fortress of quiet defiance. He never lets Itsuki's provocations get to him. Instead, he focuses entirely on me. When it's just the two of us practicing, as the knight and princess, the stifling tension of the club room melts away. We find an empty classroom or our usual spot on the rooftop, and the script transforms.
In his hands, the lines of Ser Kael are not just words on a page. They become extensions of our own reality.
"Remember this rooftop, Princess?" he'll say, his eyes holding mine. "The first time we spoke, the cherry blossoms were falling. It was our sanctuary then, just as it is now." It's our truth, woven seamlessly into the fiction. He's not just rehearsing a play; he's actively creating new sensory and emotional anchors for me, embedding our story into the lines so that a piece of it might survive the nightly reset.
The body memory, too, is a powerful tool. The script calls for several moments of physical contact between the knight and the princess—him steadying her when she stumbles, taking her hand to lead her to safety. Each time, before we rehearse the scene, Reo is meticulous about consent.
"The next scene has Kael taking Alya's hand," he'll say, his voice low and serious. "Is that okay with you, for today?"
And every day, I say yes. His touch is never a surprise. It's a carefully choreographed movement, but beneath the performance, the echo of that fall on the stairs remains. My skin remembers. My body trusts him. And with each rehearsal, the muscle memory of his hand in mine grows stronger, another unconscious truth stored away where my amnesia can't reach it.
The most challenging scene is from Act Two. The princess, driven to despair by the chancellor's lies and her own fractured mind, runs to a high balcony, contemplating a desperate escape. Her knight finds her there. The stage directions are simple: Ser Kael takes her hands, pulling her back from the ledge. He holds her, a desperate, protective gesture.
We rehearse it on the rooftop, the safety railing our imaginary balcony.
"Is this okay?" Reo asks, his voice barely a whisper before we begin.
I nod, my heart thumping.
I deliver my line, my voice trembling with Alya's—and my own—fear. "I can't tell which ghosts are real anymore! Which memories are mine?"
Reo steps forward, following the script. He takes my hands. His grip is firm, gentle. He pulls me toward him, away from the railing. Then he hesitates. The script says he holds me. But we've never rehearsed that part. It's a line of intimacy we haven't crossed.
He looks at me, a silent question in his eyes, asking for permission to go off-script. In that moment, he's not Ser Kael. He's Reo. And I'm not Princess Alya. I'm Arisa. The terrified, lost girl he has rescued time and time again.
I give a small, almost imperceptible nod.
He closes the distance between us, his arms wrapping around me in a careful, tentative embrace. One of his hands rests on my back, the other gently on my arm. He's barely touching me, holding the hug with a respectful, feather-light pressure, ready to pull back at any second. But it's enough.
My head rests against his chest, right over his heart. I can feel its steady, rhythmic beat against my ear, a solid, living drum in the quiet afternoon. The scent of his laundry detergent and the clean, fresh air fills my senses. And for a moment, the world goes utterly still. A profound sense of peace washes over me, a feeling of coming home to a place I've never been. It's a body memory I haven't lived yet, a premonition of safety. It's the most real thing I have felt all day.
He holds the hug for exactly as long as the stage directions would require, then slowly lets go. My skin tingles where he held me. My heart is racing, but the fear is gone, replaced by a warm, glowing ache.
Neither of us says anything. We just stand there, the unread pages of the script fluttering in the breeze. We both know that wasn't just acting.
That night, my postcard is a mess of contradictions. We rehearsed the hug from Act Two. He was a perfect gentleman. It felt… right. Too right. I tell my future self about the steady beat of his heart, hoping the sensory detail might survive as an echo.
As the day of the cultural festival approaches, Haruka-senpai decides our performances need more "spontaneity." She introduces improvisation exercises.
"I want you to live in these characters!" she declares. "Today, you will perform the balcony scene, but at the end, I want you to ad-lib one final line. One heartfelt, desperate promise from your character to the other."
My blood runs cold. Itsuki is in this scene, too. Valerius arrives just as the knight is pleading with the princess. We have to do this in front of him.
We run the scene. Itsuki's presence is a suffocating weight, his portrayal of the smiling, concerned chancellor more venomous than ever. When we get to the hug, Reo is just as respectful as he was on the rooftop, a brief, stage-appropriate embrace. Then comes the improvisation.
"Princess, he is unwell, driven mad by his fantasies of a past that never was," Itsuki ad-libs smoothly, stepping forward to try and pull me away from Reo. "Come with me. I will keep you safe."
The room is silent. Everyone is watching me. It's my move. The princess is caught between the two men. My script-brain is screaming for Alya's confused, hesitant lines.
But Reo's eyes find mine, and in them, I see not a knight, but the boy who waited for me in the rain. And my instincts, that loyal ghost, take over.
I pull my hand away from Itsuki. I take a half-step back, closer to Reo. I look directly at Reo, not as a princess to a knight, but as me to him. And the words that come out are not for the play. They are for us.
"Your memories might fade," I ad-lib, my voice trembling but clear. "Your name, your face, the things you say… I might forget them by sunrise." I take a breath, my gaze unwavering. "But I will not forget this feeling. And I promise… I will always find you on the rooftop. I'll remember you anyway."
A stunned silence hangs in the room. I've just ad-libbed a promise that breaks the entire logic of my character's amnesia, but it's the truest thing I have ever said.
Itsuki's pleasant mask finally cracks. Just for a second. A flash of genuine, furious defeat crosses his face. He knows, in that moment, that he has irrevocably lost. I didn't just choose the knight; I had just articulated the very foundation of my real-life survival.
Reo just stares at me, his face a mask of shocked, heart-wrenching disbelief. It's a confession, a declaration of a faith so profound it defies my own broken mind.
The spell is broken by Haruka-senpai, who is openly weeping. "Brilliant!" she sobs. "Heartbreaking! Poetic! That's our closing line for Act Two! Print it!"
I've just written our secret into the official script of the play. And now, I have to perform it. I have to make that promise, and my mind will have no choice but to let it go by morning.