The ad-libbed promise changes everything. It's no longer just a line in a play; it's a living, breathing part of our daily ritual. Every time we rehearse the scene, my heart hammers in my chest. The words feel like a sacred vow I'm renewing, even as my mind prepares to break it.
Reo is different, too. There's a new, fragile hope in his eyes when he looks at me. That promise—I'll remember you anyway—it's an impossible dream, but the fact that I keep articulating it, day after day, feels like a prayer he's starting to believe in.
My nightly postcard becomes a desperate, frantic effort to make it come true.
Tomorrow you, when you say this line, MEAN IT. It's the most important truth you have. I write down the exact sensory details of our rooftop hug rehearsal: The rhythm of his heart was 1-2…1-2… slow and steady. The wool of his uniform smelled like clean air. I'm trying to build a bridge of feelings, a rope of sensory data, for my future self to find her way back to the truth of that moment.
The cultural festival arrives in a blur of colored crepe paper and the smell of takoyaki. The school is transformed, buzzing with a joyful, chaotic energy that feels a world away from the silent war being waged on the drama club stage. Our performance is scheduled for the afternoon of the second day, the grand finale of the club showcases.
On the day of the show, my nerves are a tangled, frantic mess. This morning, I had read the postcard, the script, the detailed notes from my yesterday-self, but knowing the story is different from feeling it. I'm about to go on stage and perform a version of my own life, culminating in a promise that feels both deeply true and fundamentally impossible.
Backstage is a flurry of organized chaos. Haruka-senpai is a whirlwind of last-minute instructions, students are rushing around in costume, and the air is thick with the scent of hairspray and stage dust.
I'm in my princess costume, a simple but elegant long blue gown, standing in the wings and watching the stage. Reo, looking impossibly dashing in his silver-and-blue knight's tunic, finds me there.
"How are you doing?" he asks, his voice a low, calming presence in the chaos.
"I think I'm going to be sick," I admit, twisting a piece of my costume in my hands.
"You'll be great," he says with a confidence I don't feel. He reaches into a pocket and pulls out something small. It's a single, perfect cherry blossom petal, pressed and preserved in a small, clear piece of laminate. "For luck. From the rooftop."
He presses it into my palm. It's a tangible piece of our sanctuary, a reminder of where our story began. "Thank you," I whisper, closing my hand around it.
Itsuki, dressed in the Chancellor's ostentatious robes of deep purple and gold, walks past us, a perfectly serene smile on his face. "Break a leg, you two," he says, his voice dripping with false sincerity. "I have a feeling tonight's performance will be one to remember." The threat is clear. He has something planned.
The lights go down, the audience hushes, and the curtain rises.
The first act is a blur. The stage lights are hot and blinding, the sea of faces in the audience an anonymous darkness. But the moment Reo steps on stage with me, the rest of the world fades away. We're in our bubble. His presence is a steadying force, his eyes the only anchor I need. We move through the scenes, the lines we've rehearsed a thousand times flowing naturally.
The conflict, too, is chillingly real. When Itsuki is on stage, the temperature seems to drop. He delivers his manipulative lines with a masterful subtlety, his charm so convincing that I can hear the audience murmuring in sympathy for the "poor, misguided princess." He is winning them over, just as he likely tried to win over the faculty.
Then we reach the end of Act Two. The balcony scene. The climax.
I stand on the raised platform that serves as our balcony, the blue spotlight making me feel isolated and exposed. My voice trembles with Alya's scripted fear, a fear that needs no acting. Reo, as Kael, rushes on stage, his face a mask of desperate love and concern. He takes my hands, just as we rehearsed, and pulls me back from the brink. The hug is brief, a moment of fleeting safety before Itsuki makes his entrance.
The final confrontation plays out. The knight's earnest pleas against the chancellor's silken lies. And then, the ad-libbed line. My promise.
I look at Reo. I see the boy who waited in the rain. I see the boy who believed in my body's secret map. I see the anchor of my collapsing world. The feeling—that profound, illogical certainty—swells in my chest.
"Your memories might fade," I say, my voice ringing out with a new, powerful clarity. "Your name, your face, the things you say… I might forget them by sunrise." The audience is utterly silent, hanging on every word.
"But I will not forget this feeling." I take a step closer to him, breaking the script's blocking. I put a hand on my heart. "And I promise… I will always find you on the rooftop. I'll remember you anyway."
The final word hangs in the air, a declaration of impossible faith. In the split second before the lights are supposed to cut to black, ending the act, I see it. The faintest glimmer of a tear tracing a path down Reo's cheek.
The stage goes dark. The audience erupts into applause so thunderous it feels like a physical wave.
In the sudden blackness, as we stand frozen on stage, waiting for the curtain to fall, Reo's hand finds mine in the dark. He gives it a single, tight squeeze, a gesture of pure, unscripted gratitude.
But something is wrong. Itsuki was supposed to be standing frozen, defeated, at the back of the stage. In the darkness, I feel more than see a subtle movement near my dressing table, which was set as a prop on the side of the stage. A faint rustle of paper. What is he doing?
The curtain comes down. The lights come up. Haruka-senpai is screaming with joy. "It was perfect! Perfect!"
But Reo and I are both looking toward my dressing table. Itsuki is already walking away, melting into the crowd of backstage crew, that same infuriatingly pleasant smile on his face.
On the polished surface of the table, right next to Princess Alya's prop quill and inkwell, sits a small, familiar object that does not belong there.
It's one of my postcards.
My blood runs cold. I break away from the cast and rush over to it. It's from last night. It's the card I wrote for myself this morning. The battle plan. The play is a mind game. Itsuki will use his lines to manipulate you. Trust what you feel… He had to have stolen it from my room. How? The thought of him invading my most private, sacred space makes me feel physically ill.
But he hasn't just placed it there for me to see. He's altered it.
Across the bottom of the card, scrawled in a messy, vaguely familiar handwriting that is a cruel mockery of my own, is a single, horrifying new sentence.
P.S. None of this is real. Reo Kisaragi is the one who caused your accident. He is lying to you.
I stare at the words, my vision swimming. A forgery. The most evil, targeted attack imaginable. He's not just trying to manipulate the princess on stage; he's trying to destroy the foundation of my reality. He's planting a seed of doubt that will greet a blank-slate version of me tomorrow morning. A girl who wakes up tomorrow won't have the context of the play, of this victory. She will only have this single, poison-laced postcard.
She will wake up, and her first thought of the boy who waits on the rooftop will be that he is a liar, and her enemy.