The rooftop is silent, save for the sound of the wind and the quiet, ragged hitch of my own breathing. The cherry blossom petal is a small, warm weight in my palm, a tiny key that has unlocked a floodgate of pure, unadulterated feeling. It's not a memory—there are no images, no sounds—but the emotional residue is so potent it overwhelms the cold logic of the forgery. My heart knows the truth, even if my head doesn't.
"It's you," I whisper, the words barely audible. The tears that had been welling in my eyes finally spill over, tracing hot paths down my cheeks. "It was always you."
For the first time all morning, Reo moves. He crosses the distance between us in a few long, quick strides. He stops just a foot away, his hands clenched at his sides, as if fighting the instinct to reach out, to close that final gap. He's still respecting the boundary, waiting for my cue.
"You believe me?" he asks, his voice thick with a profound, exhausted relief.
I just nod, unable to speak, clutching the small petal like a lifeline.
It's my turn to close the distance. I take a single, trembling step forward and, before I can second-guess myself, I wrap my arms around his waist. It's a clumsy, desperate hug, burying my face in the familiar fabric of his uniform shirt. It feels like coming home after a long, terrifying journey. For a second, he's rigid with surprise, then his arms come around me, holding me with a gentle, hesitant strength, as if I might shatter.
The hug isn't like the one on stage or the one we'd rehearsed. This one is real, messy, and soaked with tears of relief. "I'm sorry," I sob into his chest. "I'm so sorry I doubted you."
"You have nothing to be sorry for," he murmurs into my hair, his voice rough. "He designed the perfect weapon against you. Against us. You fought back. You listened to your instincts. You chose to trust."
Nami, who has been standing by as a silent, stoic witness, lets out a loud, theatrical sigh of relief. "Okay, good," she declares, breaking the spell. "For a second there, I thought I was going to have to get my evidence folder out, and it's mostly just embarrassing photos of Ari from middle school."
I pull back from Reo, a watery, hiccuping laugh escaping me. Nami's presence, her unshakeable good cheer, is the final piece that chases the last of the shadows away. We're okay. We survived the attack.
"Thank you, Nami," Reo says, turning to her with a look of sincere gratitude. "For being here."
"Duh," she says, beaming. "Team Ari-Reo forever. Now, if you'll excuse me, I believe the words 'emergency celebratory donuts' were mentioned in our tactical planning session. I'm on it." And with a jaunty salute, she's gone, leaving us alone on the roof again.
The morning feels like a new beginning, a reset of our own reset. The immediate crisis is over, but the implications of it linger.
"What do we do about Itsuki?" I ask, my voice sounding more steady. "He's still out there. He tried to ruin everything. He'll just try again."
Reo's expression sobers. He retrieves the plastic folder from the ground, the evidence of our morning's trial. "We take this to the right people," he says, his voice grim. "Haruto is already drafting a formal complaint to the school board on behalf of your family. And Mirei Saionji now has everything she needs to move for a disciplinary hearing. He won't get away with this, Arisa. He wanted to play in the shadows, using your condition against you. But we just dragged him into the light."
The rest of the school day feels like walking through a dream. The cloud of suspicion is gone, replaced by a quiet, fierce sense of loyalty that hums just beneath my skin. I'm starting to understand what my other selves must have felt. This bond with Reo, this partnership, isn't something born of pity or guilt. It's a connection forged in a crisis, tested by an enemy, and proven true.
That evening, I sit at my desk to write the nightly postcard, the most important one since the storm. The forgery lies on my desk, a captured snake, defanged and powerless. I write down the entire story of the morning: the gut-wrenching doubt, the interrogation on the roof, the evidence Reo presented, and the final, irrefutable truth of the cherry blossom petal.
The feeling was the proof, I write, my pen flying across the card. Your mind will lie to you. Forged words will lie to you. But your heart, your body—they remember the truth. Trust them, always.
As I'm writing, a thought strikes me. The diary. The fake diary in the play that Lord Valerius gives to Princess Alya, the one with the forged handwriting that feels "hollow." The parallel is so precise, so direct, it's chilling. Itsuki didn't just seek out the role of the villain; he used the play as a blueprint for his real-life attack. He was workshopping his crime in plain sight.
I jot this down on the postcard, then on an impulse, I pull out my official school-issued planner. Itsuki's neat, helpful weekly schedule is still paperclipped to the inside cover. I look at it, then at the forgery, then back. The way he forms his characters, the pressure of the pen… there's nothing overtly similar, but now, a new suspicion takes root. Where did he get a sample of my handwriting that was substantial enough to copy so perfectly? The class roster wouldn't have been enough. He needed more. He needed sentences, a signature…
Then I remember. My school admission forms. My club registration slip. Documents that, as class representative, he might have had access to.
Reo is already looking into the Prometheus logo, but this feels different. This is a thread I can pull on myself. The next day, I tell him my theory.
"That makes sense," he says, his expression thoughtful. "It's a huge breach of student privacy, but he's proven he has no ethics. We can have Mirei look into the student records access logs."
For the next few days, an uneasy truce settles over us. Reo and I fall back into our comfortable routine, but there's a new weight to our interactions. We have an active enemy, and the threat of another attack looms. Rehearsals for the play are canceled "pending a disciplinary review," so our after-school time is once again our own.
One afternoon, instead of our usual rooftop study session, I find myself drawn to the library. The quiet, ordered stacks feel like a safe haven. I'm ostensibly researching a history paper, but my mind is elsewhere. I find a secluded carrel in the back, near a window that looks out over the athletic fields.
I must have been there for an hour when Reo finds me. He doesn't say a word, just pulls up the chair opposite me and opens his own textbook. The quiet, shared companionship is a balm to my frayed nerves. We work in silence, the only sound the soft scratch of my pen on paper and the turning of his pages.
As the sun begins to set, casting long golden rays through the tall library windows, I get up to shelve a book I'm done with. My bag, which I'd left on the floor, is slightly unzipped. As I walk away, a thin, leather-bound book with a broken clasp slides out and falls open on the floor under the table, hidden from my sight. It's my old diary. The one from before the accident. I haven't looked at it since we moved, the memories inside too painful, too distant.
Reo, still sitting at the table, glances down and sees it. The diary has fallen open to one of the last pages I'd written before everything changed. The script is the loopy, familiar scrawl of a happy, untroubled girl. He wouldn't read it, of course. His ethics, his respect for my privacy, are absolute.
But from across the aisle, where I'm sliding my history book back into place, I see him freeze. His eyes are locked on the open page, his face completely pale, as if he's seen a ghost. He doesn't read the words, he doesn't have to.
My eyes follow his gaze. I can't read the entry from here, but I can see the doodles in the margins. The frantic, happy little drawings I used to make when I was thinking about my crush. And on this last, fateful page, there's only one doodle, drawn over and over.
Two overlapping squares, with a sharp diagonal line cutting right through them. The Prometheus logo.
It wasn't a warning about Itsuki. It was a memory from before. My hand hadn't been writing a clue; it had been re-enacting an old, forgotten habit. And a new, terrifying question clicks into place. What if Reo hadn't recognized the symbol because it was corporate?
What if he recognized it because he'd seen it in my diary before? What if this secret he's keeping isn't about Itsuki at all, but about me?