The news photograph is a black hole, pulling all the light and certainty from the room. My mind is screaming in protest. No. That photo isn't real. It can't be. My "before" memories are a locked, sealed garden. I am the sole groundskeeper. I know every flower, every path. And there is no path where I am smiling like that, so familiar and easy, with Reo Kisaragi's arm around me.
"That's fake," I whisper, my voice sounding distant, disconnected. "Itsuki... he must have faked that, too." It's the only possible explanation. It has to be.
But Reo just shakes his head, a slow, tired gesture of defeat. "He didn't know it existed. No one did. It fell out of your diary at the scene." His voice is a low, aching thrum of regret. "Mirei only found it this morning when she was reviewing the full unedited accident file."
Mirei Saionji, who has been watching this exchange with a silent, sharp-eyed intensity, slides the original police evidence bag across the desk. Inside, nestled among the dry, official forms, is the small, faded polaroid. Real, physical, undeniable.
"Your history is not as you recall it, Tsukimi-san," Mirei says, her tone more gentle than I have ever heard it. "It seems your amnesia… is more complicated than you were led to believe."
I stare at the photo, at the girl with my face and a bright, unguarded joy I don't recognize. Her smile is aimed at someone just off-camera. And Reo… he isn't the cool, reserved school prince. He looks open, happy, completely at ease. They look like a couple. A secret couple.
And that one impossible thought is the key that unlocks a series of rusted, bolted doors in my mind. The Prometheus logo, doodled obsessively in my diary. My "before" self knew the company because his father worked there. The familiar rhythm of the drama club monologue. We must have practiced it together. The overwhelming sense of coming home I feel on the rooftop. It wasn't just a new sanctuary; it was an old one. The strange, phantom name that was on my tongue on that first morning. It wasn't a word. It was a feeling. It was his.
I'm not just forgetting my yesterdays. My amnesia took more than that. It took the truth of my "before."
I finally tear my gaze away from the photo and look at Reo. Really look at him. And now, I don't see the kind stranger who decided to help the broken new girl. I see a boy who lost something, too. I see the quiet agony of having to reintroduce yourself every single morning to the person you care about most in the world.
The system he built—the video, the postcard, the rooftop promise—it wasn't just a set of practical tools for a stranger. It was a desperate, methodical attempt to rebuild a bridge back to a person he had already known. Had already… loved?
"The accident," I say, my voice trembling as the last piece falls into place. "I was on my way to meet you, wasn't I?"
Reo closes his eyes, a muscle feathering in his jaw. When he opens them again, they're glistening with unshed tears. "We were going to tell everyone," he says, his voice so quiet I have to lean forward to hear it. "That afternoon. On the roof. We were going to stop hiding."
The secret wasn't his. It was ours. And when I woke up in the hospital, my mind hadn't just erased the last few weeks; it had selectively and cruelly pruned away the single most important development within my "before" timeline: him. It had locked him out of the garden, leaving him a stranger at the gate. And he had respected that. He had honored my mind's broken narrative, choosing to start from scratch rather than forcing a past on me that I couldn't remember and wouldn't have consented to. He didn't just let me build a new world; he let me build it without the ghost of a love I'd forgotten, giving me the freedom to choose him—or not choose him—all over again, on my own terms.
The weight of his sacrifice is crushing. Every quiet, patient morning, every gentle, respectful instruction, every time he let me take the lead, every time he erased a video that was "too intimate"—it wasn't just him being an ally. It was an act of profound, heartbreaking, and ethically perfect love.
"Your father… the treatment…" I stammer. "You've been pushing for it."
"Since the day of the accident," he confirms, his voice thick. "He's been… trying to find a way back for you. For us. But it's risky. The early trials have shown… side effects. Memory fragmentation. Paranoia. That's why I couldn't tell you about it. I couldn't present you with a hope that might end up hurting you more. It wasn't a fair choice."
My head is spinning. This whole time, he hasn't just been my guardian in the present; he's been my guardian for a potential future I didn't even know was on the table. He was holding two impossible secrets—a past I had erased and a future that might be a poison pill.
I think back to that first night of the power outage. The storm. I remembered the path to the rooftop, a secret route. A path my body knew from weeks of being the 'new girl.' But what if it was older than that? What if it was the path we had always used, back when we were a secret? My body wasn't just remembering the new routine. It was remembering the old one. The ghost map was a map back to him.
"Reo," I whisper, my voice filled with a dizzying mix of awe, grief, and a love I'm only just now beginning to understand. "All this time..."
Before I can finish, the school's final bell rings, a loud, shrill sound that feels like it's coming from another world. Our time in this strange pocket of truth is over. We have to go back out into the school, into the light of a new, rewritten history.
We stand, the movement feeling slow and heavy. Reo picks up the police bag with the photo inside, holding it as if it weighs a thousand pounds.
As we walk out of the student council room, back into the familiar, crowded hallway, the world looks completely different. Nothing has changed, but everything has changed. He isn't the kind prince anymore. He is the keeper of my forgotten heart. The guardian of a secret I had unknowingly asked him to keep.
We don't talk on the walk to the gate. There are no words big enough for what we've just unearthed. At the school entrance, where our paths diverge, he stops and finally turns to face me. The setting sun frames him in gold, just as it had on so many other afternoons that feel both distant and brand new.
"The video message," he says, his voice raw. "This changes the script. Tomorrow… it will be different."
"It's okay," I say, my own voice shaky but sure. "Whatever you decide. I trust you."
That night, for the first time in weeks, my postcard isn't a list of facts or a strategic plan. It's a confession. A prayer to the girl who will wake up tomorrow.
Good morning, I write, the words blurring through a fresh wave of tears. You're going to hear a new story tomorrow. A love story. Our love story. It's going to sound impossible. But the boy who will be waiting on the rooftop, he hasn't just been remembering yesterday for you. He's been remembering your whole heart. When he looks at you, he doesn't just see a girl with amnesia. He sees the girl he fell in love with, and he's been waiting, every single sunrise, for her to find her way back home.