(Opening Re-Orient Card - Arisa's Voice)
"Good morning. My name is Arisa Tsukimi. This part is going to sound like a story, but it's real. Look at the photo on your nightstand. That girl is you, from before the accident. The boy with her is Reo Kisaragi. The one from the video. He wasn't a stranger. He was your secret, and my amnesia made you forget. Yesterday, you learned the truth. Yesterday, he didn't ask you to remember the old story. He asked you to help him write a new one. You said yes. This is Day One. Don't be scared. Be brave. He's waiting for you on the rooftop."
The rooftop air is crisp and clean, and the hand holding mine is warm and real. The silence between us isn't the comfortable quiet of yesterday's established routine, nor is it the heavy, charged silence of our confrontations. It's a new, fragile, and utterly terrifying silence, brimming with unspoken questions. What now?
I am on a first date with a boy who has an entire library of our shared history stored in his head, while I am working with a single-page pamphlet I just read this morning.
"So," I start, my voice coming out as a breathless squeak. I clear my throat. "Reo."
Saying his name without the honorific feels both completely natural and shockingly intimate. A small, nervous smile touches his lips. It's the first time I have ever seen him look anything less than perfectly composed. He's nervous, too.
"So," he replies, his voice just as quiet. "Arisa." He gives my hand a gentle squeeze, a small reassurance that this is real. "Did the new video… make sense?"
"And the postcard. And the photo," I confirm, holding up our joined hands. "It feels… like waking up in the right story for the first time."
"I'm glad," he says, and the profound relief in his voice makes my heart ache. "I was worried it would be too much. Too fast."
"It's everything," I correct him softly. "And it's not nearly enough. I want… to know."
The first bell rings, a summons back to the real world. We walk down the stairs together, hand in hand, and this simple act feels like a monumental public declaration. The whispers start almost immediately. We are no longer the mysterious prince and the amnesiac girl; we are a curiosity. News of Itsuki's suspension has clearly spread, and the cancellation of the play has only fueled the rumors. Our connected hands are a definitive statement in a story the rest of the school is only just beginning to guess at.
I can feel the heat of their stares, but Reo's thumb drawing small, soothing circles on the back of my hand is a shield. For the first time, I don't feel like I'm shrinking under their gaze. I'm anchored.
We're almost at my classroom when a familiar voice calls my name. It's Satoru, my childhood friend. He stops short when he sees our joined hands, his friendly smile faltering for just a second. The surprise on his face is quickly replaced by a kind of gentle, resigned understanding.
"Kisaragi-san," he says with a polite nod, before turning his eyes to me. He scans my face, a searching look in his eyes. He must find what he's looking for, because his expression softens. "You look… happy, Tsukimi-chan."
"I am," I say, and the simple truth of the words surprises me. "I am."
He gives a small, wistful smile. "That's good," he says, before disappearing into his own classroom. It wasn't a confrontation; it was a quiet acknowledgment. A passing of a torch I didn't even know he was carrying.
At lunchtime, instead of our usual spot on the roof, Reo is waiting for me at the school gate. "Let's go off-campus," he says. "A real lunch. A real… first date."
He takes me to a small, quiet cafe nestled in a side street, the kind of place with mismatched chairs and the rich, warm smell of coffee and old books. We talk, and for the first time, I'm not just asking for facts about yesterday. I'm asking about the before.
"What was our first conversation?" I ask, twisting a napkin in my lap.
"It was in the library," he says, a fond smile lighting his face. "You dropped a stack of books. I helped you pick them up. You told me my taste in historical fiction was 'predictably grim.'"
I laugh, a real, unburdened sound. "That sounds like me."
"It was," he says softly. "You've always seen through the performance."
After lunch, he leads me a few doors down to a secondhand bookstore. The moment we step inside, the scent of old paper and leather binding fills the air, and a powerful sense of déjà vu washes over me, so strong it makes me dizzy.
"Whoa," I murmur, steadying myself against a shelf. "This place..."
Reo watches me, his expression hopeful. "We used to come here. After school. It was our spot."
My body remembers. Another ghost map, another unconscious truth. We wander the narrow, crowded aisles in a comfortable silence. He leads me to a section in the back—Poetry. He reaches up to a high shelf and pulls down a slim, well-worn volume with a dark blue cover. He holds it out to me. The Last Starwatcher.
The second my fingers touch the faded cover, a sensory ghost hits me. It's not a memory. It's a feeling—a whisper of shared laughter, the warmth of a rainy afternoon, the quiet joy of two people existing in the same small space. A warmth, a ghost of joy, so potent and real it brings tears to my eyes.
"You always said this one was mine, and the grim history books were yours," Reo says quietly, his voice thick with the memory of it.
He buys the book for me, refusing to let me pay. "Every new story needs a beginning," he says, pressing the book into my hands as we leave. It feels like a promise. A tangible piece of our lost past, reclaimed for our new future.
On the way back to school, we pass a small, sticker-covered photo booth. On an impulse born of a joy so bright it feels effervescent, I pull him toward it.
"We need proof," I say, my voice giddy.
"Proof?" he asks, a bemused smile on his face.
"Proof of Day One," I declare, tugging him inside the tiny curtained space.
The next few minutes are a clumsy, wonderful blur of flashes and laughter. The first photo, I'm shyly smiling while he looks at me with that same unguarded warmth from the photo Nami showed me. The second, I'm holding up the book while he laughs. The third, I'm caught off guard as he gently leans in, his face closer to mine than it has ever been, his expression soft and full of a love that makes the camera flash seem dim.
When the strip of photos slides out, warm from the machine, I know it's the most precious thing I own. It's the first artifact of our new story. Evidence of a yesterday that, for once, I won't just be told about. I will have proof.
That night, my room feels different. It's no longer just a sterile, safe environment. It's the starting point of an adventure. I carefully pin the new photo strip to the center of my wall, right next to the impossible polaroid from our past. Before, and Now.
I sit down to write my postcard. I don't just detail the facts. I describe the feeling. His smile when he talks about the library is real. Don't doubt it. The smell of the bookstore will feel like coming home. Let it. In the third picture in the photo booth, just for a second, you are going to feel a happiness so pure it scares you. Don't be scared.
My brother knocks and enters just as I'm finishing, a worried frown on his face that is jarringly out of place with the bright, hopeful glow I feel.
"Arisa," he says, his voice serious. "I just got off the phone with Mom and Dad." My stomach drops. Our parents work overseas. Their calls are infrequent and usually mean something big is happening. "They saw the school's official incident report about… well, everything. They're worried." He takes a deep breath. "They're coming home. For the weekend."