(Opening Re-Orient Card - Arisa's Voice)
"Good morning. It's Sunday. Your parents are making waffles downstairs—the smell is probably the first real thing you'll notice. They know all about you and Reo, and they approve. Yesterday, you all decided to explore the option of an experimental treatment, but there's no pressure. He made you a promise: whatever you choose, he's not going anywhere. For the first time, your future feels like a blueprint, not a blank wall. His name is Reo, and today, you're going to ask him to show you a piece of the past."
The weekend sunlight streams into my room, gentler than the weekday light. There is no urgency of a school bell, no anxiety of a cast list or a confrontation. There is only the peaceful hum of a family waking up on a Sunday, and the warm, comforting scent of waffles and maple syrup wafting up the stairs. The morning's re-orientation is the softest, calmest it has ever been. The story on the postcard is not a tale of survival, but one of promise.
When I go downstairs, the scene is a quiet echo of yesterday. My parents are in the kitchen, Reo is sitting at the table with Haruto, a mug of tea cradled in his hands. They're not talking about anything important, just debating the merits of a movie they all watched last night. It's a snapshot of such profound normalcy it makes my heart ache with a gentle, joyful pang. This is real. This is my life, today.
Reo's eyes light up when he sees me, a private, conspiratorial smile passing between us. He looks like a boy who belongs here, his princely aura replaced by a comfortable, lived-in warmth.
After a breakfast filled with easy laughter, my parents announce they have some errands to run before their flight back that evening. There's a new lightness to them, the heavy burden of worry for their strange, distant daughter having been replaced by a cautious, visible hope. Before leaving, my mother pulls me into a hug that feels different from her hesitant one the day before. It's firm, real.
"He's a good boy, Arisa," she whispers into my hair. "You chose well. Both times."
When they're gone, the house is quiet again. Haruto retreats to his room to study, leaving me and Reo alone in the sun-dappled living room. An awkward, first-date energy descends again. We've survived trials and confronted villains, but the simple, uncharted territory of a quiet Sunday afternoon together feels just as monumental.
"So," Reo says, breaking the silence. "What does one do on Day Three?"
I look at him, at his kind, patient face, the face of the boy who has held my entire forgotten history in his heart. "I want to see it," I say, my voice soft. "The before. You told me stories about it. The library, the bookstore… but they're your memories. I want to see a piece of it through her eyes."
A flicker of surprise, then a deep, gentle understanding dawns on his face. He knows what I'm asking for. The proof.
"My old diary is upstairs," I say. "The one from the library. The photo from the accident fell out of it. She… our other self… she wrote about you in there, didn't she?"
He just nods, his expression unreadable.
I go upstairs and retrieve it, the worn leather cool beneath my fingers. I bring it back down and place it on the coffee table between us. It feels like a sacred text, a historical document from a lost civilization.
"I can't ask you to read her private thoughts," I say, my heart hammering. "But… was there a page? A single entry you saw, or one that you knew about, that I could read? Just to… understand. To feel a piece of what she felt."
Reo is quiet for a long time, his gaze fixed on the closed book. He's wrestling with the ethics of it, I can tell. He's been the perfect guardian, never overstepping, never leveraging a past I didn't remember. But I'm asking him to open the door, just a crack.
"There is one," he says finally, his voice rough. "It wasn't a secret. She read it to me, on the rooftop, the day before the accident. It was the day she finally… admitted it. To herself, and to me." He takes a deep breath. "The page should be marked. She always used a blue ribbon."
My hands are trembling as I open the diary. The pages are filled with the familiar, loopy handwriting of a girl who feels like a distant sister. I flip through them, past school gossip and song lyrics, until I find it. A thin, faded blue ribbon, tucked between two pages.
I take a deep breath and open to the marked spot. The entry is dated just two days before the accident. And it's not a story. It's a list.
At the top of the page, in big, bold letters, is the heading: Reasons Why Liking Reo Kisaragi is an Inconvenient but Irrefutable Fact.
A small, surprised laugh escapes me. It's so… clinical. So me.
I start to read the list, and with each line, it's like a new window is opening into the past.
He's the only person who doesn't interrupt me when I'm trying to make a point, even if the point is dumb.
The way the sun hits his hair on the rooftop in the late afternoon. (Okay, that one is shallow, but it's still a fact.)
He brings me the grim history books from the library and pretends he's not doing it on purpose.
He has this tiny, almost invisible scar right above his left eyebrow. You can only see it when he's really concentrating. It means he's fallible. I like that he's fallible.
He remembers things. Small things. Like that I hate green peppers, or that I always start a book by reading the last sentence first.
His quiet. It isn't an empty quiet. It's a comfortable, safe quiet. Like a warm room on a rainy day.
He listens to the same sad, indie music I do and isn't ashamed to admit it.
He's not a prince. He's just a boy who is trying really, really hard. And I think… I think I'm the only one who sees it.
My eyes are swimming with tears by the time I reach the end. This isn't just a list. It's a portrait. It's a detailed, tender, and deeply observant map of her feelings for him. These aren't the grand declarations of a fairy tale princess; they are the small, irrefutable truths that love is actually built on. The quiet, the noticing, the seeing.
At the very bottom of the page, after the last point, there is one final sentence, circled several times. He sees me, too. And that is the most inconvenient, wonderful fact of all. And surrounding the circled words are a dozen tiny, perfect doodles of the Prometheus logo. It wasn't a warning or a clue. It was just a doodle. Her nervous, happy habit. The symbol of the boy she was falling in love with.
I look up at Reo. He's not looking at me; he's looking out the window, giving me the privacy to experience this moment alone. But I can see the tension in his shoulders, the vulnerability.
"The scar," I whisper, my voice thick with unshed tears. "It's right there."
He instinctively raises a hand to his eyebrow, his composure finally breaking. A faint, sad smile touches his lips. "You noticed," he says quietly. "She did, too."
I close the diary and place my hand over the cover, over her words, her feelings. They're not my memories. I cannot claim her joy, her discovery, her history. But the echo… the echo is undeniable. The quiet boy who tries hard. The comfortable silence. The seeing. It's the same portrait I've been discovering for myself, day by day, on postcards and rooftops. I didn't know her, the girl who wrote these letters. But our hearts, it seems, learned to spell the very same name.
"Thank you," I say, my voice full of a gratitude so profound it feels bottomless. "For showing me."
"Thank you for asking to see," he replies, finally turning to look at me, his eyes shining with a love that transcends time and memory, a love that has patiently waited for this very moment. "Welcome back."