(Opening Re-Orient Card - Arisa's Voice)
"Good morning. Your name is Arisa, and you are wearing a silver locket. It was a gift from Reo. Open it. The photo on one side is from your new beginning, your Day One. The empty side is for a past you don't remember, a choice you have yet to make. This locket is your new primary anchor. It will be on your skin every morning, a truth that survives the reset. Today, when you meet him on the rooftop, thank him for it. His name is Reo, and yesterday, he gave you a way to carry your own story."
The first thing I'm aware of, even before the light, even before the alarm, is the feeling of something cool and smooth against my skin. My hand instinctively goes to my chest, my fingers closing around a small, heart-shaped object. I sit up, my mind a familiar, disoriented blank, and my first conscious action of the day is to look down at the silver locket resting against my collarbone.
My fingers, guided by a tactile memory that must have been forged in the hours before sleep, find the tiny clasp. It clicks open. Inside, a smiling, laughing boy. And an empty space beside him.
The video, the postcard, they fill in the blanks. They give the photo a name, a context. They tell the story of a gift, a promise, and a choice. This morning's re-orientation is different. It's not just a set of instructions; it feels like waking up in the middle of a beautiful, ongoing love story. I am both the reader and the main character.
When I get to the rooftop, the locket is a warm weight against my heart, a constant, tangible reminder. He's there, waiting by the railing. The look of quiet, anxious hope on his face as he waits for me to cross the rooftop is becoming a treasured, familiar sight.
"Hi," I say, my hand unconsciously touching the locket.
"Hi," he replies, his eyes immediately going to the glint of silver at my throat. "It looks... right. On you."
"Thank you," I say, and the words feel too small for the magnitude of the gift. "For this. For… everything. For letting it be my choice."
"It was always your choice, Arisa," he says softly. "I just gave you the frame."
The school day passes in a new, calmer rhythm. Itsuki is a cold, distant planet at the front of the room, but his gravitational pull feels weaker today. My afternoon library session with Satoru is productive and friendly, the awkwardness replaced by an easy, platonic comfort. And my stolen hours with Reo after—walking home through the park, sharing another snack on the swings—feel less like a secret mission and more like the natural, wonderful shape of our new life.
This becomes our routine. School, a quiet hour with my past, and a sun-drenched, gentle afternoon with my present. Each day, Reo gives me another piece of the 'before.' Not a grand revelation, but a small, quiet detail.
"This was the bench where you first told me about your parents' work overseas," he'll say. Or, "You always hated the bell that rang for third period; you said it was off-key." He is painting a portrait of her, my ghost, and in her brushstrokes, I am finding my own colors. I don't remember loving him then. But I understand why she did. The reasons on her list are proven true, every single day.
One week after he gave me the locket, something new happens.
It starts with the waking. I'm pulled from sleep not by my alarm, but by a dream. A fleeting, formless dream, but with a powerful emotional weight. A feeling of… comfort. Of a quiet, safe, rainy afternoon. A scent of old paper and fresh coffee. It's gone the moment I open my eyes, but the emotional residue, the warm, golden feeling of it, lingers like the heat from a sunbeam.
I go through my routine. The video. The postcard, now chronicling a week of quiet dates and shared secrets. I look at the locket, at the laughing boy and the empty space. And for the first time, the space doesn't feel like a missing piece. It just feels… like potential.
As I'm brushing my hair, getting ready for school, my phone chimes with a text. My alarm. It's my daily reminder to head to the rooftop. It chimes with the strange, gentle melody I'd heard on that very first, terrifying morning.
He chose this for you, a ghost of a voice whispers in my head. He knows it's the opening chord of your favorite sad, indie song. The thought isn't a memory. It's an intuitive leap, a conclusion drawn from a hundred different pieces of information he's given me. It's my present-day mind, piecing the puzzle together. But it feels as true as any memory.
When I get to the rooftop, the morning sun is particularly bright, casting everything in a sharp, beautiful light. Reo is standing there, looking out at the city. And as I see his silhouette against the brilliant, blue sky, the feeling from my dream returns, a sudden, powerful wave of warmth and recognition. And a single word, a name, rises in my mind, unbidden, whispered from some deep, forgotten well.
It's not just his name, but my version of it. The secret name a girl in love would use.
He turns as I approach, his familiar, hopeful smile on his face. "Good morning, Arisa."
I stop a few feet away, my heart doing a slow, spectacular somersault. The name is on my lips, a bubble of impossible sound. I can't have remembered it. It's impossible. It's a trick of the light, a symptom of wishful thinking. A side effect.
"Arisa?" he asks, his smile faltering with a flicker of concern. "Is everything okay?"
I look at him, at his kind eyes, at the tiny scar above his eyebrow, at the boy who patiently rebuilt my universe. The boy whose name my heart just whispered to me at sunrise.
"Reo," I say, testing his name, the familiar, official one. Then I take a deep breath, and I let the whisper out into the world, a fragile, impossible gift. It's soft, but clear in the quiet morning air. A single word. The one from her heart, now somehow in mine.
The reaction is instantaneous. Every ounce of color drains from his face. His carefully composed calm shatters into a million pieces. He stares at me, his eyes wide with a shocked, heart-stopping disbelief, as if I've just spoken a language he thought was long dead.
I can't read the emotion on his face. It's not just shock. It's something more complicated. It's awe. It's terror. It's a hope so profound and so dangerous it seems to hurt him.
"What…" he finally chokes out, his voice a raw, broken thing. "What did you just call me?"