"Good morning. Your name is Arisa. The room in your head is no longer crowded—it's merging. Yesterday, you had your first real, full memory. A rainy afternoon on a rooftop, with him. The postcard can't explain the science of it, only the feeling: you are no longer a person with an echo. You are becoming a person with a history. The process is unpredictable. Sometimes a scent will bring a feeling, sometimes a touch will bring a whole scene. Be patient. Reo isn't just your anchor to the present anymore; he's your anchor to both shores."
Waking up is like surfacing from a deep, strange ocean. For a fleeting second, my first thought isn't Where am I? but a warm, sleepy contentment accompanied by the phantom scent of rain. Then the reality of the present snaps into place, and my mind becomes the familiar, quiet space, awaiting its morning data feed. The memory of the rooftop rain is gone, tucked back into a room I no longer have the key for.
But the postcard is a map. It tells me that for a few beautiful, terrifying minutes yesterday, I wasn't just remembering a story. I was in the story. The fact of it settles in my chest, a warm, heavy stone of profound possibility.
When I meet Reo, the quiet intensity between us has reached a new frequency. He's no longer just waiting for a sign of recognition; he's now watching a cartographer at work, a girl who is slowly, painstakingly mapping the forgotten coastline of her own heart. He's not the storyteller anymore; he's the atlas, the reference text I can turn to when my own survey tools fail.
"Anything?" he asks, his voice soft, not with pity, but with a quiet, scientific curiosity we now share.
"Just the echo of the feeling," I admit, touching my locket. "But it's stronger this morning. The postcard said it was real. Thank you for… believing me."
"There was never any doubt," he says, his gaze steady. "I was there, remember?"
This becomes the new shape of our days. My second, and then third, therapy sessions are gentle explorations. Dr. Kisaragi isn't pushing for more dramatic memory breakthroughs. He's helping me build the vocabulary of my own mind. We're not trying to force the door open; we're just sliding notes under it, listening for replies.
The partial memories come in flashes, unpredictable and sensory-driven. They are rarely full scenes. More often, they are fragments, perfect and small and strange. I'll be in the cafeteria and the clatter of a dropped tray will trigger the phantom taste of the too-sweet melon soda from a vending machine we used to frequent. In music class, I'll hear a certain chord and feel a sudden, sharp pang of the happy-sad melancholy of watching the sunset with him from the library window. I start carrying a small notebook, separate from my postcard diary, just to jot down the triggers and the feelings. Smell of coffee = safety + feeling of being understood. Sound of the 3 p.m. bell = annoyance + secret shared smile. I am cataloging the emotional ingredients of our lost past.
And Reo is my collaborator. After each new fragment surfaces, I bring it to him, like a found object.
"Today it was a color," I tell him one afternoon in the park. "That deep blue of the sky right after the sun goes down. It made me feel… like I was about to hear good news."
His eyes light up with recognition. "The Stargazing Knight," he says immediately. "The play. Your character's dress was that exact color. That was the color she was wearing when my character finally confessed. We had a long conversation about what her 'color of hope' would be. You chose that one."
He is fitting my feelings into his facts. Together, we are building a three-dimensional model of my memory, a beautiful, fragile sculpture made of echoes and history.
But not all the fragments are sweet.
One afternoon, I'm helping Haruto put away groceries. He opens a new jar of strawberry jam, and the sweet, artificial scent hits me. I'm suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of cold, clammy dread, so powerful it makes my knees buckle. My heart starts to pound with a frantic, animal terror.
"Arisa?" Haruto says, rushing to steady me. "What is it? Are you okay?"
"The smell," I gasp, backing away from the open jar as if it's a snake. "It's… wrong. It's… fear."
I can't explain it. But the feeling is undeniable. I document it in my notebook: Strawberry scent = terror + the feeling of falling.
When I show it to Reo, his face goes pale. He's quiet for a long, heavy moment. "Okay," he says finally, his voice carefully controlled. "This one… this is a harder one."
We are sitting on our bench. He doesn't take my hand. He gives me space. "The day of the accident," he begins, his gaze fixed on some distant point. "You were carrying a small bento your mom had packed for you. It had a little container of strawberry jam for your toast. When the car hit… it was the one thing that broke open in your bag. The smell was… everywhere."
I stare at him, my stomach twisting. My mind has no picture of the crash. But my body, my deepest, most primal senses, they remember the scent of terror.
"It's okay," Reo says, his voice a low, steady anchor in the sudden storm of my second-hand trauma. "It's just a fragment. It can't hurt you. It's just a book on the shelf. You don't have to open it." He finally looks at me, and his eyes are filled with a fierce, protective love. "But it's important. Because it's proof that this process isn't just about recovering the good memories. It's about recovering the truth. And the truth is complicated."
This new, darker fragment changes the nature of our project. It's not just a sweet, nostalgic scavenger hunt anymore. We are now dealing with trauma, with the tangled, painful roots of my condition. And I find myself leaning on Reo not just as a historian, but as a steady, unshakable shield. His calm in the face of my recovered fear is a testament to the strength of his own heart. He isn't afraid of my broken pieces.
A few days later, we're in the bookstore, our sanctuary. I'm idly running my hand along a shelf of worn, leather-bound books when my fingers brush against a particular volume. A jolt, like a low-grade electric shock, goes up my arm.
My hand, small and a little clumsy, is trying to put a book back on a high shelf. It's too heavy. It slips. Strong, steady hands catch it before it falls. "Need some help, Starwatcher?" a low, amused voice says.
It's another full memory. Quick, fleeting, but whole. His hands over mine on a book. His voice, gentle and teasing.
I pull the book from the shelf. It's a thick, heavy atlas of the stars. I open it, and tucked into the spine is a faded, forgotten photograph. It's not a polaroid. It's a strip from a photo booth. But it's not our photo strip. It's an older one. In it, two kids who can't be more than twelve or thirteen are making silly faces at the camera. A younger me, with a gappy, brace-filled smile. And a younger, ganglier version of Itsuki Kurobane. They look… happy. Like friends.
My breath catches in my throat. I look up at Reo, who has come to stand beside me, a question in my eyes.
He looks at the photo strip, and a deep, weary sadness fills his face. "The truth," he says softly, "is always more complicated."