She stayed up that night.
Just in case.
It wasn't like they had a plan.
He didn't text. Didn't call. He never did.
But somehow, Lisa thought — if he was going to do it, it would be tonight.
The moment.
The words.
Whatever it was between them, it would finally become something.
She replayed the last time they'd seen each other — behind the station, under those lanterns.
You know I'm older than you.
Two months.
Still counts.
And she smiled.
She hadn't told him, but she brought something back from Seoul — a bracelet, woven silver. Small. Unisex.
She bought two. One for him.
She waited until 1:00 a.m.
Then 2:00.
No text.
No knock.
Nothing.
She went to bed.
The bracelet stayed in her pocket.
The next morning, she checked the old inbox they used — the one she made for him in middle school, back when he didn't have a phone yet.
0 new messages.
By the end of the week, she had told herself a new story:
He forgot.
By the second week:
He's distancing.
By the third:
I was wrong about what we were.
The real truth never even crossed her mind:
That something had gone wrong.
Across the country, in a secure HID operations node hidden beneath a fake export company near Kyoto Station, the Osaka resonance spike had already been tagged and processed.
Too late to erase.
Too loud to ignore.
The report landed on the desk of a mid-tier analyst named Director Iha, who pushed it up the chain with three simple words:
"Possible Prime Signature."
It reached Director Karasawa's eyes three days later.
And that's when everything changed.
Seung-min watched it unfold in real time.
He had no power to stop it. Couldn't delete the record. Couldn't edit the signal path.
All he could do was trace the field ripple from Osaka.
One kilometer radius.
Time-stamped: 8:18 PM.
Right outside Lisa's agency building.
He rubbed his face. Cursed softly.
"You idiot…"
Then he typed a new request into the system:
TRACKING REQUEST: SAGARA, KYOSUKE – EXTERNAL ANOMALY PROTOCOL
STATUS: LOST / INACTIVE
COMMENT: POSSIBLE OVERRESONANCE. SUBJECT UNSTABLE.
He hit submit. Logged out.
Sat back in the chair.
And didn't move for a very long time.
Lisa didn't mention him again.
Not to her parents. Not to her label. Not even to herself.
But when she flew back to Osaka one final time to pack her things, she found an old school notebook wedged behind a desk drawer.
She opened it.
Inside, folded crisp and yellowed:
Three stars.
Two bold. One smaller. Slightly above.
Drawn in pencil.
She pressed her hand against the page.
Didn't cry.
Didn't smile.
Just stood there, frozen in a space no one else knew existed.
That night, as her train pulled out of Osaka Station, she looked back once.
You were supposed to say goodbye.
The words never reached her lips.
But they never left her.