The city lights shimmered like scattered stars, reflected on rain-slick roads that had just begun to dry after a passing shower.
Inside a quiet restaurant tucked between towering buildings, two people sat across from each other—hands occasionally brushing, smiles lingering a second too long, as if neither of them wanted the night to end.
Nishibi Haruto watched his wife the way people look at things they are afraid of losing, even while they are still there.
"You're staring again," she teased, stirring her drink.
"I'm allowed," Haruto replied. "It's my wedding night."
Sakura blinked at him, then smiled in that quiet way she always did when her heart was too full for words.
"Yes," she said gently. "It is."
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
There was no need.
The kind of silence between them wasn't empty—it was full. Full of everything they had been through to reach this night. Full of promises that didn't need to be spoken anymore because they had already been chosen.
Outside, the world moved on as it always did. Cars passed. People hurried. Time did what time always does—never waiting for anyone.
Inside, it paused.
Not because it wanted to.
Because it was allowed to.
Haruto felt something dangerously simple:
This is happiness.
Not grand. Not eternal. Just warm, fragile, and real.
Sakura reached across the table and set her glass down carefully, as if even sound deserved respect tonight while she lightly touched his hand.
"Haruto.."
He looked at her fully now.
"Yes?"
There was a silence between them that did not feel empty.
It felt prepared.
"If we ever get another life…"
He chuckled softly. "Another life? Already planning ahead?"
She didn't laugh with him this time.
Her eyes lingered on his a little too long.
"…I hope we find each other again," she said.
However,Haruto who was obviously bewildered by the her sudden bomb-dropping sentence could only utter a single word.
"Huh?"
She frowned.
She racked her brain and searched for words, then seemed to abandon them halfway.
"If something ever tried to take this away," she said instead, "would you still find me again?"
This time however Haruto stopped teasing her after realising the serious tone shift.He said without hesitation.
"That's not even a question," he said. "Even if I forgot everything… I'd still come back to you."
He raised his hand with the palm facing her showing a singular gold ring decorating his finger.
He added. "We'd find each other anywhere."
Sakura smiled—but this time, it was smaller,quieter.
Like she didn't fully believe the world was that kind.
Outside, a truck horn disturbed the peacefull night somewhere in the distance.
It sound was distant
Haruto didn't notice.
Sakura did—but only for a moment.
And then she looked back at him.
and decided, without knowing she had decided anything at all, that it was not important and forgot about it.
They left the restaurant together.
The door closed behind them with the soft finality of something ordinary.
The air outside was cool enough to feel like memory being written in reverse. Streetlights stretched across the pavement in long golden lines, as if the city were trying to stitch something broken back together before it had even fallen apart.
Sakura walked slightly ahead.
Haruto followed, as he always did.
Not because she led him.
But because he liked watching her exist in front of him.
There are moments in life that feel like they are being recorded even as they happen—not by cameras, but by something quieter. Something that knows how fragile joy is, and chooses not to interfere.
This was one of those moments.
He thought about how normal everything felt.
How safe.
How final normal moments always seem in hindsight.
A truck appeared at the intersection ahead.
Too fast.
Too loud.
Too....certain.
The world did not warn them.
It never does.
Haruto turned his head slightly, as if sensing a change in the air—
but by then, the distance between cause and consequence had already collapsed.
Neither of them saw it coming.
Not in time.
Not in any time that mattered.
There was no dramatic sound that the heart remembers correctly afterward.
Only motion.
Only impact.
Only the sudden, impossible silence where a second ago there had been a new life beginning to start.
The world did not stop.
It simply failed to include them anymore.
________________________________________
And somewhere beyond the boundary where names lose meaning, where memory is still forming but not yet shaped into regret-
something listened.
Something that had always been listening.
And something, very quietly, prepared to answer,quietly.