After dinner, the house surrendered to a deeper quiet, one that did not soothe, but unsettled. It was the kind of silence that pressed itself into the corners of the walls and slipped beneath doors, not with gentleness, but with weight. A stillness that seemed to carry the breath of something unsaid, something waiting.
Downstairs, I could hear the faint hum of Mom's voice as she washed the dishes, the melody fragile and tired, as though even her humming remembered what this house had lost. Aoi had vanished into her room without a word, her absence louder than any goodbye.
The air felt heavier now. As though even silence had learned how to linger.
I climbed the stairs with reluctant steps, each one echoing in the narrow hallway like a whisper I was afraid to hear. The light overhead was dim, casting long shadows that danced across the old photographs and peeling wallpaper. My fingers trailed the railing absently, drawn into the rhythm of memory, how I used to sprint up these steps, two at a time, breathless with laughter and light.
I stopped.
My old bedroom door stood slightly ajar. I hadn't planned to go there. I hadn't even realized that my feet were carrying me toward it. But there it was, half-open, like a quiet invitation or a warning.
I pushed the door open.
At first, it looked the same.
But only at first.
A slow ache bloomed in my chest as I stepped inside. It was like walking into a dream someone else had tried to finish for me. The walls, the furniture, the scent in the air, they had all been touched by time, reshaped by someone else's hands. The longer I stood there, the more I realized this wasn't my room anymore.
It had become hers.
Aoi's.
The walls were lined with framed photographs of us. Childhood moments frozen in laughter and sunlight. The kind of photos you forget exist until they look back at you like echoes. There we were on the beach, arms crusted with sand, our faces shining. There we were in winter, her small fingers tugging at my jacket sleeve as snow swirled around us. She had chosen these moments carefully, almost reverently, as though curating the fragments of a bond she refused to let die.
And then there were the smaller details. Her books stacked neatly along the shelves. Her trinkets resting on the nightstand. The soft pink bedsheets that draped across what used to be mine. This was no longer a borrowed space. It had been claimed, transformed. Quietly. Completely.
I was the ghost here.
I crossed the threshold like I was stepping into something sacred. My fingers found one of the frames, the beach photo and brushed against the glass. I could almost hear the tide again, almost feel the heat of the sun against my cheeks. She had placed it near the window, just where the light would touch it in the morning. It wasn't decoration. It was remembrance. An altar of memory built in the silence.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. The unfamiliar softness pressed up beneath me, but all I felt was the cold. The kind that came from somewhere deeper than skin. My throat tightened.
This wasn't just a room that had changed. I had changed. We both had. And now I was sitting in the shell of a past that had moved on without me.
A knock interrupted the stillness.
"Riku?"
Her voice was barely more than a breath.
I turned my head. "Yeah," I answered, my voice rough, catching against the edges of everything I hadn't said.
The door opened slowly. Aoi stepped inside, pausing just beyond the threshold. Her eyes scanned the room, but they didn't settle until they found me. She looked unsure of herself, as if she'd wandered into a space even she didn't know how to navigate anymore.
She didn't sit. She walked to the window and stared out at the darkness beyond.
"I didn't mean to change your room so much," she said quietly. "I just… I think I wanted to keep you here. Somehow. Even when you were gone."
Her voice cracked, the emotion trembling just beneath the surface.
I opened my mouth, but no words came. Everything I could have said felt too fragile to hold.
"It's fine," I said at last, though the words felt hollow in my mouth. "It just feels… different now."
She nodded, still facing the window. "Yeah. I guess it does."
I looked at her, really looked. Her shoulders, once so small and familiar, now carried a weight I didn't recognize. Or maybe one I hadn't noticed until now. There was something about the way she stood there, caught between who we were and who we had become, that made my chest ache.
She turned, stepping back toward the door.
"I'll leave you alone," she murmured.
But just before she crossed the threshold, she stopped. Her hand lingered on the doorframe. She glanced back at me, her eyes holding something fragile. Something real.
"Riku… I missed you."
And then she was gone.
I sat there, surrounded by the remnants of a childhood now preserved under glass and soft pink sheets. The silence returned, but it was no longer empty. It echoed with her voice, with a closeness that felt too far and a distance that felt too near.
And I realized. I didn't know where I belonged anymore.
Not in this room.
Not in this version of us.
And that truth cut deeper than I was ready to admit.