Tuesday came with its familiar gray sky and breath of autumn on the river.
Ciel rose early, charcoal already staining his fingertips before the kettle even finished boiling.
The fig tree courtyard waited — that small, sacred patch of stone and green where memory felt less fragile.
He arrived first, as always. Sketchbook open, pencil tapping against the paper in restless beats.
Ten minutes. Then twenty.
He drew to calm his breath: a single line for the curve of her cheek, another for the bend of her collarbone.
But the lines shook, no matter how carefully he traced them.
Thirty minutes. He checked his phone. Nothing.
He told himself:
"She's just running late."
But a chill bloomed at the edges of that thought — the cold whisper of a fear older than words.
An hour passed.
The fig tree's leaves stirred in the breeze, a soft sound that felt too much like goodbye.
He flipped through his older sketches, desperate for something solid.
Her face stared back at him from page after page — different seasons, different lives — yet always her.
"Where are you?" he whispered, voice cracking in the empty courtyard.
At last, he called her. Once. Twice. Straight to voicemail.
His pulse thundered, the world narrowing to the gray stone under his feet.
"Elara," he whispered into the phone. "It's Tuesday. Please… remember."
Theo found him there hours later, still seated on the cold bench, knuckles white around his pencil.
"She didn't come?" Theo asked gently.
Ciel shook his head, voice too raw for words.
"Maybe she just forgot what day it was," Theo offered, though even he didn't sound convinced.
"It was always Tuesday," Ciel rasped. "Even when nothing else stayed… Tuesday did."
Rain began to fall, soaking the pages of his open sketchbook.
Ciel made no move to close it.
"What if this is it?" he whispered, barely audible. "What if this time, she really forgets?"
Theo placed a quiet hand on his shoulder, grip warm and grounding.
"Then remind her," Theo said softly. "Even if it breaks you."
At dusk, Ciel stood, legs stiff and cold.
He traced his thumb over the last sketch he'd made of her: unfinished, the eyes only half-drawn.
"Elara," he murmured, voice shaking. "Wherever you are… please remember."
Back at his apartment, the quiet felt louder than the rain outside.
He spread the sketchbooks across the floor — years of faces, symbols, notes scrawled in desperate ink.
The same spiral. The fig tree. The word Tuesday, circled and underlined again and again.
In the hush of that room, a terrible thought took root:
What if this time, she forgets before I can remind her? And what if I forget too?
He closed his eyes, breathing ragged, and whispered the promise he had made across lifetimes:
"Even if you forget me…I will keep looking."
But in the cold quiet of that missing Tuesday, it felt less like hope —and more like a prayer whispered into empty air.