> "Sometimes, we don't remember their last words… because they weren't meant for us to understand yet."
It had been 3 years since Rina passed away.
Elias Vane still hadn't spoken a full sentence about her. Not to anyone. Not even to himself.
Every night he sat by the window in silence, a cup of tea growing cold in his hands, replaying her final words like a song stuck in his mind. Not dramatic. Not whispered in mystery. Just… strange.
> "It's always around the fourth day."
That's what she said before she closed her eyes for the last time.
No one asked what it meant.
Maybe no one even heard it properly.
But Elias did.
He just had no idea what it meant.
He thought maybe she meant her medicine. Or the way the pain returned. Or maybe some memory he should've shared with her but didn't.
Whatever it was, the sentence kept scratching at the back of his mind.
---
That weekend, Elias met his old friend Kamran for lunch at a small cafe. It had been a while — years, maybe.
They talked about work. Furniture. Weather. Grief.
Kamran, warm and calm as always, asked gently, "How are you holding up?"
Elias gave the usual polite answer.
Then Kamran said something that made Elias freeze—just for a second.
He was sipping his tea when he casually added, almost in passing:
> "I think the hardest part is that fourth day. When it all starts sinking in… and it finally feels real."
Elias didn't react.
Not on the outside.
He nodded. Sipped his drink. Changed the subject.
But his heart had skipped a beat.
Fourth day.
Again.
Exactly like Rina had said — though she hadn't said it in the same tone, or even the same way. She said it with purpose. As if it meant something specific.
And now Kamran said it in the middle of a casual conversation, as if it was just a figure of speech.
But it wasn't.
Elias knew it wasn't.
---
That night, he had a dream.
Not strange. Not surreal.
Just quiet.
He was standing in their childhood kitchen.
Afternoon sunlight. Dust in the air. A kettle boiling on the stove.
Rina was there, much younger — maybe fifteen.
She was writing something on a notepad while Elias cleaned the counter.
She looked up and said, smiling, almost playfully:
> "You never notice what happens on day four. That's your problem."
Then he turned to look at the note she was writing.
But it was blank.
And the moment he leaned in to read it—
he woke up.
No alarm. No loud sound.
Just an empty silence in the room.
He sat still for a long time.
Then picked up a pen and wrote in his notebook:
> Rina. Fourth day. Kamran. Dream. Blank note.
Something was starting to form. A pattern. A thread.
He didn't know what it meant yet. But the same sentence—spoken at death, repeated in a dream, echoed by a friend—didn't belong to coincidence anymore.
It belonged to a question that hadn't yet been asked.
---