Her question hung in the empty hallway between us, heavy and sharp as a shard of glass.
Who are you, Kelin Ishida?
My mind was a catastrophic system failure. All my carefully constructed scenarios, my witty lines, my clever personas—the messenger, the meteorologist—evaporated into smoke. I was left standing there, stripped bare, just a boy with a mountain of one-sided memories and a devastating secret.
And the girl he loved was looking at him like he was a ghost.
My tongue felt thick and useless in my mouth. Say something. Anything. Make a joke. Deflect. Lie. The old Kelin, the master of these daily missions, was screaming at me.
But my heart, that traitorous, hope-addled muscle, wouldn't let me. This moment felt too fragile, too sacred to be covered up with a clever lie.
I took a half-step towards her, my hands rising slightly in a gesture of peace. "I'm just..." I started, my voice hoarse. "... a guy who likes the same sad songs you do."
It was the truest thing I could say without telling her everything.
Her expression didn't soften. The fear and confusion were still swirling in her eyes. "But I've never heard that song. I know I haven't. My notebook..." She instinctively touched the leather-bound book in her bag. "I write everything down. A song like that... I'd write it down."
"Maybe you just dreamed it," I offered weakly. The explanation was so flimsy it was insulting.
"It didn't feel like a dream," she whispered, her gaze distant, unfocused. She was looking inward, trying to catch a phantom. "It felt like... an echo. Like your voice, from a long way away."
An echo. She used that word again.
The implications of what was happening crashed down on me with the force of a tidal wave. For so long, I had accepted the clinical finality of her condition. Memories are wiped. The slate is clean. But what if it wasn't? What if a memory wasn't a file to be deleted, but a song whose melody could linger, faintly, in the quietest rooms of the mind?
This wasn't just a sign anymore. This was a fracture in the very foundation of her—and my—reality.
I could see the struggle on her face. Her entire life was built around trusting her system: her notes, her friend Sora, the information she was given each morning. Trusting them was how she survived. I was an anomaly, a glitch in the code, a piece that didn't fit. And it was scaring her.
I had wanted to create a bridge. Instead, I had created a chasm.
"Sina," I said, her name a quiet plea. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I got weird. It won't happen again."
My apology seemed to snap her back to the present. She looked at me, really looked at me, and her expression shifted. The fear receded slightly, replaced by a profound, heart-wrenching sadness.
"It's not your fault," she said, her voice barely audible. "It's... me. I get like this sometimes. My mind plays tricks on me. It's just... the static."
The static. That's what she called it. The confusing, baseless feelings. The emotional debris of forgotten days.
She was rationalizing it. Forcing the impossible thing that had just happened into a box she could understand. She was retreating to the safety of her diagnosis, because the alternative—that a boy she'd met this morning was somehow connected to her past—was too terrifying to contemplate.
The moment was over. The fracture was closing. She was choosing the story she knew how to live with.
"I have to go," she said again, and this time, there was a finality to it. She clutched her bag straps, a small, fragile soldier preparing for a battle I could only watch. "Sora will be waiting for me."
She gave me one last, lingering look—a mixture of fear, fascination, and regret—and then she walked away.
She didn't run. She walked with a deliberate, steady pace, as if trying to physically walk away from the confusion, from the "static."
I watched her go until she turned the corner and was gone.
The hallway was silent.
The fragile, beautiful day I had built for her was shattered. My reckless gamble hadn't just failed; it had backfired in the most painful way possible. I hadn't brought her comfort or a sense of connection. I had brought her fear and confusion. I had reminded her that she was broken.
Zeke's excited words from lunch echoed in my mind. This is a sign! A crack in the Matrix!
He was wrong. It wasn't a crack of light.
It was a crack in a dam. And I was terrified of the flood that was coming.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number. My blood ran cold.
Unknown: This is Sora Minami. Stay away from Sina.