Sora's question was not an accusation. It was a genuine, baffled inquiry from one chess player to another who had just revealed they'd been playing an entirely different, impossibly complex game all along.
What in the world have you been doing for the last eighty days?
The bus stop was quiet now, the streetlights casting long, lonely pools of light on the pavement. The weight of her question, and the unspoken eighty days of my life it represented, settled heavily between us. I could lie. I could downplay it. I could give her a half-truth.
But I was done with lies. Even the brilliant, compassionate, and effective ones. I was tired. So deeply tired of being the sole archivist of a love story no one else could read.
"Let's walk," I said, my voice hoarse. I couldn't have this conversation standing still.
Sora just nodded, her wary eyes fixed on me, sensing the shift. We started walking, our footsteps echoing in the quiet twilight, heading back towards the river, towards the bridge that had become the silent witness to our strange story.
"It started eighty-one days ago," I began, the words feeling foreign and rusty after being locked away for so long. "I was in the courtyard. I saw her for the first time. She dropped her books. I helped her pick them up."
I kept my gaze fixed on the pavement in front of me, recounting the story in a flat, journalistic tone. It was the only way I could get through it without breaking.
"She laughed at something I said. It was... the first time I'd felt anything in a long time. Joy. Anything. Later that day, I found out about her condition. A friend told me. He warned me to stay away."
I glanced at Sora. Her face was a mask of stoicism, but I could see the tension in her jaw. She was listening. Intently.
"The next morning," I continued, "I saw her again. She walked right past me. No recognition. I was just... another stranger. It felt like a punch to the gut." I paused, taking a shaky breath. "But then I thought... if every day is a new beginning for her, then... every day can be a new beginning for us. I could make her laugh again. For the first time, again."
We reached the bridge and stopped, leaning against the cold railing where Sina and I had stood so many times. The river below was dark and glossy, reflecting the city lights like scattered jewels.
"So I did," I whispered, the memories flooding back now, a dizzying, heartbreaking cascade. "Day 2, I pretended to be a tourist and asked her for directions. Day 3, I 'accidentally' spilled coffee on my own shirt just to make her laugh. Day 12 was the cake shop. Day 23 was this bridge, watching the sunset."
I looked at Sora. Her face was pale in the dim light, her eyes wide with a dawning, horrified understanding.
"Day 42," I went on, my voice cracking, "we got caught in the rain and ran to that taiyaki shop. She said the custard was the best thing she'd ever tasted. On Day 61, we saw ducks in this river. On Day 78, I orchestrated an elaborate plan involving a cat named Mr. Snugglesworth to meet her."
The name of the cat, her landlady's cat, was a deliberate choice. A piece of irrefutable proof.
Sora's carefully constructed composure finally broke. She let out a soft, strangled sound, her hand flying up to cover her mouth.
"And yesterday... Day 80," I finished, my voice raw, "I spent the whole day hiding from her because you told me to, and watching her look for me was the single most painful thing I have ever experienced in my entire life."
Silence descended, thick and heavy. All of it was out. The whole, insane, impossible truth. Eighty sunrises. Eighty first hellos. Eighty last goodbyes.
I finally dared to meet Sora's eyes. They were shining with unshed tears. The sharp, analytical guardian was gone, replaced by a girl who was staring at a kind of love, a kind of devotion, that she had never imagined was possible.
"You're... you're insane," she whispered, but the words held no heat. They were spoken with a quiet, terrified awe. "Completely and utterly insane."
"I know," I said, a hollow laugh escaping my lips.
"All of them?" she asked, her voice trembling. "All those little echoes she's been having? The songs? The claw machines? That was you? You were... building those moments? Over and over?"
"I was just trying to make her happy," I said, my shoulders slumping with the full weight of it all. "One day at a time. It was the only thing I could do. I recorded a lot of it... on my phone. A video diary. Just so I'd have proof that it was real. That I wasn't the one who was crazy."
Sora stared at the dark water for a long time, processing the sheer scale of the Sisyphean task I had set for myself. She was piecing together months of Sina's unexplained moods, her moments of 'static', her drawings of things she didn't remember seeing. It was all clicking into place.
Finally, she turned to me. The tears had receded, replaced by a look of fierce, steely resolve. The guardian was back, but this time, her defenses weren't pointed at me anymore. They were pointed at the problem.
"Okay," she said, her voice firm, clear, and imbued with a strength that steadied my own trembling soul. "The game has changed, Ishida. This isn't just about managing her confusion anymore."
She locked her gaze with mine, and I saw a partnership solidify in her eyes. An alliance of ghosts, fighting for a girl lost in the fog.
"From now on," she declared, her voice ringing with a newfound purpose, "we're not just creating memories. We're building a bridge. And we're going to get her across it. Together."