The new normal was deceptively comfortable. For the next few days, Operation: Bridge-Building was a quiet success. I walked with Sina and Sora to class. I ate lunch with their study group. Sora, with the precision of a master propagandist, continued to weave me into the fabric of Sina's daily life.
Every morning, Sora's new addition to the notes prepped Sina for my presence. Every day, Sora and I would reinforce the "Cat Rescue" memory and add tiny, believable new ones. A shared joke in the hallway. A quick chat about a book. We were creating a carefully curated, consistent history.
And it was working. The "static" in Sina's eyes was gone. The searching, haunted look had been replaced with an easy, trusting warmth. When she looked at me now, she saw a friend. A real, solid, explainable friend.
But as I lay in bed one night, scrolling through my phone, I came face-to-face with the ghost in my machine.
My video diary.
It was a folder, hidden away, labeled simply Archives. Inside were dozens and dozens of video files, each titled with a date. Day 12 - Cake Shop Disaster. Day 23 - Sorbet Sunset. Day 42 - Taiyaki Rain. Day 78 - Feline Prophecy.
My thumb hovered over the file for Day 78. A lump formed in my throat. This was the raw data. The proof of the life that our new, elegant lie had been designed to cover up. This was a library of a thousand beautiful moments that, if ever discovered, would shatter the fragile peace we had worked so hard to build.
With a trembling finger, I pressed play.
My own face filled the screen, looking tired but happy, illuminated by the dim light of a streetlamp at the bus stop.
"End of Day 78," my recorded voice said, sounding hollow and distant. "Mission success. We... we had taiyaki. We went to the arcade. She beat me at the dance game." A shaky, humorless laugh. "She won a stupid blue bear. And for a few minutes in a dusty record store, she listened to a sad song and she understood me completely. I know she did." The Kelin on the screen looked away, his jaw tight. "And tomorrow... she won't remember any of it. But I will. I'll remember for both of us."
I slammed the phone off, my heart pounding, my chest aching with a grief I thought I had managed to bury.
Our new plan, for all its brilliance, was built on a foundation of erasure. It required me to forget. To pretend that Day 81 was our true beginning. It required me to treat the first eighty days of our story as a failed experiment, a collection of dangerous, radioactive data that had to be contained.
Every video in this folder was a landmine. Every beautiful, secret memory I cherished was now a liability.
The next day at school, the weight of the archives was heavy on my mind. During a free period, I found Sora in the library, her head buried in a textbook. I sat down opposite her, and she looked up, her sharp eyes immediately sensing my mood.
"What is it?" she asked, closing her book. "You look like you're carrying a bomb."
"In a way, I am," I said, my voice low. I pulled out my phone and slid it across the table to her. I had the Archives folder open.
She looked at the screen, her brow furrowing as she read the file names. Day 55 - Sculpture Garden. Day 61 - Duck Family. Day 79 - Amateur Meteorologist. Her eyes widened in comprehension. "This is... your proof."
"It's eighty days of raw, unedited, foundational-myth-shattering proof," I said grimly. "And I don't know what to do with it."
Sora picked up the phone, her fingers hesitating before she tapped on a random file: Day 34 - Bookstore. The video played, silent. It was shaky, clearly taken from a distance. It showed Sina in a bookstore, her face lit up as she found a book by her favorite author. Then, the camera panned to me, pretending to browse a few aisles over, a stupidly happy, secret smile on my face.
Sora watched, her expression unreadable. She swiped to another video. And another. A montage of forgotten laughter, of shared snacks, of fleeting, perfect moments played out in silence on the tiny screen. She was seeing the ghosts I lived with every single day.
Finally, she put the phone down, her face pale.
"Delete them," she said, her voice quiet but firm.
I recoiled as if she'd slapped me. "What? No! Sora, this is... this is everything! It's the only proof I have that any of it was real!"
"It was real, Kelin," she said, her voice softening, using my first name in a way that felt disarmingly gentle. "I know that now. But we are building a new reality for her. A safer one. And that... that is a weapon. In the wrong hands, or even in the right hands at the wrong time, it would destroy her. Not just confuse her. It would prove to her that her mind is a prison she can't even perceive. It would validate her deepest, most terrifying fear."
I knew she was right. Logically, pragmatically, she was a hundred percent correct. Each video was a loaded gun. But emotionally, the thought of hitting 'delete' felt like a betrayal. It felt like killing eighty versions of the girl I loved, eighty days of my own life, my own heart.
"I can't," I whispered, the words tasting like failure. "I can't do it."
Sora was quiet for a long moment, her gaze fixed on the phone as if it were a venomous snake. She saw the conflict in my eyes, the agony.
"Okay," she said finally, her voice resolute. "Okay. You can't. So I'll make the decision for you." She slid the phone back to me.
"Give it to me."
I stared at her. "What?"
"Give me the phone. Or a hard drive. Or whatever you have this stuff saved on," she clarified, her expression deadly serious. "You can't delete it. And you can't be trusted to keep it safe, because you're too emotionally compromised."
She was declaring herself the custodian of my ghosts.
"I will be the gatekeeper of this archive," she stated, her voice leaving no room for argument. "I will lock it down, encrypt it, and hide it where no one, not even myself, can stumble upon it by accident. It will not be a weapon. It will not be a liability. It will simply be... an archive. Preserved, but sealed."
It was a radical solution. A compromise I hadn't even considered. She wouldn't destroy my past. She would simply... put it in a vault. She was offering to share the heaviest burden I had, to become the co-warden of my secret history.
Looking at her, at the fierce, unwavering loyalty in her eyes—loyalty to Sina, and now, shockingly, to me—I knew I could trust her.
"Okay," I agreed, my voice hoarse. "I'll transfer the files tonight."
As I walked out of the library, I felt a strange sense of loss, but also of profound relief. I was no longer the sole keeper of the memories. The ghosts in the machine now had a new guardian. And I hoped to God she was strong enough to keep them buried.