The sunrise was not a symbol of hope. It was the ticking of a time bomb.
I spent the entire night staring at my ceiling, a prisoner in my own bed. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face—the shock, the wonder, the shy, beautiful smile. And then I would see Sora's face—the fury, the panic, the cold, clinical dread.
I had kissed her. It had been perfect. And it had been the stupidest, most reckless thing I had ever done.
Sora's words echoed in the dark. Out of proportion with the narrative. A seismic event. A new paradox. I had taken our carefully balanced Jenga tower of constructed memories and slammed a bowling ball into the side of it. Now, all I could do was wait for the crash.
My phone, sitting on my nightstand, was a dark, silent monolith. No 5 a.m. strategy text from Sora. The silence was more damning than any angry message could have been. It meant she was waiting, too. It meant there was no plan. The variable was too large, the outcome too unpredictable. All we could do was observe the fallout.
When I finally dragged myself out of bed, I felt like I hadn't slept in a week. My reflection in the mirror was a stranger—a ghost with dark circles under his eyes who looked like he'd single-handedly doomed the entire world.
Zeke's morning text was a burst of oblivious, chaotic energy that felt like it was from another universe.
Agent Pineapple: DUDE. THE KISS. LEGENDARY. We are SO celebrating after school. I'm thinking karaoke. You can sing sad broody songs and I'll do backup. It'll be great.
I couldn't even summon the energy to reply. How could I explain that the greatest moment of my life might have been the very thing that destroyed it?
The walk to school was a death march. Every step was heavy with dread. My usual haunts—the bakery, the bookstore, the bridge—felt like ruins of a lost civilization, the civilization of Before the Kiss.
When I reached the school gates, my worst fears were confirmed.
Sora was there, but she wasn't waiting for me. She was with Sina. And it was bad. I could tell from a hundred feet away.
Sina looked… lost. Utterly, profoundly lost. She was clutching her notebook to her chest like a life raft, her knuckles white. Her face was pale, and her eyes, normally so bright and curious, were clouded with a deep, frantic anxiety. She was talking to Sora in a low, panicked whisper, shaking her head over and over. She looked just like she had on Day 80, the day she'd been haunted by a ghost she couldn't name—only this time, it was a hundred times worse.
The bomb had detonated.
My feet felt rooted to the spot. I couldn't move. Sora finally saw me, and the look she gave me was a complex, devastating mixture of exhaustion, anger, and a desperate plea for help. She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of her head. Stay back. Not yet.
I retreated behind the cover of a large cherry tree, my heart feeling like a block of ice in my chest. I couldn't hear their words, but I could feel the vibrating tension of the conversation. Sina looked like she was on the verge of tears, and Sora was trying desperately to hold her together, her hands on Sina's shoulders, her expression firm but gentle.
After a few agonizing minutes, Sora seemed to calm her down. She guided Sina towards the school building, giving me one last look that said, Library. Lunch. Don't you dare go off-script again.
I watched them disappear, and the full weight of my selfish act crashed down on me. I hadn't just made a mistake; I had actively caused her pain. The happy, wonderful girl I had kissed last night had been erased and replaced by this terrified, confused stranger, and it was entirely my fault.
The morning was a special kind of hell. I actively avoided all the routes where I might see her, my mission of the last few weeks completely reversed. I was a ghost again, hiding in the shadows, not out of a misguided sense of kindness, but out of shame.
When I finally forced myself to go to the library at lunch, Sora was already there, nursing a black coffee and looking like she'd been through a war.
"Tell me," I said, my voice barely a whisper as I sat down. "How bad is it?"
Sora took a long, slow sip of her coffee before answering. "It's… complicated," she said, her voice heavy with fatigue. "The foundational myth held. She doesn't consciously remember the kiss. But the emotional residue, the 'seismic aftershock' as I so eloquently put it, is massive."
She rubbed her temples. "She woke up in a state of sheer panic. She told me she had the most vivid, overwhelming dream. She said she dreamed she kissed someone, and that the feeling of it—the warmth, the surprise, the… rightness of it—felt more real than anything she's ever known. But there was no face in the dream. Just the feeling."
I felt like the floor had dropped out from under me. A dream. Her mind had processed the memory, stripped of its context, and filed it away as a dream.
"She's been a mess all morning," Sora continued. "She keeps asking me if it's possible to fall in love with someone in a dream. She wrote three pages in her notebook, just trying to describe the feeling. She's convinced she's losing her mind. She's analyzing the 'Cat Rescue' story, trying to figure out if her subconscious is manufacturing a crush on you based on that. The lie is being stress-tested to its absolute breaking point."
I buried my face in my hands. "So what do we do?"
"For now, we contain," Sora said, her strategic mind kicking back into gear despite her exhaustion. "I've spent all morning reassuring her. Telling her that intense dreams are normal. That having a crush is normal. We're in damage control mode. The most important thing is that you act completely, one hundred percent normal. No soulful looks. No meaningful pauses. You are the kind, funny, platonic friend. Any hint of romance from you will be like throwing gasoline on the fire of her confusion."
She leaned forward, her eyes locking onto mine, her expression dead serious.
"You detonated the bomb, Kelin. Now we have to pretend we can't hear the explosion. Today, we don't build. We don't reinforce. We just… survive."