The hours between the phone call and 6 p.m. were a grey, featureless blur. I moved through my house like a ghost, my mind numb. The romantic lead in my grand, tragic story had been recast as a defendant in a clinical hearing.
When I arrived at their apartment building, the sun was already setting, casting long, mournful shadows across the street. The air was cool, carrying the scent of damp pavement and the coming night. This was the place where eighty-four of my days had ended, watching her bus pull away. I had never been inside before. It felt like crossing a sacred, forbidden threshold.
Sora opened the door. She looked exhausted, her usual sharp confidence replaced by a weary resignation. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She didn't say anything, just gave me a tired, defeated nod and stepped aside to let me in.
The apartment was small, clean, and devastatingly impersonal. It was a space designed for function, not comfort. The walls were mostly bare, the furniture practical. But here and there were flashes of Sina. A small, vibrant watercolor of a sunset propped on a bookshelf. A collection of whimsical, mismatched coffee mugs in the kitchen. And on a small end table, Agent Blue, the lopsided stuffed bear, sat staring out at nothing. The sight of it was a punch to the gut.
Two women were sitting in the living room. One, a woman in her late forties with a kind but weary face and the same amber eyes as Sina, had to be her aunt. The other was Dr. Aris Thorne. She was sharp, intelligent, with piercing dark eyes and an aura of calm, unshakeable authority. She looked exactly as her voice had sounded on the phone.
And from a closed door down the short hallway, there was a profound and total silence. Sina's room.
"Mr. Ishida," Dr. Thorne said, her voice even. "Thank you for coming. Please, sit." She gestured to an armchair that put me directly opposite them. The tribunal. Sora remained standing by the door, a silent, anxious sentinel.
"Let's not waste time," the doctor began, her gaze clinical and assessing. "Sora Minami has provided me with an extensive, if highly unorthodox, account of the last three months. Including a hard drive containing... eighty days of video documentation."
My stomach turned to lead. The archives. The vault had been opened.
Sina's aunt, whose name I learned was Elara, wrung her hands. "I've watched some of them," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "The video from the record store. The one at the arcade. He... you..." she looked at me, her expression a painful mix of anger and awe. "You genuinely care for her. Anyone can see that. Which makes what you've done both... unbelievably cruel and unbelievably kind all at once."
That was it. That was the paradox that had defined my entire existence for months, summed up perfectly by the woman I had been lying to all this time.
"My primary concern is Sina's mental state," Dr. Thorne cut in, her tone pulling the conversation back to the clinical. "Her reality, which is already a fragile construct she has to rebuild every morning, has been systematically compromised. The trust she has in her notes, in her best friend, in her own perceptions... it has been shattered. The resulting psychological distress is acute."
"We know," Sora whispered from the doorway. "We broke it. We take full responsibility."
Dr. Thorne's gaze shifted to her. "Your 'Project Mnemosyne' was a reckless and unethical piece of amateur psychology, Sora. You are lucky that this didn't trigger a full psychotic break."
Sora flinched but didn't argue. We had no defense.
"However," the doctor continued, turning her piercing gaze back to me. "It has also created a situation I've never encountered. According to Sora's notes, Sina's subconscious appears to be forming... pathways. Resonances. Her 'dreams,' her 'static,' her so-called déjá vu—these are not things her condition should allow for. A memory, for an anterograde amnesiac, is like a footprint in the sand at the water's edge. The tide comes in, it's gone. Utterly. Your constant, emotionally-charged repetition seems to have... carved some of those footprints into stone."
The metaphor was both beautiful and terrifying.
"We don't know what this means," Dr. Thorne confessed, the first crack in her clinical facade. "We don't know if these 'stone footprints' are a path forward, or just wreckage that will trip her up forever. Which is why we are here."
She leaned forward, her hands clasped on the table. "I have two options, Kelin. The first is the standard medical procedure. A hard reset. We relocate Sina. We change her environment, her routine. We remove all the variables—including you, Sora, this apartment, the school. We scrub the slate as clean as we can. It's the safe, established protocol for managing external trauma to a patient in her condition."
My blood ran cold. To be erased. Utterly. For all of it—the echoes, the foundation, the kiss, the confession—to become just another bad dream she was rescued from. It was a fate worse than being forgotten. It was being invalidated.
"What's the second option?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
Dr. Thorne's eyes held mine. "The second option... is a new experiment. Unorthodox. Potentially dangerous. But it is the only option that honors the reality of what has happened here."
She took a deep breath. "We lean in. We attempt to integrate you, the 'destabilizing factor,' into her recovery. We create a controlled environment where we can observe these memory echoes, these... stone footprints. Instead of a secret, chaotic series of lies, we create a structured, therapeutic approach, with you as a central, honest component."
My heart, which I thought had turned to stone, started to beat again.
"It would mean telling her the truth," Elara added, her voice shaky but firm. "All of it. Gently. Over time. With professional guidance. Letting her see the videos. Letting her process the eighty-four days not as a betrayal, but as... a very strange, very complicated, very real love story."
I looked at them, at these two women who held Sina's world in their hands. They weren't sentencing me. They were offering me a choice. A chance. Not to be Sina's romantic hero, but to be a part of her healing. A consistent, truthful part of her incredibly difficult reality. It was a role I didn't deserve, but it was the only one I had ever truly wanted.
"Yes," I said, my voice thick with an emotion I couldn't name. "Anything. Whatever it takes. I'll do it."
Just as I said the words, the closed door at the end of the hall made a soft click.
We all froze, our heads turning. The door opened a few inches.
And Sina's face, pale and tear-stained, but with a new, quiet determination in her amber eyes, peeked out. She had been listening.
"The videos," she said, her voice a fragile whisper that filled the entire, silent room. "I want to see them."