The air in the room became charged, fragile as spun glass. Sina stood in the doorway, a ghost in her own home, making a request that was both an act of profound bravery and a willingness to walk through a fire.
I want to see them.
Dr. Thorne was the first to recover. Her clinical composure returned, but it was softened now with a gentle caution. "Sina," she said, her voice even. "Viewing those videos could be extremely disorienting. It will be like watching a stranger who looks just like you, living a life you have no memory of. It could be very distressing."
"It can't be more distressing than this," Sina replied, her voice gaining a sliver of strength. She gestured vaguely to her own head. "Than the 'static.' Than the silence. I want to know who the stranger is. The one in my dreams." Her amber eyes flickered to me, just for a second. The accusation was gone, replaced by a deep, terrifying, and consuming curiosity.
Her aunt Elara looked at Dr. Thorne, her expression a silent, pleading question. The doctor gave a slow, deliberate nod. This was the first step of the new experiment. Honesty. Integration.
Sora moved without a word, her actions fluid and practiced. She got the hard drive from her room, connected it to the television, her hands deft and sure. She was back in her element, the competent, loyal guardian, facilitating the impossible.
The living room was cast in the blue-ish glow of the TV screen. We all took our places, not as a tribunal anymore, but as witnesses. Sina came out and sat on the couch, curling into the corner, as far away from me as she could get while still being in the room. Her aunt sat beside her, a protective, grounding presence. Dr. Thorne sat in the armchair, watching Sina with an eagle's focus. I remained where I was, feeling like an exposed nerve. Sora stood by the television, her hand on the laptop mouse, the gatekeeper to my ghosts.
"Which one first?" Sora asked, her voice hushed.
I cleared my throat. "Start... at the beginning," I said. "Day 1." My voice cracked. The real Day 1. The one no one but me had ever seen.
Sora found the file. It was a short, thirty-second clip, recorded in my bedroom late that night. My younger face filled the screen, looking dazed, ecstatic.
"Her name is Sina," my recorded voice said, full of a breathless wonder I had forgotten I'd ever felt. "She has this laugh. It's like... color. In a grey world. I think I'm in trouble."
The clip ended. The screen went dark.
The silence in the room was absolute. Sina was staring at the blank screen, her face completely pale. She had just seen a boy she barely knew, a version of myself from almost three months ago, describing the exact moment he started falling for her. A moment that, to her, had never happened.
"Play the next one," she whispered, her voice a thread.
Sora clicked on the file for Day 12. The shaky video filled the screen, showing the inside of the little bakery. It showed a Sina-who-was-not-Sina, laughing as she got a smear of frosting on her nose. The camera's perspective was clearly mine, hidden behind a menu.
Elara let out a small, choked gasp. Sina just watched, her hands clenched into fists in her lap.
On we went. Sora skipped around, a curator guiding a tour through a lost lifetime.
She played a clip from Day 23. Sina on the bridge at sunset, her hair blowing in the wind, her voice clear. "It looks like spilled sorbet."
She played a clip from Day 42. A shaky, rain-streaked video of us huddled in the taiyaki shop. "This is the best thing I've ever tasted!" the girl on the screen exclaimed.
Clip after clip, ghost after ghost, memory after memory. The sculpture garden. The ducks in the river. Each one was a small, perfect shard of a life only I had lived.
With each new video, a subtle shift happened in the room. Sina's rigid posture began to relax, just a little. Her hands unclenched. Her breathing deepened. She wasn't just watching a stranger anymore. She was watching herself be happy. Genuinely, uncomplicatedly, joyfully happy. The girl on the screen wasn't confused. She wasn't scared. She was alive, vibrant, falling in love with a dorky, awkward boy who kept orchestrating ridiculous, perfect days for her.
Finally, Sora navigated to the file for Day 78. The big one. Feline Prophecy. She pressed play.
The TV screen filled with the absurd, chaotic, wonderful energy of that day. My disastrously theatrical "trip." Sina's beautiful, full-throated laugh at the mention of Mr. Snugglesworth.
Then came the part in the record store.
The screen showed us squeezed into the tiny listening booth, our heads close together, sharing the tangled headset. The sad, haunting piano melody I'd recorded on my phone's microphone filled the living room. The Sina on the screen was quiet, thoughtful, her eyes distant.
Her recorded voice, soft and clear, said, "It sounded like it was waiting for someone."
The Sina in the living room, our Sina, let out a soft, sharp gasp. Her hand flew to her chest. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, wide with a dawning, impossible recognition. The static in her head finally had a source. The echo finally had a voice. She was watching the birth of a memory she didn't know she had.
Sora stopped the video. The room was plunged back into a heavy, emotional silence.
Sina didn't move for a full minute. She just stared at the blank screen, her mind clearly reeling, connecting a thousand invisible dots, trying to absorb the sheer, overwhelming weight of eighty-four lost days of laughter, of connection, of a love that had grown in secret, right under the surface of her own life.
She finally turned her head, slowly, and looked at me. Her amber eyes were swimming with tears, but the fear and the anger were gone. They had been replaced by a look of such profound, heart-shattering sorrow and a fragile, burgeoning wonder that it stole the air from my lungs.
She didn't say, What did you do?
She didn't say, Why did you lie?
She just looked at me, at the boy who had carried all of this alone for so long, and whispered a single, devastating question.
"You remembered all of that?"