Her question wasn't an accusation. It was a lament. A quiet expression of awe at a feat of emotional endurance she was only just beginning to comprehend.
You remembered all of that?
All I could do was nod, my throat too tight to form words. Yes. Every sunrise. Every laugh. Every single forgotten moment. I remembered.
Sina's gaze held mine for a long, heavy moment before she finally looked away, a single tear tracing a path down her cheek. She was processing the scale of it. Not just the deception, but the devotion. Not just the manipulation, but the memory.
Dr. Thorne chose this moment to gently step back in, her voice a calm, steadying presence in the emotionally saturated room. "Sina," she said softly. "That was a lot to take in. It's okay to feel overwhelmed. We can stop for today."
Sina shook her head, not looking at anyone, her eyes fixed on the blank television. "No," she whispered. "I'm... okay." She took a shaky breath, like a diver surfacing from a great depth. "I think... I need some fresh air."
Her aunt Elara immediately started to get up. "I'll come with you, sweetheart."
"No," Sina said again, a little stronger this time. "Please. I just need a minute. Alone." She looked up, and her gaze, with a hesitance that broke my heart, landed on me. "...almost alone."
The unspoken request hung in the air, a fragile, terrifying invitation.
Dr. Thorne and Elara exchanged a look. It was the doctor who gave a slow, measured nod. "Five minutes," she said, her tone clinical but her eyes communicating a deeper understanding. "Just to the apartment building's courtyard. Stay where we can see you from the window."
It wasn't a date. It wasn't a romantic moment. It was a supervised, therapeutic exercise. And it was everything.
The walk down the hallway and into the elevator was a silent, charged journey. We stood on opposite sides of the small space, not touching, not speaking, acutely aware of the massive, unsaid thing that now existed between us. It wasn't a secret anymore. It was a shared history, a landscape of ghosts that only I had the map to.
The cool night air of the courtyard was a relief. The space was small, just a few benches and some manicured shrubs, lit by the soft glow of pathway lights. We walked to the center and just... stood there. The silence stretched, filled with the sounds of the city's distant hum.
I didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry" felt too small. "I love you" felt too complicated. So I just waited, giving her the space she had asked for.
Finally, she spoke, her voice quiet, aimed at the night sky rather than at me.
"That girl," she said. "The one on the videos. She seems... happy."
"She was," I replied, my voice hoarse. "You... you were."
"She laughed a lot," Sina continued, her tone one of distant observation. "She wasn't scared. Or confused. She just seemed... free." She finally turned to look at me, and her expression was one of profound, heartbreaking envy for a version of herself she would never be. "What was it like? To be with her?"
The question floored me. She was asking me to describe herself to herself.
"It was like..." I struggled, searching for words that could possibly do it justice. "It was like chasing the sunrise. Every day, I knew it was coming, and every day, it was new and beautiful and... worth it. It was the only thing in my life that mattered."
She processed this, her gaze dropping to her hands. "So when... when you were with me, this whole time... since the cat... were you just pretending? Trying to get back to her?"
I understood her fear immediately. Was this new, constructed reality just a pale imitation? Was she just a stand-in for the ghosts on the screen?
"No," I said, with a conviction that came from the deepest part of my soul. "Sina, no. Look at me."
She hesitated, then slowly lifted her gaze to meet mine.
"That girl on the screen... that's just a part of the story," I told her, my voice earnest, desperate for her to understand. "But she's not you. Not the you I know. I don't know the girl who won the claw machine on Day 83. I don't know the girl who has lunch with Kaito and Maya. I don't know the girl who survived my confession on a bridge and was brave enough to watch those videos tonight. The only Sina I get to know, the only one I get to keep, is the one standing in front of me right now."
I took a tentative step closer, closing some of the space between us.
"And she is just as amazing as all the others."
Her breath hitched. A fresh wave of tears welled in her eyes, but these felt different. They weren't tears of pain or confusion. They were tears of... release. Of understanding.
I had validated her. The "her" of today. I wasn't in love with a ghost. I was falling for the survivor.
"It's just... so much," she whispered, shaking her head, the full weight of it still pressing down. "Eighty-four days. Eighty-four first dates. Eighty-four goodbyes. How... how did you not give up?"
The question was the core of it all. The one thing her logical, fractured mind couldn't compute. The sheer, irrational endurance of it all.
"Because," I said, my voice dropping to a raw, simple truth. "Even a single day with you was better than a lifetime without."
And there it was. The thesis statement of my entire existence for the past three months. Laid bare in the quiet courtyard.
She didn't have an answer for that. She just cried, silently. And this time, when I reached out and gently pulled her into a hug, she didn't pull away. She leaned into me, burying her face in my chest, and for the first time, she let herself be held by the boy who remembered everything.
From the window above, I knew a doctor and a guardian and an aunt were watching. But in this small, quiet space, it was just us. Not a lie. Not a project. Just a boy and a girl, standing in the ruins, finally starting to speak the same language.