The air on the bridge, heavy with the weight of eighty-five days of unspoken history, suddenly felt light. Her declaration—a conscious, deliberate reset—hadn't erased the past, but it had drawn a line. It was an acknowledgment of everything that had happened, and a brave, terrifying choice to step over that line and into something new.
"So," she said, hugging her arms as if a cold wind had blown through, though the air was still. "What happens on the... the first and last day?"
The question was so genuine, so achingly vulnerable. All my old instincts, the showman who orchestrated grand romantic gestures, screamed at me. Taiyaki! Arcades! Prophecies! But I squashed them down. That was the old game. The lie. The honest answer was far simpler, and far more terrifying.
"I have no idea," I confessed. And the honesty of it felt like a fresh, clean breeze. "All my other first days came with a script. This one... we're just winging it."
A small, hesitant smile touched her lips. "Winging it," she repeated, testing the words. "Okay. I think I can do that."
An awkward, but not uncomfortable, silence fell. The truth was, we were both completely lost. We were two strangers who knew everything and nothing about each other. She knew the highlight reel of my heart. I knew the intimate details of her condition. But we didn't know how to just... be.
"We should... probably go to school," she said finally, looking towards the street. The pull of routine, of the familiar, was strong.
"We could," I said, a spark of the old, impulsive Kelin igniting. "Or... we could skip."
The suggestion hung in the air, a direct echo of Day 78. But this time, it wasn't a clever ploy. It was a genuine question. A choice.
She looked at me, and I saw a war in her eyes. The old, cautious Sina was battling the brave, adventurous ghost from the videos. "We'd get in trouble," she said, but her voice lacked conviction.
"Probably," I admitted. I gestured to the city stretching out before us, beyond the park. "But that girl from Day 54... I don't think she'd care about a demerit."
The challenge was laid. Was she the girl from the notebook, or the girl from the screen?
She was quiet for a long moment. I could practically see her weighing the risks, the fear of the unknown warring with the desire to be the person she'd seen herself be. Finally, she took a deep, decisive breath.
"Okay," she said, a new, determined light in her eyes. "Let's skip."
The simple word felt like a monumental victory.
"But," she added, holding up a finger. "On one condition. No plans. No 'quests.' No 'prophecies.' You're not the tour guide. Today... we're both just tourists."
My grin was so wide it hurt my face. "Deal."
And so began the strangest, most awkward, and most beautiful first date of my life.
We didn't go to the taiyaki shop or the arcade. Those places were haunted, saturated with memories that weren't hers. Instead, we just walked, letting the city guide us. We were tourists in a town we'd both lived in our whole lives.
The conversation was stilted at first. We were walking on eggshells, both afraid of saying the wrong thing. We talked about the weather. We talked about the weird architecture of a new building.
Then, we passed a small pet shop with a window full of puppies tumbling over each other. Sina stopped, her face pressed against the glass, a genuine, unforced laugh bubbling out of her as a tiny golden retriever tripped over its own feet.
The sound was like a key turning in a lock.
"They're so clumsy," she giggled, her earlier tension melting away in the face of pure, unadulterated puppy joy.
"He's like Zeke's spirit animal," I joked, and the shared reference, the easy camaraderie of our new, real friendship, landed perfectly.
She laughed again, a little louder this time. The ice was broken.
From there, the conversation began to flow. But it wasn't the witty, performative banter of the past. It was... quieter. More curious. She'd ask me a simple question, "What's your favorite band?" and I would give a real, honest answer, not one calculated to impress her. Then I'd ask her, "What's the best thing you've ever drawn?" and she'd tell me about a watercolor of a rain puddle she was proud of, a memory from a time before the accident, a piece of the "real" her she held onto.
We were discovering each other, not as romantic comedy archetypes, but as people. Flawed, quiet, real people.
Late in the afternoon, we found ourselves in a part of the city neither of us knew well, a little neighborhood of old houses and quiet streets. She took out her notebook—the same leather-bound book, but it felt different in her hands today. It wasn't a medical device. It was just a journal.
She didn't write a list of facts. She sat on a bench and started to draw. A sketch of an old, gnarled tree we had just passed. Her hand moved with a quiet confidence.
I sat beside her, not speaking, just watching. It felt more intimate than any of our dramatic adventures. I wasn't orchestrating this moment. I was just... being allowed to witness it.
When she finished, she looked at the sketch, then at me.
"Last night," she said softly, her gaze returning to the notebook. "Dr. Thorne said that my memories... they're like footprints in the sand. Wiped away every night."
My heart ached. "Sina..."
"It's okay," she said, giving me a small, sad smile. "But today... it doesn't feel like that. It doesn't feel like a footprint." She lightly touched the pencil drawing on the page.
"It feels like a sketch," she whispered. "I know it won't be in my head tomorrow. But it's here now. On the page. Proof that I saw it. Proof that I was here. And... it feels like enough."
It was a profound, heartbreakingly beautiful declaration of acceptance. She was finding a new way to live. Not just surviving the reset, but creating something that could endure it. A sketch. A piece of proof.
As the sun began to set, we made our way back towards her bus stop, the silence between us comfortable now, filled not with tension, but with the quiet hum of a day truly shared.
This day had no grand climax. No dramatic kiss. No rescued cat. It was a day of puppies, and quiet conversation, and a single, simple drawing. It was messy, and awkward, and uncertain.
And it was the first day that had felt completely real.
When her bus arrived, she turned to me. The familiar moment of parting.
"So," she said, her voice a little shy. "Tomorrow morning... will you still be here?"
The question held the weight of the world. She was asking if I had the strength to do this, to face the girl who wouldn't remember this quiet, beautiful, awkward day.
"Yeah," I said, my voice thick with a promise that was deeper than any I'd ever made. "I'll be here."