The sunrise on Day 87 was, in its own way, the most terrifying I had ever faced.
There was no lie to fall back on, no persona to hide behind. There was only the promise I had made to the girl from the sketchbook, and the absolute certainty that the girl I would meet today had no memory of it.
My morning was a study in quiet anxiety. I texted Sora, not for a plan, but for a simple status update.
Me: How is she?
Sora: She woke up calm. Read the notes. Dr. Thorne added a new section last night. It's… direct.
The vagueness of "direct" was unsettling. What had the doctor deemed necessary for Sina's new reality?
I walked to the bridge, my heart a leaden weight in my chest. This was our new meeting spot, our ground zero. Would she even be there? Had her conscious reset overridden the fragile intention she'd set yesterday?
She was there.
She was leaning against the railing in the exact same spot, but the blue bear was gone. Instead, clutched in her hands, was the sketchbook. Her knuckles were white. She wasn't looking at the river. She was staring at the drawing of the gnarled tree, her expression a mixture of profound confusion and deep, searching contemplation.
She felt my presence before she saw me, her head snapping up, her eyes wide. They were the eyes of a stranger again. Wary, uncertain, and completely devoid of yesterday's shared warmth. The reset had been total. The sight of it was as painful as it had been on Day 2, but this time, the pain was laced with a strange, fragile hope.
This was the test.
I stopped a few feet away, giving her space. "Good morning," I said, my voice gentle.
She flinched slightly at the sound of my voice. "You're... Kelin Ishida," she said. It wasn't a question. It was a fact she was reading from an internal script.
"I am," I confirmed.
Her eyes darted from my face, down to the sketchbook in her hands, and then back to my face. The cogs were turning, trying to reconcile the data she'd been given with the living, breathing person in front of her.
"My notes," she began, her voice a little shaky, "Dr. Thorne's new section... they say some things about you."
"I bet they do," I said with a small, sad smile.
"They say that you... know me. Better than anyone. They say that there's a folder on my laptop called 'The Archives' and that you are the star of it." Her gaze was intense, analytical. The artist from yesterday was gone, replaced by the amnesiac, trying to piece together a life from a manual.
"They also say," she continued, her voice dropping, "that I shouldn't be afraid of you. That you are... important. And that yesterday... we skipped school." She looked down at the drawing again. "And I drew this."
She held the sketchbook out, a silent offering of the only piece of yesterday that had survived the night.
"It's a really good drawing," I said softly.
"I don't remember it," she whispered, the words a familiar, painful refrain. "I don't remember drawing it. I don't remember the tree. And I don't remember... you."
This was it. The moment of truth. Was yesterday a fluke? A single, beautiful day that would now become just another file in the archive, another story she had to be told?
I looked at the drawing, at the sure, confident lines she had made, and then I looked at her, at the deep, desperate confusion in her eyes. The old me would have launched into a story, a distraction. But the new me... the honest me... I just waited.
She kept looking from the drawing to my face, her brow furrowed in concentration. The silence stretched, and I could feel the chance, the fragile hope of this new beginning, starting to slip away.
Then, something shifted in her expression. A tiny flicker. Her gaze became less analytical and more... intuitive.
"That's not true," she said, her voice so quiet I almost missed it.
My heart stopped. "What?"
"What I just said," she elaborated, her eyes still locked on my face. "That I don't remember you. It's not... completely true." She took a half-step closer, her expression turning from confused to awestruck. "My head... my memory... it's a blank page. I know that. But when I look at you..."
She trailed off, her free hand coming up to touch her chest, right over her heart.
"In here," she whispered, her voice full of a wonder that mirrored my own. "It's not blank at all."
The words were a sunburst in the grey morning. The archives, the confession, the honest conversation... it had changed something fundamental. The echoes weren't just random static anymore. They were coalescing. They were becoming a feeling. A feeling that could survive the reset. Her mind was forgetting, but her heart... her heart was starting to remember.
A slow, brilliant smile broke across my face, full of a relief so profound it felt like I could float away.
She saw my smile, and a hesitant one of her own answered it. The wary stranger was gone, replaced by a girl standing on the edge of a great and terrifying mystery, and for the first time, she didn't look scared. She looked intrigued.
"So," she said, clutching the sketchbook, the tangible proof of her own bravery. "Day 87." Her voice was still shaky, but it held a new thread of determination. "What do tourists who have already skipped school do for an encore?"
The script was gone. The lies were gone. All that was left was the truth of the feeling in her heart, and the promise of a boy who would be there to meet her every sunrise, no matter how many it took.
"I don't know," I said, my voice thick with joy. "But I have a feeling it's going to be a good day to find out."