"How do you bottle a sunrise?" I asked, my voice still hoarse, the question more philosophical than literal.
Sina's sad smile widened just a little, a hint of her old playful spark returning, now tempered with a new, quiet wisdom. "With a camera," she said. "Or a sketchbook. Or... a really good thermos of coffee."
Her answer was so simple, so practical, it broke the intensely emotional spell of the moment, letting us breathe again. The world had shattered and been remade, and now, in the quiet morning light, we had to figure out how to live in it.
"Coffee sounds like a good place to start," I agreed.
Her words, "Let's go bottle a sunrise," became the mission statement for the next phase of our lives. It wasn't about me creating perfect days for her anymore. It was about us consciously, deliberately, capturing the fleeting beauty of a single day, together. We became archivists of our own present.
We didn't skip school. The idea of running away from the world didn't fit anymore. Instead, we walked there together, a comfortable, shared silence between us. We were no longer hiding a secret or managing a project. We were just two people who knew each other's scars, walking side-by-side.
The change was palpable. Sora, who met us at the gates, took one look at our faces—at Sina's calm sadness and my quiet relief—and gave a small, almost invisible nod. She didn't ask questions. She just fell into step beside us, the third member of a trio that had been forged in a crucible of lies and had emerged into a landscape of stark honesty.
Our day became a series of small acts of "bottling."
During a boring lecture, I watched as Sina, instead of looking lost, pulled out a tiny notepad and did a quick, thumbnail sketch of the way the light from the projector was hitting a dust mote-filled sunbeam. A tiny, perfect moment of beauty captured from a sea of monotony. She caught me watching, and for the first time, gave me a small, knowing wink.
At lunch, sitting with our friends, the dynamic had shifted again. There was no tension. Maya, who had clearly been briefed by Sora, was on her best, most sensitively cheerful behavior.
"So," Maya said, her voice bright, "now that the 'will-they-won't-they' is officially 'they-did-and-it's-super-epic,' what's on the agenda for the weekend?"
Sina didn't blush or look away. She met Maya's gaze with a calm smile. "Kelin and I," she said, and the way she said "Kelin and I" as a single, unbreakable unit was new and powerful, "are thinking of trying to find the ugliest gargoyle in the city. For a... an art project."
Kaito pushed his glasses up. "An interesting aesthetic parameter. The subjective nature of 'ugliness' will present significant classification challenges."
Zeke just grinned. "Awesome. A gargoyle hunt. Can Agent Pineapple and I be the getaway drivers?"
This was our life now. Open. Honest. Weirdly wonderful. My eighty-four days of secrets were becoming the shared, foundational mythology of our entire friend group.
After school, Sina and I began our hunt. It wasn't about finding a destination. It was about the act of looking. We wandered through old parts of the city, our heads tilted up, searching the cornices of old buildings.
"That one looks more grumpy than ugly," she'd say, pointing.
"And that one just looks vaguely disappointed in my life choices," I'd reply.
We didn't find a truly ugly gargoyle, but that wasn't the point. We found an old bookstore we'd never seen before. We found a bakery that sold lemon tarts that were almost as good as the custard at our taiyaki place. We found a quiet park with a fountain that made rainbows in the late afternoon mist.
And she sketched it all. A quick, energetic drawing of the bookstore's cat. A detailed study of the lemon tart's flaky crust. A loose, watercolor impression of the fountain's rainbows. Each sketch was a bottle, capturing a piece of the day.
As the sun began to set, we ended up back on our bridge. She sat on the bench, putting the finishing touches on her last drawing. I watched her, marveling at the quiet, focused confidence she now possessed.
"The girl from the archives," I said softly, "the one before... all this. She never sketched this much. She drew sometimes, but... not like this. Not like it was her job."
Sina looked up from her page, a thoughtful expression on her face. "She didn't need to," she replied. "She had you to remember for her." She looked down at her sketchbook, at the pages filled with the evidence of our day. "I don't have that luxury. But..." she tapped the book. "I have this. It's a different kind of memory. Not a feeling, like in my heart. Not a video, like in the archives. It's a choice. The memory of a choice to pay attention."
It was a profound distinction. Her amnesia hadn't changed, but her relationship to it had. It was no longer a void, a terrifying emptiness. It was a blank canvas she had to consciously choose to fill, every single day.
As her bus pulled up, the familiar moment of parting felt different again. There was no sad resignation, no brave preparation for the morning's battle.
She stood up and, without any prompting from a note, she took my hand.
"Okay," she said, her voice firm, like a field general giving a command. "Tomorrow. Sunrise. This bridge." She squeezed my hand. "Bring coffee."
She got on the bus. I watched it go, a genuine, uncomplicated smile on my face.
She hadn't just had a good day. She had built one, piece by piece, and bottled the evidence. And she was already planning the next one. She wasn't just my partner in fighting her condition anymore. She was the leader. And I realized, with a rush of profound love and admiration, that I would follow her anywhere. Even into the next, uncertain sunrise.