Graduation day was supposed to be a celebration. Instead, it felt like a funeral.
I woke up on the morning of Day 183 to a world that was fundamentally broken. There was no sunrise on the bridge, no ceremony of re-awakening. There was just a profound, echoing silence. The song of our lives had stopped mid-verse.
I went to the bridge anyway. I don't know what I was expecting. That she would change her mind? That her morning reset would somehow erase her heartbreaking decision?
But she wasn't there. For the first time in one hundred and eighty-three days, my sunrise was a solo act. The silence on the bridge wasn't peaceful; it was a gaping wound.
My phone, a lifeline for so long, remained dead. No messages from her, no strategy texts from Sora. I was completely, utterly alone with the wreckage.
The graduation ceremony was a surreal, out-of-body experience. I sat with my classmates, a sea of beaming, excited faces in identical caps and gowns, and I felt like an alien observing a foreign ritual. Diplomas were handed out. Speeches were made about bright futures and limitless potential. My name was called, and I walked across the stage, shook the principal's hand, and accepted a piece of paper that felt utterly meaningless.
Through it all, I searched for her. I saw her sitting a few rows ahead, a small, still island in the celebratory sea. She was seated between her aunt and Sora. Her face was pale, her expression carefully blank. She never once looked in my direction. When her name was called, she walked the stage with a quiet, heartbreaking grace and then returned to her seat, a ghost at her own graduation.
The ceremony ended. The air filled with the triumphant roar of the graduates, caps flying into the air in a shower of navy blue cardboard. Families hugged, friends cheered, and a future full of promise seemed to break open like a piñata.
And in the middle of it all, we were a universe apart.
Zeke found me, his usual exuberant grin dimmed by a cloud of concern. "Dude," he said, clapping a heavy hand on my shoulder. "This is… this is not the triumphant karaoke vibe I was planning on." He was holding out his yearbook. "Sign it?"
I took it, my hand feeling disconnected from my body, and scrawled a meaningless platitude. I couldn't even summon the energy for a good inside joke.
"Sora told me what happened," Zeke said, his voice unusually gentle. "She's trying to save you, man. By being a noble idiot."
"I know," I said, my own voice sounding distant. "And the worst part is, she's not wrong." The shame of my moment of fear, my hesitation to promise "forever," was a fresh, open wound.
Then, through the crowd, I saw Sora making her way towards us. Her face was grim.
"Can I talk to him for a second, Zeke?" she asked. Zeke gave my shoulder one last squeeze and disappeared into the throng of happy families.
"How is she?" I asked immediately.
"How do you think?" Sora countered, her voice sharp with a grief that matched my own. "She's holding it together with tape and glue. She wrote herself a new note this morning. The 'instruction' was simple: Do not go to the bridge. Do not talk to Kelin. This is for his own good. Be strong."
My heart fractured. She was using the very system of bravery we had developed together to enforce our separation. She was weaponizing her own strength against her heart.
"She's convinced she's doing the right thing," Sora continued, her gaze softening. "She loves you so much that her greatest fear isn't forgetting you anymore; it's holding you back. And your… hesitation… the other day, it just confirmed that fear for her."
"What am I supposed to do, Sora?" I pleaded. "Lie to her? Tell her that a lifetime of this won't be hard? That I'm not scared? I'm terrified. But being without her is a million times worse."
"I know," she said. "But she doesn't. All she saw was your fear. And it validated hers." She took a deep breath, looking around at the joyful chaos. "Look, I have to get back to her. But… don't give up. Not yet. She's making a sacrifice based on a single moment of doubt. The archives… they have 182 days of evidence to the contrary. She'll get there. But she has to do it on her own time."
Sora turned to leave, then paused, turning back. She was holding Sina's yearbook. "She's been letting everyone else sign this all day," she said, her voice dropping. "But she won't ask you. She thinks it's… cruel. To ask you to write in a memory book for a girl who has no memory."
She held it out to me. "I think you should sign it anyway."
I took the yearbook, the smooth, generic cover feeling impossibly heavy in my hands. Sora gave me a final, sad, empathetic look and then melted back into the crowd.
I found a quiet spot under a tree at the edge of the school grounds, away from the celebration. I opened the book. The pages were filled with the well-wishes and inside jokes of her friends. "Sina, you're the sweetest! Good luck!" from Maya. "Your contributions to the study group were statistically significant. Maintain optimal performance in all future endeavors," from Kaito.
I found a blank page near the back. And I knew, with a certainty that cut through my fog of misery, that I couldn't just sign it. I couldn't just write "Good luck in the future."
This wasn't a yearbook entry. It was my closing argument. It was the only voice I had left to speak to her across the chasm she had created.
I took out my pen, the same one I'd used to sign Zeke's yearbook with a meaningless scrawl, and I began to write. I poured all the pain, all the love, all the frustration, and all the unwavering, stubborn truth of my heart onto that single, blank page. I wasn't writing to the girl who broke up with me yesterday.
I was writing to the stranger who would wake up and read it tomorrow.
When I was done, my hand was cramping and my face was wet with tears I hadn't realized I'd been crying. I found Sora again, who was standing with Sina and her aunt by the school gates, preparing to leave the life we had known behind for good.
I walked up to them, my heart pounding. Sina saw me coming and flinched, her eyes full of pain. She took a half-step back.
I didn't try to speak to her. I just looked at Sora. "Can you make sure she gets this?" I asked, my voice raw, as I held out the yearbook.
Sora took it, her fingers brushing mine. I allowed myself one last, lingering look at Sina. At her sad, beautiful, determined face. The face of the girl who was trying to save me by destroying me.
I love you, my heart screamed.
But all I said was, "Goodbye, Sina."
And then I turned, and I walked away from my own graduation, from the ghost of our perfect high school life, and into a future that was, for the first time in 183 days, completely and utterly blank.