The small copper key in Yui's hand looked heavy as she pushed it into the lock. It was the same key that had always been on her own chain, the one she'd flaunted years ago as her badge of exclusive access.
I was the first to cross the threshold, stepping from the bright evening into a perpetual twilight. The air inside was cool, dustless, and thick with the faint, dried-out scent of salt and cedar.
"See?" Yui said, her voice bright and a little too loud, breaking the silence. She pushed the door shut behind us, the latch clicking with an unnerving finality. "I told you. I kept it exactly the way you left it."
I stood perfectly still in the entryway, trying to reconcile the room with the void in my memory. The house was a museum of a life I could no longer claim. Everything was immaculate. The slippers were lined up beside the shoe rack. The wooden coat pegs were empty, waiting.
Yui, already on edge from the hospital escape, began to fill the quiet with a nervous tour.
"I'm actually a really great housewife, you know," she rattled off, moving to the living room. "I came every single day. Every single day for two years, to clean. I scrubbed the floors and dusted your bookshelves. I even remembered to open the windows for five minutes every morning to air it out, just the way you like."
She was boasting, but the pride in her voice was brittle. She was waiting for me to praise her effort, to marvel at the perfect preservation. She was trying to prove the worth of her sacrifice.
My eyes, however, were not on her; they were moving. My intellect, which had helped me retain enough knowledge for the doctors to declare me "functionally sound," now started working backward. I was a detective in my own crime scene.
The dust. There was none. Not a particle on the ancient wooden cabinet, not a single mote dancing in the thin shafts of sunlight that pierced the window. This wasn't a cleaning job done last week in anticipation of my return. This was two years of obsessive, daily maintenance.
To keep a space like this perfectly static required absolute devotion, an unbearable, relentless schedule.
Yui was talking about the correct method for polishing the kitchen sink. She looked up at me, awaiting my approval.
I didn't answer. I had stopped breathing.
My gaze was locked on the floor near the corner of the small reading table. Wedged between the wooden leg and the dusty skirting board was a piece of white cardstock. It was slightly warped, stained with an unmistakable dark smudge, and printed in playful script with the words: "Happy 17th Birthday, Jun!"
It was my seventeenth birthday card. My eyes immediately recognized Yui's unmistakable, delicate handwriting beneath the printed greeting. And that dark smudge—it was the dried residue of a hundred tears, the unmistakable water mark of heavy, desperate grief.
The reality hit me with the force of a tidal wave—far worse than the blank, terrifying void of my missing memories. The card was proof that she had stood right here. She had held this card. She had tried to celebrate a birthday that never came.
This beautiful, flawless room wasn't a testament to her love; it was a monument to her suffering. I saw them all instantly: the years of silent anguish, the hours spent on her knees, scrubbing dust that wasn't there, trying to scrub away the fact of my absence. I saw the possessive love that had compelled her to build a perfect cage of time, not for herself, but for me.
"And I even got the correct brand of-"
I didn't let her finish. I moved, covering the space between us in two rapid steps, and pulled her into my arms. I crushed her against my chest with a force that made her gasp, the small, brittle sound of her interrupted speech shattering the silence.
It was the first time I had cried since I woke up. No, it was the first time I had ever cried. The tears I hadn't shed for my parents, the tears I hadn't shed when I woke up with a blank mind—they all poured out now, hot and unstoppable, soaking into the top of her hair.
"I'm sorry," I choked out, the word rough and unrecognizable from my throat. "I'm so sorry, Yui. I don't know where I was, I don't know what happened, but I know what you did. I saw what it cost you."
I held the small copper key of my existence, and it was burning my hand with the heat of her two years of tears.
"I will never do that again," I promised, pressing my face into her neck, feeling the delicate pulse of her life against my cheek. "Never. I won't ever leave you alone. I won't be that kind of burden. Never again, Yui."
She was silent for a moment, letting me break, letting the tears fall. Then, slowly, her small hands came up, wrapping around my waist. She held me with a soft, steady strength.
"It's okay," she whispered, her voice low and calm, the voice of the eternal protector. "It's over now, Jun. You kept your promise. You came back."
She stroked the back of my head gently. "And I told you before: I will never let go of your hand, never. So don't worry about that little detail."
We stayed like that until the light outside began to fade and the crying finally stopped, leaving me shaky and exhausted.
When I finally pulled back, I wiped my face on my sleeve and forced myself to look at her. Her eyes were wide and red-rimmed, but she was smiling—the bright, real smile of the girl who had always been my light.
I walked over to the corner of the room, grabbed the backpack I'd brought from the hospital, and began pulling clothes from the drawers. My hands worked quickly, shoving shirts and a toothbrush into the pack.
"Jun? What are you doing?" Yui asked, her expression confused.
I slung the backpack over my shoulder and walked to the door, placing the copper key back on the small table. I didn't need it anymore.
"I'm going home," I replied, a small, reckless smirk finally breaking through the grief. "I can't very well let my wife sleep alone anymore, can I? Consider me permanently in your care, Yui-chan."