The days moved forward — but Haruto felt stuck.
School was loud, chaotic, full of clattering desks and echoing announcements, sneakers squeaking against tile, and the endless murmur of teenage voices. But inside… Haruto drifted through it all like a ghost. His body was present, but his heart?
Somewhere else.
The laughter in the corridors didn't reach him. The sunlight through the windows felt pale, washed out. Every color seemed a few shades duller. The world… I just felt off. As if he'd left something behind.
Or worse — someone.
He couldn't explain it. Not to his classmates, who barely knew him. Not to his mother, who noticed the blankness in his eyes and tried to fill the silence with extra breakfast or gentle reminders. And definitely not to his teachers, whose voices blurred into white noise the moment he sat down at his desk.
It was like waking up with a song stuck in your head — one you never remembered hearing but somehow knew every word to. Every now and then, something would spark: the brush of wind through his hair, the sound of rain tapping lightly against the window, a shadow that passed too closely behind him in the hallway.
A tug.
A flash.
A memory that didn't belong in this world.
A pendant. A feather swaying gently on a chain. Raindrops forming tiny ripples on a lake's surface. A soft laugh. Fingers intertwined. A whisper, carried by the breeze.
"You're kind of special, Haruto."
He would freeze mid-step, heart thudding, eyes scanning the room like he expected her to be there — smiling at him, arms folded, head tilted just slightly to the right.
But she wasn't.
Because she wasn't real.
Right?
And yet… every time he looked across the classroom, there she was — or someone like her. A girl with long black hair reading by the window. A soft laugh echoing from the courtyard that sounded achingly familiar. A figure in the hallway, just out of reach, vanishing around the corner the moment he blinked.
Not her. But almost.
One afternoon, as he sat in class, a gentle breeze flowed through the open window beside him. He stared out at the drifting clouds, zoning out of a history lecture about feudal Japan, when he saw something.
A white feather.
Floating down.
Caught by the wind, dancing.
It landed on the window sill in front of him. Light. Fragile.
His breath caught.
The feather.
He reached out slowly; almost afraid it would vanish the moment he touched it. But it didn't. It felt real. Tangible. Soft between his fingers. And yet it set off a thunderclap in his chest.
Yumiko.
Her name echoed inside him like thunder in the valley of his ribs. It filled the hollow space in his chest like breath after drowning. His vision blurred for a moment as her face resurfaced — her eyes, clear and deep as the lake. Her voice, both steady and uncertain. Her hand in his, matching pendants catching the moonlight.
He clutched the feather tight in his fist and excused himself to the bathroom, heart pounding.
This wasn't over.
That night, he couldn't sleep.
So, he wrote.
At first, just small things — random thoughts, stray lines, phrases that popped into his head out of nowhere. Then… full sentences.
"We were at a lake. There was a storm."
"She said I was a nice weirdo."
"Her smile made the world quieter."
"Feather pendants. Hers were silver."
"She laughed like sunlight on water."
"Yumiko."
He started drawing too.
Sketches of a haunted house built from cardboard and string lights. A campfire, flickering beneath a wide starry sky. Two pairs of shoes left by a lakeshore. A girl sitting beneath a Sakura tree, holding a strip of paper in her hands.
A list of things she had said.
A list of things he remembered feeling.
None of it made any sense.
He shouldn't know these things. Shouldn't feel like real memories.
But he did.
"Haruto?"
His mom knocked on the door gently the next morning, a hint of concern in her voice. He had fallen asleep at his desk, face pressed into the notebook, pen still in hand. The feather was tucked inside the journal like a bookmark.
He got up, slowly, moving through the motions again.
Breakfast. School. Hallways. Class.
Drifting.
Searching.
At lunch, he sat alone again. Not because no one talked to him — some did. But they all felt… far away. He stared at the other students, wondering if anyone else carried a dream so vivid it cracked their world in half.
He glanced across the courtyard. A girl sat alone under a tree, reading.
Long hair. Legs crossed. A soft expression on her face.
Something twisted in his chest.
He stood, almost involuntarily. I walked across the courtyard with a heart full of hope and fear.
But when she looked up — it wasn't her.
The girl smiled politely, blinked in confusion.
"Um… can I help you?"
Haruto hesitated. "Sorry. Thought you were someone else."
He turned and walked away, shame and sadness crawling under his skin like insects.
Later that day, he found himself on the rooftop.
No one else was up there. The sky was starting to turn gold, with long streaks of
orange and rose cutting across it.
He stood by the railing.
The breeze brushed through his hair, cool and familiar.
He closed his eyes.
"Can I kiss you now?"
"Matching weirdos, huh?"
"I'm falling for you."
"Let's write the next chapter together."
Tears gathered in his lashes before he even realized.
He wiped them away, frustrated. He didn't even know what he was mourning.
A dream?
A ghost?
A version of himself that had felt whole?
That evening, Haruto sat on the floor of his room, surrounded by pages from his journal. Drawings, letters, fragments. They were messy. Disjointed. Some pages tear-streaked, some covered in hurried, almost frantic handwriting.
He picked one up and read aloud.
"Yumiko,
If you were just dreaming…
Why did you make everything feel real?
Why do I remember the way you smelled
like Sakura and rain?
Why do I remember the sound of your voice cracking when you said my name?
Why does my chest hurt like I left something behind in a world I can't go back to?
Why does it feel like I'm waiting for you?"
The silence after was suffocating.
Until—
A breeze blew in through the open window.
The pages fluttered.
One tore loose, carried across the room… and slid under his closet door.
He got up slowly, heart pounding again.
I opened it. And there, lying neatly on the floor...
Was a second feather.
Identical to the one he found on the windowsill.
His hand trembled as he picked it up.
Something inside him whispered:
She was real.
And maybe…
Just maybe…
She still is.