A week passed in the northern village.

  Yuki spent his days with Rin — walking the gardens, recounting stories, reading aloud from their old favorite books. She laughed often, leaned into his presence like sunlight seeking warmth. But every time her hand touched his, it trembled slightly. As though her body remembered something her mind still could not.

  At night, she dreamed.

  And in those dreams, she cried.

  Aoi drifted like a ghost.

  She spoke with the villagers, helped in the kitchens, learned the rhythms of the place. But when she wasn’t needed, she wandered. Into the trees. To the stream. Beneath the overcast skies that hadn’t broken since their arrival.

  It wasn’t bitterness that clung to her.

  It was a quiet unraveling.

  The path that had brought her here — the path of wind and thread, of memory and rain — had been walked for someone else’s sake.

  And now, at the end of it, she wasn’t sure what remained for her.

  One morning, Rin found her at the edge of the woods.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Aoi was kneeling, stacking stones — not for any reason, just to give her hands something to do.

  Rin sat beside her.

  “I dreamed of you last night,” she said softly.

  Aoi blinked. “Me?”

  “You were standing in the rain, holding a candle that wouldn’t go out. I asked why you weren’t coming inside. You said… ‘I wasn’t invited.’”

  Aoi looked down at the stones.

  “I’m not angry,” she said. “I just don’t know where to go.”

  Rin took her hand.

  “I don’t remember everything,” she admitted. “But I remember the feeling of losing something. Someone. I think it broke me before I ever met you.”

  A long silence passed between them.

  Then Rin whispered:

  “Would you stay? Even if I never remember? Even if it’s him I keep choosing?”

  Aoi’s voice was barely audible.

  “I already chose.”

  That night, it rained again.

  The first real storm since they arrived.

  Yuki and Rin stood beneath the eaves, watching the downpour, the bracelet of memory still glowing faintly on his wrist.

  Rin turned to him.

  “I dreamed of the bridge again. But this time… I didn’t cry. I walked across it.”

  Yuki smiled. “Maybe that means you're ready to remember.”

  “No,” she said. “It means I’m ready to stop waiting for the past.”

  Elsewhere in the village, a boy delivered a letter to Aoi.

  No return address.

  Just one word on the seal:

  “Shirou.”