The envelope sat between Yuki’s fingers like a living thing.
Small.
Weightless.
Unignorable.
Behind the storeroom door, he could hear faint sounds—Aoi moving things around, pretending to be busy. Pretending not to care.
Yuki tore the envelope open before he could think better of it.
Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded twice.
No greeting. No signature.
Just a short, haunting line:
"You can't rewrite the ending if you never finish the story."
The handwriting was unmistakable.
It belonged to Shirou.
Yuki’s chest tightened.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
It wasn’t possible. Shirou had been gone for years. His letters had stopped. His voice had vanished from the world like morning mist burned away by noon.
And yet...
Yuki turned the paper over, looking for a clue, a trick, a lie. There was nothing. Just that sentence, lingering like a ghost.
The door creaked behind him.
Aoi stood there, framed by the soft golden light of the back room, a hesitant look on her face.
“Was that… from her?” she asked.
Yuki tucked the letter away without thinking, as if hiding it could make it untrue.
“No,” he said, too quickly. “I mean—yes. Sort of.”
Aoi didn’t press, but the hurt flickered in her eyes.
“You don’t have to explain,” she said, her voice light, brittle. “You have your own life, Yuki. Your own... stories.”
He hated how far away she suddenly felt.
“Aoi, wait—” he started.
But she was already moving past him, grabbing her jacket from the hook by the door.
“I just remembered—I promised Kenta I’d help set up for the poetry reading tonight.”
"Aoi—"
She smiled at him, bright and fake.
"I’ll see you there, okay?"
The bell above the door jingled as she slipped out into the mist.
Yuki stood there for a long moment, the letter burning a hole in his pocket, the words burning a hole in his heart.
For the first time since he arrived in this sleepy town, Yuki realized something terrifying:
He could lose her.
And worse—
He already might have.
