The shrine was silent.
The transfer student—no, not a stranger, not anymore—stood beside Yuki, eyes wide, trembling from something he didn't fully understand. She could feel the fragments inside her settling like snowfall, gentle and cold. The memories were returning, not in a flood but a slow uncoiling of truths she hadn't known she carried.
"I knew you," she said quietly.
His hand twitched in hers. "You did."
"And you knew me."
He nodded.
For a moment, time folded. She saw the first loop, the bloodied ground, the promise whispered beneath the moon. She saw Ren's smile, the moment he turned away—his final act not of survival, but surrender.
He had traded himself so she could live.
"You weren't supposed to come back," she said.
"I didn't," he replied. "I think… I was allowed this much."
Allowed.
Not by the system. Not by Tsuki.
By something older, something kinder.
A loophole in a loop.
The red moon didn't return. The night sky above the shrine glowed silver and soft. Tsuki, the passive system that had once done nothing, remained silent. But now, Yuki understood.
It hadn't guided. It hadn't warned.
Because the choice had always been theirs.
And Ren had made his.
She turned to the boy with Ren's voice, but not his face.
"What happens now?"
He smiled faintly. "Now, I go."
"No." Her voice broke. "Not again."
But already, the warmth of his hand was fading.
System Tsuki: Loop Resolution Complete.
Anchor: Released.
His body shimmered like mist in morning light.
"I didn't want you to be alone," he whispered. "So I stayed a little longer. Just to see you smile again."
Tears slid down her cheeks. "I remember everything. I remember you."
He touched her cheek. "Then I'll never truly be gone."
And then he was.
A year passed.
The shrine was restored that summer, painted anew by local volunteers. At the center of the courtyard stood a mural: a boy and a girl beneath a silver moon, surrounded by broken clocks.
No one knew who had painted it.
At the academy, a new student exhibit opened: Fragments of Memory. One painting drew the most attention. A faceless boy standing at the edge of a forest, watching the moon. Beneath it, a single line was written in delicate, looping brushwork:
"Even forgotten things leave echoes."
Yuki never stopped visiting the shrine. Every year, on the night of the last full moon before spring, she left a paper lantern at the gate.
She never saw him again.
But sometimes, when the wind was still, and the moon hung high and silent—she swore she could feel a hand brushing hers.
Just for a moment.
The End