The next morning, the re-orientation feels… easier. Not easy, but less terrifying. The new video, in my own carefully chosen words, grounds me with a sense of authority I didn't have yesterday. The postcard's description of events is a clear, concise log from a trusted source. When Reo is waiting for me on the rooftop, the familiar sight brings a flutter of something that feels less like dread and more like a hesitant, fragile relief.
He seems to sense the shift in me, too. "You seem calmer today," he notes, handing me a can of warm milk tea from the vending machine. I didn't even see him get it.
"The new video helped," I admit, my fingers wrapping around the can's pleasant warmth. "It felt like… my decision."
"It was," he says simply, and that's the end of it. We drink our tea in comfortable silence until the bell rings.
After school, Nami bounces up to my desk, her eyes sparkling with a mission. "Okay, Ari! Big project tonight! I'm coming over!"
"You are?" The idea of having someone in my space, a space I'm still learning myself, is a little daunting.
"Duh! You can't build the Great Wall of Arisa by yourself," she says, as if this explains everything. Seeing my blank look, she giggles. "Your photo wall! Duh! You wanted to… y'know, expand it. Make it more official. My sacred duty as Best Reset Friend is to provide snacks and expert photo-pinning placement. It's a very prestigious role."
An hour later, my room is filled with the scent of salty potato chips and Nami's supernova energy. She's brought a small mountain of photo prints from the last few weeks, all neatly dated on the back in her bubbly handwriting.
"Okay," she says, clapping her hands together, a general leading her troops. "The goal is visual association. We put up photos of people with their names, photos of places with their locations. We build a physical, external hard drive for your brain!"
She makes it sound fun, like a craft project instead of a desperate attempt to patch the holes in my own mind. And with her here, it almost feels that way. We work for hours, pinning up photo after photo. There's one of me and Nami making silly faces at the camera, a cone of ice cream dripping down my hand. There's a photo of the school gate under the cherry blossoms, labeled 'Hanamori High.' There's one of Nurse Shidou at her desk, looking up and smiling. Each one is a tiny pixel of a life I'm living on a delay.
Then we get to the pictures of Reo.
Nami pins up the one of him on the rooftop, the one that was already there. She adds another, a candid shot where he's concentrating on a textbook, his brow furrowed. "Exhibit A: The Broody Prince in his natural habitat," she narrates with the flair of a nature documentary host.
I laugh, a real, unforced sound. As I take the next picture from the stack, my breath catches. It's a photo of me, but I'm looking away from the camera, my head tilted, a small, genuine smile on my face. It was taken from the side, and in the corner of the frame, you can see Reo. He isn't looking at the camera either. He's looking at me, and his expression is one of such quiet, unguarded warmth that it makes my chest ache with a powerful, disorienting sense of déjà vu.
"That's a good one," Nami says softly, her playful tone gone. "He took that one. You had just said something funny about Amamine-sensei's terrible fashion sense. You didn't even know he took it until I showed it to you."
He took it. He saw me like that. This secret, stolen moment of unguarded happiness. I reach out and trace the outline of his face in the photograph, a strange feeling blooming inside me.
The doorbell chimes, a sharp interruption to the quiet moment. Haruto calls up the stairs. "Arisa! Someone's here for you!"
Nami and I exchange a confused look. Reo wouldn't just show up unannounced. She shrugs, and I head downstairs, my heart beating a little faster with nervous curiosity.
Standing in our doorway is a boy I've never seen before, though his face seems vaguely familiar, like an actor from a show I watched years ago. He has friendly eyes and a shock of slightly unruly sandy-brown hair. He's holding a single, slightly faded photograph.
"Tsukimi-chan?" he asks, a hopeful smile on his face. When I nod, his smile widens. "I'm Satoru Nadeshiko. We... we grew up together. I live just a few blocks away. I heard you were… back in school. I wanted to bring you this."
He holds out the picture. It's of two children, no older than six or seven, sitting on a park swing set. A little girl with my dark hair and a missing front tooth, and a little boy with that same unruly sandy-brown hair, grinning at the camera. My childhood friend. My mind supplies the name from the "before" times, a wave of relief washing over me. A piece of my past I can still access. Satoru.
"Satoru-kun," I say, a real smile forming on my face this time. "I remember."
The relief that floods his face is immense. "Oh, good. I was so worried you wouldn't."
"My older memories are fine," I explain, feeling the familiar, awkward need to define the boundaries of my condition. "It's just… the new stuff that doesn't stick."
"I know, your brother told my mom," he says, rubbing the back of his neck. "Anyway, I thought maybe... a familiar face from the before might be nice." He offers the picture again. "For your wall, maybe."
It's an incredibly sweet gesture. "Thank you," I say, taking the photo from him. Our fingers don't brush, there's no spark. There's just the comfortable, warm feeling of a shared history. A history I can actually recall.
He's about to say something else when a figure walks up the path behind him. It's Reo, his school bag slung over one shoulder, his expression unreadable. He was coming to check on me, I realize. Or maybe Nami texted him.
"Kisaragi-kun," I say, surprised.
Satoru turns, his friendly smile tightening just a fraction when he sees Reo. "Kisaragi-san," he says, his tone polite but distinctly cooler. "Fancy seeing you here."
"Nadeshiko," Reo replies, his voice perfectly level. The two of them look at each other, and the air between them crackles with a subtle tension I don't understand. It's like two kings sizing up each other's territory. And that territory, I realize with a jolt, is me. My past versus my present.
Satoru turns back to me, his smile returning, a little forced this time. "Well, I should go. I just wanted to drop that off. It's good to see you, Tsukimi-chan."
"You too, Satoru-kun."
He leaves, and Reo steps up to the porch. He glances at the old photo in my hand. He doesn't ask who it was. He knows. He knows everything.
"Nami texted," he says, answering my unspoken question. "She said you were 'redecorating'."
"It's the Great Wall of Arisa," I say, a small smile playing on my lips. "It's a prestigious project."
"I see." A ghost of a smile touches his own lips.
We stand in an awkward silence for a moment, the setting sun painting the clouds orange and purple behind him. I should invite him in, but my house feels too personal, my room too exposed with its new, raw map of my fragmented life.
He seems to understand. "I just wanted to make sure everything was okay." He takes a small, hesitant step back. "I'll see you tomorrow, Tsukimi-san."
"See you tomorrow," I echo.
He turns and walks away, his retreating figure silhouetted against the sunset. I stand there holding the picture Satoru gave me, a solid piece of my past. My "before." It's a comforting weight in my hand. But as I go back upstairs to my room, I find myself drawn back to the photo Reo took. The one where he saw a version of me that even I can't remember.
Nami helps me pin Satoru's photo on the corkboard, in a section we label "The Before Times." She gives me a quick, tight hug before she leaves, whispering, "You got this."
Later, alone in the quiet of my room, I sit at my desk to write the nightly postcard. My gaze drifts over the new wall. The photo of me and Satoru as kids feels warm and safe, a comfortable old blanket. It evokes happy, accessible memories of scraped knees and shared popsicles.
But the candid photo of Reo looking at me... it makes my chest ache with a nameless, echoing emotion. It holds a story I can't access, a feeling I have no right to, a connection forged in a time I can't remember.
Nami hands me the thumbtack for the next photo, but my eyes are locked on the one boy who is already a stranger in my past.