Morning arrived the way spring mornings always did in the town—soft and weightless, as though light itself had learned to whisper. A pale gold haze touched the rooftops, and windbells chimed like fragments of forgotten songs. Sozuki followed the sound.
He and Hana had started meeting without planning to. She would appear near the old shrine steps or by the riverside where laundry lines swayed in the wind. Sometimes she brought bread from the corner bakery; sometimes he brought nothing but silence. Still, she smiled as if that was enough.
That morning, they walked through the shopping street together. Vendors shouted about grilled corn and sweet bean cakes, and the smell of soy sauce and sea salt drifted through the air. Hana tugged his sleeve when she found something she wanted him to try.
"Here," she said, handing him a skewer. "You don't eat much, do you?"
Sozuki hesitated. Food had always been strange for him—he could taste it, but it never stayed. The warmth disappeared too quickly, like steam leaving his hands.
"It's good," he said anyway. His voice came out soft, almost shy.
Hana studied him. "You always say that."
He smiled faintly. "Maybe I just like pretending."
They sat on a low wall outside a stationery shop. Students in uniforms passed by, laughing, arms slung over each other's shoulders. The sight made something twist quietly inside him—an echo of belonging he could never reach. Hana followed his gaze and didn't say anything. Instead, she took out her sketchbook.
"You always draw," Sozuki murmured.
"It helps me remember things. Faces, days… feelings," she replied. Her pencil traced the outline of a lantern. "If I don't draw them, they fade."
He looked at the page, at the quick confident strokes. "Do you think people fade too?"
She paused. The street noise seemed to thin around them. "Only when we stop remembering them," she said. "Why? Are you afraid of fading?"
Sozuki's answer was lost in the wind.
He hadn't told her that sometimes he woke up in strange places—temple grounds, riverbanks, classrooms left empty for decades—and didn't remember how he got there. That sometimes, people walked through him as if he were made of smoke. He didn't tell her about the dreams either, the ones full of rain and glass and a figures voice calling a name he no longer recognized.
Instead, he said quietly, "I think… I already did."
Hana glanced up, but before she could speak, a gust carried cherry petals between them. They shimmered briefly, then vanished.
They spent the afternoon wandering farther than usual, toward the hill where the festival banners were still half-hanging from last week's celebration. The path wound through rows of tea fields and the smell of wet soil after rain. Hana walked ahead, her hair catching light like threads of amber.
"Sozuki," she called without turning, "what do you want to do when you grow up?"
He laughed under his breath. "Grow up?"
"Yeah," she said, grinning. "Everyone has to. Even you."
He wanted to tell her that he had been seven for as long as he could remember—that he'd watched entire generations rise and disappear while he stayed the same—but the words caught in his throat.
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe… travel. See the world. Learn why the rain smells different in every town."
"That's such a you answer," Hana said, smiling. "I'd like to paint those places."
"You'd bring color to them," he murmured. Then, after a pause: "Do you ever think memories can be reborn? Like… maybe people leave traces of themselves in the world, and that's why certain places feel familiar?"
Hana's steps slowed. "You mean like déjà vu?"
"Maybe," he said. "Or like meeting someone you're sure you've met before."
Her eyes flickered toward him, thoughtful. "Is that what I feel like?"
Sozuki looked away. "Sometimes."
The wind answered for him, brushing between them with the scent of green tea and earth.
Evening drifted in, tinted orange and pink. They reached the park by the river—the same one where he'd first seen her sketching alone. Fireflies began to pulse near the reeds, and children's laughter echoed from the playground.
Hana opened her bag and pulled out two cans of soda. "To celebrate our adventure," she said, raising hers.
He accepted the can, though it felt oddly weightless in his hand. "What are we celebrating?"
"Existing," she said simply. "And meeting each other again today."
Sozuki smiled. "That's enough reason."
They sat beneath the same cherry tree whose blossoms had rained over him weeks ago. The branches shivered lightly, scattering petals over their hair. The world smelled of river mist and sugar from the nearby stalls.
"Sozuki," Hana said after a while, "do you ever feel like you're living someone else's life?"
He turned toward her. "Why do you ask?"
"I don't know. Sometimes when I walk home, I feel like I'm following footprints that aren't mine. Like I borrowed a path from someone who left a long time ago."
Her words struck something deep inside him, something that pulsed with both fear and recognition. He looked down at his hands; the edges of them trembled faintly in the dim light, as though the air itself was trying to erase him.
"Maybe we all borrow our days," he said quietly. "Until someone remembers us."
Hana didn't answer. Instead, she reached out and brushed a petal from his hair. Her fingers passed close to his temple, warm, real. For a moment he almost believed he was human again.
The sky deepened into twilight. A breeze rippled through the grass, carrying the faint chime of bells from the town below.
Later, as they walked back through the narrow streets, they passed a row of closed shops. Neon signs blinked, flickering between life and darkness. Hana pointed at an old photo studio with cracked glass. Inside, hundreds of photographs lined the wall—families, festivals, newborns, students in uniforms decades out of date.
Something drew Sozuki toward the window. He pressed his palm to the glass.
There, among the yellowed photos, was one that made his breath catch: a child who looked exactly like him, standing between two smiling adults. The picture had faded, but the kids grin was unmistakable. On the bottom corner, a handwritten note read Yamagaki Family, 1982.
"Sozuki?" Hana asked softly.
He stepped back, dizzy. "That… can't be."
Hana looked closer. "He looks just like you."
"Yeah," he whispered. "He does."
A long silence settled between them, broken only by the hum of the streetlight. Hana turned to say something, but he was staring past her, eyes wide, as if seeing ghosts in every reflection.
He didn't notice his hand still pressed against the glass, or that the reflection of the kid in the photo lined perfectly with his own.
That night, Sozuki couldn't sleep. He sat by the river where lanterns drifted on the current like tiny souls. The water reflected stars, but when he reached out, they scattered at his touch.
"I was real once," he whispered to no one. "Wasn't I?"
Footsteps approached behind him. "You still are," Hana said.
He turned; she stood holding two paper lanterns, their light trembling against her face. "You shouldn't be out this late," he said.
"Neither should you," she replied, setting one lantern in the water. "It's strange—you always vanish after sunset."
"I just… wander."
"Do you ever go home?"
He hesitated. "I don't know where that is anymore."
Hana's expression softened. "Then maybe… this can be your place, for now."
She lowered the second lantern beside his. Their lights drifted side by side, carried by the slow current.
"Look," she said, smiling faintly. "They're staying together."
He watched the glow fade into the dark distance. "Thank you," he murmured.
"For what?"
"For seeing me."
End of Part 1 of Chapter Three.
CHAPTER THREE — The Days That Felt Borrowed (Part 2)
Morning drifted in on the breath of the river. A thin fog still clung to the water, the kind that softens every edge of the world until reality feels like it's been drawn in pencil. Sozuki sat on the stone embankment, watching the lanterns from the night before fade into pale shapes downstream. The paper had gone translucent, the candles drowned, yet he could still see faint glimmers inside them—as if something refused to go out.
He didn't remember falling asleep, only the quiet weight of Hana's voice beside him, saying good-night, see you tomorrow. But now the space next to him was empty, her footprints half-washed away by dew.
A bicycle bell rang behind him. When he turned, Hana was there after all, coasting down the path with a paper bag balanced on the handlebar. Her hair caught the early light.
"You stayed here all night?" she asked, braking to a stop. "I guess I did." "You're lucky it didn't rain."
She handed him a steamed bun, still warm through the paper. The smell of red bean filled the air. "I thought you might be hungry," she said.
He accepted it carefully, though he already knew that warmth would pass through his fingers the way every touch eventually did. Still, he smiled. "Thanks."
They ate in silence for a while. The town was waking around them: shutters rising, roosters crowing somewhere far off, the faint echo of a train crossing the bridge. Sozuki felt it all like he always did—present yet apart, as if the world were a painting and he was the light behind the glass.
"Do you ever think," Hana said suddenly, "that the world remembers us even when we forget ourselves?" He looked at her. "What do you mean?" "Last night I dreamed of this river. Only it was years ago, maybe before I was born. There was a child here, trying to light a lantern." "What happened to him?" "I don't know. I woke up before he finished."
She smiled, but there was unease in it. He wondered if the dream was really hers, or if memories sometimes slipped between them like wind through open doors.
They spent the day wandering again, though their steps felt slower, heavier with the unspoken. They stopped by a small park where wisteria hung in purple curtains, bees humming between the blossoms. Children played tag on the slide. A mother called out, laughing. Sozuki watched them the way one watches a movie that once meant something but whose ending has long been forgotten.
"Do you ever wish you could start over?" he asked quietly. Hana looked at him, surprised. "Start over how?" "From the beginning. Before you knew what losing things felt like."
She thought about it. "Maybe. But then I'd never have met you."
The words landed softly but deep, like pebbles sinking through still water. He tried to hold on to them, to believe them, yet some part of him whispered that the kindness she offered would fade like everything else. He hated that thought. He wanted to be someone who could stay.
A gust swept through the park, and for a heartbeat the world thinned. He saw the air shimmer around his hands, his outline bending the light. Hana blinked, eyes wide.
"Sozuki…?" He hid his hands behind his back. "It's nothing. Just the sun." But the lie tasted bitter. He could feel himself blurring, edges softening, as if the world had begun to forget him faster than he could remember himself.
At noon they reached the summer market by the shrine. Stalls lined the path, bright banners snapping in the wind. Hana bought shaved ice for both of them and insisted he try the blue syrup. When he laughed, she said it was the first real laugh she'd heard from him.
They wandered among the stands, stopping at a stall of old trinkets. A glass marble caught Sozuki's eye—clear with a swirl of sky-blue inside. The vendor, an elderly gramps, smiled when Sozuki picked it up.
"That one's been here for decades," he said. "No one ever buys it. Funny thing—it always ends up back on my table, even when it's sold." Sozuki turned the marble in his palm. It was cold, impossibly cold for such a warm day. "Maybe it likes it here." "Or maybe," the old gramps said, "it's waiting for its owner to come back."
Hana glanced at him, then at Sozuki. "You should keep it. "He started to hand over coins before remembering he never carried any. Hana quickly paid instead, smiling. "Consider it a present."
The marble caught the sunlight and threw tiny rainbows over their hands. For the first time in years—or in lifetimes—Sozuki felt something solid, something that didn't pass through him. He closed his fist around it and held on.
They found a bench beneath a row of gingko trees. Cicadas sang their endless summer hymn. Hana sketched the street while Sozuki watched clouds drag slow shadows across the rooftops.
"Draw me," he said suddenly. She blinked. "You've never asked that before." "Maybe I want to see how you see me."
She smiled and began to draw. Her pencil moved delicately, tracing lines with care. He tried to stay still, though part of him feared there would be nothing for the pencil to catch—that the page would stay blank where he sat.
When she finished, she turned the sketchbook toward him. His throat tightened. There he was, beneath the gingko leaves, small and a little blurred at the edges, but undeniably there.
"You made me look real," he whispered. "You are," she said. "At least to me."
The simplicity of it broke something open inside him. He blinked quickly, pretending the sunlight made his eyes water.
Later, clouds gathered over the mountains. The air turned heavy with the promise of rain. They took shelter under a bus stop awning as thunder rolled in the distance. Hana hugged her sketchbook to her stomach; Sozuki stared at the wet pavement, watching raindrops ripple into each other until the world seemed to melt.
"Do you remember anything from before we met?" she asked over the rain. He hesitated. "Only fragments. A house with wind chimes. A mother singing while she cooked. A fathers laughter. Then… nothing." "Maybe they're still out there," she said softly. "Waiting." He shook his head. "It's been too long." "How long?" He opened his mouth, closed it again. "I don't know. Time doesn't work right for me."
Hana looked at him then, really looked, as if searching for the outline of the truth. "You always say strange things," she said gently. "But I believe you."
The rain slowed. The sky cleared to a dim lavender. When they stepped out, puddles mirrored the world upside-down—their reflections walking hand in hand though their real hands never touched.
Evening again. Lanterns flickered on in shop windows. They crossed the bridge back toward town, the same one from his dreams. Sozuki felt the marble in his pocket pulse faintly, catching the last light of day.
Hana stopped halfway across and looked down at the water. "If you could wish for one thing," she said, "what would it be?"
He thought for a long time. "To remember," he said at last. "Even if it hurts."
She nodded. "Then I'll wish with you."
They closed their eyes. The wind carried the smell of wet stone and river moss, and somewhere below them a train rumbled, shaking the bridge. For a moment he felt utterly present, as if the world itself held its breath around them.
When he opened his eyes again, she was smiling—tired but warm. "See? Now it's a promise."
He smiled back. "A promise."
They stood there until the sun disappeared and the first stars appeared above the hills.
That night, after Hana had gone home, Sozuki wandered through the sleeping town. Streetlights buzzed softly; rainwater glimmered in the gutters. He passed the photo studio again. The window was dark now, the pictures hidden behind their own reflections. But faintly, in the glass, he saw his face—fading, for an instant—and behind him, Hana's silhouette, though she wasn't there.
The image flickered, then vanished. The marble in his pocket grew warm.
He whispered to the empty street, "Who was I?"
The only answer was the sound of the river, steady and endless, carrying the faint glow of two drifting lanterns far into the dark.
TO BE CONTINUED...