The notebook sat between them like a living thing.

Aiko had never been curious about someone’s writing before. Not really. But Sora’s notebook was different. The pages weren’t polished poems or neat haikus. They were full of half-formed thoughts, dreamlike images, and lines that felt like they were written while sleepwalking through memory.

"The sky doesn’t weep for the fallen.
It weeps for those still waiting under the branches."

She ran her fingers across the page. “You wrote this after we met at the tree?”

Sora nodded from across the small table in the café’s garden.

“It just came to me. Like a voice that had been waiting to speak.”

Aiko frowned. “Your poems... they sound like things I’ve thought before. Or dreamed.”

He smiled softly. “Then maybe they were always yours. I’m just writing them down.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that — or why it made her heart beat like someone had whispered her name in a silent room.

Later that evening, Aiko found herself sketching again — but not Ren this time.

It was him.

Sora, sitting under the tree with the petals around him like a crown. Eyes closed, book in hand. There was something solemn about the way he held still, as if he was trying not to break something fragile inside him.

She hated how much she wanted to understand that look.

The following day, she caught him standing in front of the town’s memorial wall.
It was small, tucked beside the shrine — a place where old names were carved into stone. War. Accidents. Losses that never left the town.

Sora’s fingers brushed across one particular name.
Her blood ran cold.

Ren Takahashi.
The name she hadn’t spoken aloud in two years.

“What are you doing?” she asked, voice sharper than she meant.

He turned slowly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“You knew him?”
“No.”
He hesitated.
“…But I’ve read about him.”

“Read? From who? What book?”

Sora looked like he was choosing his next words very carefully.

“Sometimes... people who are lost don’t vanish. They just become stories. You’d be surprised where those stories end up.”

Aiko stepped back, her throat tight.

What the hell does that mean?

“Sora… why are you really here?”

He looked at her then — not evasive, not charming, not poetic.

Just honest.

“Because I think someone sent me.
And I think it’s time you finally knew the truth.”

It was raining.

Not heavy, not loud — just soft enough to sound like paper tearing in slow motion.

Aiko stood under the awning of the café, arms crossed, eyes fixed on Sora as he held out a folded envelope like it weighed more than it should.

“…What is that?” she asked, not moving.

“Something I found a few weeks ago. In a box of old books at a secondhand store near Shibuya.”
His voice was careful. “It was tucked between pages of an out-of-print poetry collection. Dated six years ago. Addressed to you.”

Aiko stared at it. Her name was there — written in Ren’s handwriting.
There was no mistaking it.

“…That’s not possible,” she whispered.

“I thought so too. But you tell me.”

Her hands trembled as she took it.

The paper was worn, the ink faded slightly at the corners. But the moment she unfolded it, his words hit her like a pulse:

Aiko,
If this letter ever finds you, it means I didn’t make it back in time. And I’m sorry — more than you’ll ever know.
There’s so much I wanted to say. But most of all, I wanted you to know… it wasn’t an accident. What happened to me wasn’t random.
Someone didn’t want me to come home.
I left behind something that mattered. Something I never should’ve touched. I was trying to protect you from it. If this is the last thing you ever hear from me — please don’t stop drawing. Your art… it saved me more than once.
Yours always,
Ren

The rain faded into silence.

Aiko’s lips parted, but nothing came out. The words blurred in her hands. Her knees might’ve buckled if Sora hadn’t stepped forward to catch her.

“I didn’t want to give it to you until I was sure it was real.” His voice was low, steady. “But I knew the moment I saw your sketches. The moment you said his name without saying it.”

She pulled back slowly, searching his face. “How did you find it? Why would you even pick up a random book like that?”

He gave her a quiet look.

“Because it was the only one on the shelf that didn’t collect dust.”
“Like someone kept opening it... waiting for someone to notice.”

That night, Aiko sat alone with the letter, rereading it under the warm glow of her bedroom lamp. Every word burned. Every line peeled back something she thought had healed.

He hadn’t forgotten her.

He hadn’t abandoned her.

He had been trying to protect her.

And someone didn’t want him to.

The next morning, she found Sora already at the tree — sketchbook closed, notebook beside him, waiting.

She sat beside him, quiet for a long time.

“I want to find out what really happened to him,” she said finally. “But I don’t know where to start.”

Sora looked at her, eyes calm. Purposeful.

“Then let’s start with the last place he was seen alive.”

To be continued in...

Chapter 3: Echoes in the Ink

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