The notebook wasn't the end.
It was the beginning.
Ren thought he was alone—just a boy cursed to love girls who were destined to die. But the whispers had grown louder since Jun's death. Not just in his dreams. In waking life. In reflections. In static. In the wind.
He had become marked.
He felt it.
And someone else did, too.
---
It started with a stranger on the train.
Ren sat alone, hood pulled low, eyes scanning Aiko's and Jun's final entries again and again. The stranger took the seat across from him without a word. Tall. Wrapped in a black coat stitched with pale silver thread—like constellations woven into fabric.
The man stared out the window, then said:
> "The star chose you too, didn't it?"
Ren froze. His fingers gripped the notebook.
The man smiled, but it was sad.
> "You're hearing it now. The humming. The dreams. The pressure in your skull that never goes away."
Ren finally spoke. "Who are you?"
The man turned to him, eyes sharp as broken moons. "I'm a survivor."
He held out a coin—jet black, engraved with a spiral pattern.
> "This will lead you to the Silent Orbit."
Before Ren could ask anything more, the train lights flickered.
The man was gone.
Only the coin remained.
---
Three days later, Ren stood before a bunker carved into the side of a dead mountain, the coin still warm in his palm. No signs. No doors. Just ancient stone and whispering wind.
Until he pressed the coin against the rock.
The stone rippled like water. And then, it opened.
Inside: silence. Cold metal. Faint blue lights tracing along the floor like starlight veins.
They were waiting for him.
Five figures, hooded in black. The central one—taller, female—spoke first.
> "So the last fragment walks among us."
Ren stepped forward. "What is the Silent Orbit?"
She lowered her hood. A scar ran down her cheek, glowing faintly. Not a wound. A mark.
> "We are what remains of the ones who survived Kurosaki Syndrome. We carry the truth your world hides."
Ren's heart pounded.
> "This isn't a disease," she said. "It's a signal."
> "The star is not dying—it's waking up."