August 9th, 2025
That morning, the alarm rang—though Kairi couldn't remember setting it.
He opened his eyes slowly, staring at the faded ceiling. The light slipping through the curtains was dull, colorless. It could've been morning. It could've been evening. Ever since his sister disappeared, the hours had stopped making sense. And silence had become the loudest thing.
His father was gone before sunrise. His mother drifted through the house like a ghost afraid of stepping on her own memories. The school uniform lay neatly folded over the chair. He didn't remember placing it there.
Life went on even when he wasn't in it. The body moved, hands reached for things, but his mind was somewhere else—stuck in the last words his sister spoke, in the silence that followed.
At school, no one said his name.
Kairi noticed it with painful precision—how his presence was avoided like a crack in glass. His three friends still sat near him. They still talked, still laughed. But between them and Kairi, something invisible had formed. A distance no one dared to cross.
Igarashi Souta tried to joke sometimes, his voice too light, too forced. Tachibana Mei never looked him in the eyes, but left him small sticky notes in his pencil case.
"You used to draw. Do you still?"
He never replied.
Nakajima Riku didn't pretend. He simply sat beside him in silence, shared his umbrella when it rained. That silence—honest, unbroken—was the closest thing to comfort.
During lunch, Kairi went to the rooftop. The wind up there was cold, clean. It made him feel awake, even if just a little.
He opened the bento box his mother had packed. Rice, a soft-boiled egg, a tomato shaped like a flower. She still did that. Even though no one commented on it anymore.
A few meters away, Shinozaki Aoi sat quietly, not reading like she usually did, but watching the sky. Her expression looked distant, like she was trying to remember something she'd never really known.
Kairi considered saying something. But the thought faded. Like everything else, it died before becoming real.
After class, he returned to his locker. The halls were mostly empty. His locker held the usual—textbooks, a wrinkled note he didn't recall writing, and a folded paper flower.
He stared at it. It hadn't aged. The kind his sister used to make.
On the back, faint ink read:
"Even without words, I am still here."
He didn't know if she had left it. Or if memory had grown a voice of its own.