Ayame hadn't expected a knock at her window.
But there it was — soft, almost polite.
She blinked up from her desk where constellation charts and memory diagrams were sprawled like a galaxy in paper form. The knock came again.
She stood, heart ticking faster, and unlatched the frame.
Kael crouched on the tree branch just outside, looking sheepish.
"I know this is weird," he said, "but I couldn't sleep."
Ayame tilted her head. "So you decided to Spider-Man into my room?"
He grinned. "Hey, I asked first. Window etiquette."
She stepped back, opening the window wider. "Get in here before you fall and make a tragic protagonist-shaped dent in the garden."
Kael climbed in, brushing bark off his hoodie. "Thanks. Sorry. Just… something's bothering me."
Ayame folded her arms. "More than the whole memory-thieving shadow enemy arc we've found ourselves in?"
He sat on her bed, staring at the stardust pendant hanging from her desk lamp. "Yeah. It's about what the echo fragment said. That we'd given 'too much… and still not enough.'"
Ayame sat beside him. "You think it meant us, specifically?"
"I think it meant *you*," Kael said. "You gave everything to bring back the melody. And now, even after all that… someone's still out there, undoing it."
Silence.
Ayame picked up her pendant. "I keep thinking about what it cost. What we *almost* lost. I should feel proud, right? That we restored it. But instead I feel like it's crumbling again — and this time, we're running out of glue."
Kael leaned back, looking up at the ceiling. "What if this was always part of the Composer's plan? Not just to fix the melody, but to keep *guarding* it?"
"You think this is some divine internship?"
Kael chuckled. "Wouldn't be the weirdest thing we've faced."
Ayame smiled. But it faded fast.
"There's something else," she said, voice low. "I've been hearing whispers."
Kael sat up straighter. "Whispers?"
She nodded. "Not voices. Not words. Just… *suggestions.* Like a feeling brushing against my mind. Telling me to *remember* something that never happened."
Kael frowned. "What kind of memories?"
Ayame's gaze darkened. "A boy with silver eyes. A city of glass. A promise I don't remember making — but every time I close my eyes, I *feel* like I broke it."
Kael was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "I think I've had them too. Except mine's a woman in a red coat. And a staircase made of strings."
They stared at each other.
"Is it possible," Kael said slowly, "that our memories were touched too?"
Ayame stood, pacing. "No — we *remember* the glade. The pact. The return."
"But maybe not *everything,*" Kael murmured. "What if we're missing pieces too? Not stolen… just *buried.*"
Ayame turned sharply to her shelf and pulled out a small box. Inside were keepsakes — things she'd kept from their journey: a cracked compass, a dried petal, a music note etched in crystal.
And a key.
She stared at it.
"I don't remember this."
Kael moved beside her. "Is that from the Composer's realm?"
She turned the key over. It was silver, ornate, and warm to the touch — like it had its own pulse.
"There's no lock I've ever seen it fit," she said.
Kael pointed to a symbol on its side — a crescent wrapped in thorns.
"That's… familiar."
Ayame's eyes widened. "It's the same mark on the gatekeeper's wrist."
Kael exhaled. "Then it's not just a key. It's a *seal.* Maybe something the gatekeeper left behind."
Ayame closed her fist around it. "Then we're not done with the gates. Or the glade."
They sat in silence again, the air heavy.
Then Kael said, very softly, "Do you ever think about what would've happened if you didn't come back?"
Ayame turned. "Every day."
Kael's throat worked. "I… I don't say it enough. But I'm glad you did. I'm glad you're here."
Ayame smiled gently. "You say it in the way you look at me."
His eyes met hers.
And something unspoken passed between them. Not quite a memory. Not quite a future.
Just a pulse of *now.*
He reached up, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "You're really not afraid, are you?"
Ayame's smile softened. "I am. All the time. But being afraid and doing it anyway… that's what got us this far."
Kael's hand lingered by her cheek.
"I think," he said, "we're about to start the hardest part."
Ayame nodded. "But we're starting it together."
They didn't kiss.
Not yet.
But the air between them shimmered like it wanted to.
—
The next day, school resumed its chaos. Festival booths, costume fittings, last-minute prop panics.
But Ayame saw the shadows differently now.
She watched everyone.
She listened.
And by lunch, she noticed it again.
Naoko Ishida — the boy who always wrote notes in the margins of every test, who quoted obscure poetry and laughed too hard at bad puns — had stopped humming.
He always hummed when he studied.
She watched him carefully. He frowned at a math worksheet, but something about him looked *wrong.* Dimmed.
"Hey," Ayame said, sitting beside him. "That's a new notebook."
Naoko looked up. "Yeah. Lost the old one."
She blinked. "You *never* lose your notes."
He shrugged. "Guess I'm not as organized as I thought."
Ayame felt a chill.
"Do you remember a poem," she asked slowly, "that ends with '…and still, the stars watched in silence'?"
Naoko tilted his head. "That sounds… familiar."
Kael appeared, holding a bag of shrimp chips. "He quoted it at the Moonlight Showcase last year."
Naoko blinked. "I did?"
Kael nodded. "You even cried a little. Don't pretend you didn't."
Naoko looked genuinely startled. "That's weird. I don't… I can't picture it."
Ayame looked at Kael.
It was happening again.
Kael whispered, "How many do you think it'll be, by the end?"
Ayame didn't answer.
Instead, she opened her pouch.
The broken orb from Mio had turned to stardust. But something had gathered in its place.
A second orb.
Lighter this time — but no less haunted.
Ayame held it up to the light.
Inside, she saw a pen scratching furiously across a page. A candle. The sound of a voice reciting words like spells.
Naoko's memory.
Still pulsing. Still alive.
Waiting.
Ayame lowered it.
"This time," she said, "we won't wait for the fragments to warn us."
Kael nodded. "We'll be the ones chasing the echoes."
Ayame tightened her grip on the orb.
And somewhere, far away, a lock turned.
---