The forest changed as they moved eastward.

  Gone were the tall pines that sang with wind. In their place rose birches, pale and lean, their bark peeling like forgotten letters. The sun filtered in softly, as if reluctant to interrupt.

  Yuki and Aoi walked in silence, the stone river stretching before them — a dry bed of smooth, bleached rocks winding like a serpent through the woods. Some stones had names carved into them. Some had small tokens left atop — feathers, buttons, a cracked lens. Like it had become a place for those who remembered something they couldn’t quite name.

  Each step stirred ghosts.

  Each breath tasted like a page turning.

  Aoi broke the silence first. “Do you ever feel like you’re living inside someone else’s memory?”

  Yuki looked at her.

  “All the time,” he said.

  They found the house near nightfall.

  A small cabin, half-hidden by overgrowth, its roof sagging but still standing. The door had been marked — three vertical lines, then a single slash through the middle. It was Shirou’s symbol for chapter.

  Yuki reached for the handle, paused, then knocked.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  No answer.

  He pushed the door open.

  Inside, it smelled of dust and pine resin. A desk sat in the corner, covered with papers, charcoal sketches, and a cracked mug. There were books, all hand-bound. Titles in Shirou’s looping script: Dreamscript, The Fourth Voice, A Cartography of What Was Lost.

  In the far room, a bed. Neatly made.

  Too neatly.

  As if he’d just stepped out, expecting to return.

  Aoi picked up a page from the desk, eyes scanning the words.

  “He is closer now. I can hear him in the wind again. Yuki... you were always the better ending. I just couldn't find the right way to write you back in.”

  Her fingers trembled.

  Yuki stepped beside her.

  There was another map, scribbled messily — not fantasy, but real. Markings traced through towns, ruins, forests. A trail that ended in a red circle marked Rin.

  He stared.

  “She’s alive too,” he said.

  Later that night, they built a small fire outside the cabin. Neither spoke for a long while. The flames cracked gently. The wind moved through the trees like a hush trying not to disturb what had been left behind.

  Then Aoi asked, “When you find him… what will you say?”

  Yuki stared into the fire.

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Maybe nothing. Maybe just — ‘You still matter.’”

  Aoi smiled faintly. “That might be enough.”

  And then, because silence is its own kind of confession, she leaned into him.

  Not as a question.

  But as an answer.

  And Yuki, who had once written of love like it was always one chapter too late, held her hand and didn’t let go.