Two days passed.

  Yuki stayed in the little town. With Aoi. With her laughter. Her tea-stained fingers. Her voice, soft as dusk, reading dog-eared poetry into the calm.

  But the letter in his pocket remained.

  A whisper of a world unfinished.

  A question that wouldn’t stop asking.

  Late one evening, Yuki stood at the bookstore counter, the lights dimmed, the store closed, the smell of paper thick in the air. Aoi sat nearby, legs crossed on a cushion, sketching something absentmindedly in the corner of her journal — not words, but shapes. Spirals. Clouds. Roads.

  "I keep wondering," Yuki said suddenly, "what Shirou meant."

  Aoi didn’t look up.

  "The letter?" she asked.

  He nodded.

  “You can't rewrite the ending if you never finish the story.”

  “I think he’s alive,” Yuki said. “Somewhere. Watching me. Waiting.”

  Aoi's pencil stilled.

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  “You want to find him.”

  Yuki hesitated.

  “It’s not just about him. It’s about… who I was when we wrote together. Who I thought I’d become.”

  Aoi looked up then. Her eyes were quiet.

  “And who are you now?”

  Yuki didn't answer right away. Instead, he pulled a worn map from behind the counter — the one Shirou had drawn years ago. Back when their world had names like “The Hollow Pines” and “The Silver Tracks.” Back when the stories lived between them like shared breath.

  He laid it flat on the counter. His finger traced along the ragged edge — a place labeled only with one word: Forget.

  “He always said if he disappeared,” Yuki whispered, “he’d leave a clue here. At the edge of the world we imagined.”

  Aoi stood, crossed the space between them.

  She placed her hand over his on the map.

  “I want to be honest with you,” she said. “Part of me wants to tell you to stay. Because I’m scared.”

  Yuki met her gaze.

  “But I won’t,” Aoi continued. “Because I think the only way forward… is through the shadows we left behind.”

  A beat passed.

  Then another.

  “Come with me,” Yuki said.

  Aoi blinked. “What?”

  “You’re part of my story now,” he said. “I don’t want to go without you.”

  She stared at him.

  Then slowly, quietly, she smiled.

  “Then let’s find the ending,” she said.

  That night, beneath a sky full of stars and a map full of ghosts, Yuki and Aoi packed their bags.

  They didn’t know what they’d find beyond the edges of the familiar.

  But for the first time, Yuki felt ready.

  Not because he had all the answers.

  But because someone would be holding his hand while he searched.