The Festival of Lanterns arrived quietly, slipping into the town like a secret.

  Every year, people gathered by the river to write wishes on paper lanterns and set them afloat, believing the current would carry their hopes into the arms of unseen spirits. It was old, this tradition—older than the town itself—and even those who claimed not to believe still came, if only for the beauty of it.

  Aoi found Yuki in the bookstore that afternoon, holding two lantern kits awkwardly under one arm.

  “You’re coming,” she said without giving him a choice.

  Yuki smiled, defeated. “You don’t take no very well, do you?”

  “Not when it comes to magic.”

  They spent an hour at the counter, assembling the delicate frames and smoothing the paper into place. Aoi’s hands were quick and sure; Yuki’s were clumsy, and she laughed when his first lantern collapsed like a sad umbrella.

  “Poet of broken things,” she teased.

  “Careful,” he said. “I might make that your title.”

  They finished just as dusk fell.

  The town’s narrow streets glowed with strings of lights, and children darted past holding tiny lanterns above their heads like captured stars. The riverbank was already crowded when they arrived, the air filled with low laughter and the scent of sweet rice cakes.

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  Aoi handed Yuki a pen. “Write something.”

  He hesitated.

  Not because he didn’t know what to wish for.

  But because he did.

  Across the river, the old willow trees wept into the water, their long branches brushing the surface. The reflection of the lanterns flickered between them, trembling like fragile hearts.

  Aoi crouched beside her lantern, scribbling quickly, cheeks pink from the cool air.

  Yuki stared at his blank one, the pen poised above it.

  Finally, he wrote:

  “For the stories that find their endings.

  For the hearts brave enough to begin again.”

  They carried their lanterns to the river’s edge.

  Side by side, they lowered them into the dark water.

  Aoi glanced at him. “Do you think they’ll really reach anyone?”

  He watched as the lanterns drifted, catching the current, floating toward the unseen.

  “I think,” Yuki said slowly, “they already have.”

  For a moment, neither of them moved.

  Then, softly, Aoi slipped her hand into his.

  Not demanding.

  Not asking.

  Just being.

  Yuki didn’t pull away.

  Instead, he closed his fingers around hers, like anchoring a story that didn’t want to be lost again.

  Above them, a single firework bloomed in the night sky—bright and fleeting, beautiful in its impermanence.

  They didn’t need to say anything.

  The river carried their wishes forward.

  And the night carried them closer.