> **Dear Kaito,**

>

> It rained again last night. Not the kind of rain that crashes down, but the kind that lingers—soft, insistent, as if the sky couldn’t decide whether to cry or simply hover on the edge of it. I opened the window anyway. Let the damp crawl in. Let it settle into the pages of the book I wasn’t reading, the one left open on the kotatsu like a forgotten thought.

>

> I think I saw someone today who looked like you.

>

> Same coat—dark, wool, slightly too long in the sleeves. Same way of holding an umbrella just low enough to shadow the eyes. He turned the corner near Nishiki Market, and for a second, my breath caught. I almost called out. But I didn’t. I don’t even know if I’d recognize your voice now.

>

> Two years is a long time to love a ghost.

>

> I started restoring a diary yesterday. Nineteenth century. A woman wrote to her husband every day while he was at sea. She never mailed them. She tucked them between the pages of a poetry book. When they found it after her death, the ink had blurred in places—water damage, they said. But I think it was tears.

>

> I wonder if she, too, believed that silence was a kind of faith.

>

> I still have your scarf. The grey one, frayed at one end where you caught it on a train door. I keep it in the bottom drawer, wrapped in tissue paper like something sacred. I wear it when the archive is cold. Not because I miss you.

>

> (I miss you.)

>

> But I won’t send this.

>

> Again,

> Emi

---

The ink dried slowly.

Emi set the pen down beside the notebook, its metal weight cool against the wood. She didn’t reread it. She never did. To read it again would be to invite doubt, and doubt was the enemy of ritual.

Outside, the first light of morning pressed through the paper screen, pale and hesitant. Rain still fell, tapping the roof in uneven rhythm—like a message in code she no longer knew how to break.

She closed the notebook. Not with force, but with care, as though it might sigh if handled too roughly. Then she slid it into the left drawer of her desk, the one that stuck unless you hit it just right. She tapped it twice—once to close, once to seal—and turned on the lamp.

The room was small: a low table, a kotatsu half-hidden under a faded quilt, a single shelf of books in no order. No photographs. No postcards. Nothing to say, *I was loved. I left. I remember.*

Only the letters.

She lit a stick of incense—*sakaki*, the kind used in shrines—and sat cross-legged on the floor, watching the smoke curl toward the ceiling like a question without an answer.

In Tokyo, you used to say, *“If you don’t speak it, it doesn’t exist.”*

But here, in this quiet house in Kyoto, the opposite feels true.

The things I never say are the ones that live the longest.

She exhaled.

And for the first time that day, allowed herself to feel it—the hollow beneath her ribs, the one shaped exactly like your name.

The air in the Kyoto Institute of Lost Texts was always ten degrees cooler than the world outside. Dry. Still. The kind of quiet that didn’t feel empty, but full—like the walls themselves were holding their breath.

Emi adjusted the magnifying lamp over her desk, its green glass shade casting a pool of light onto the page. Before her lay the diary from Chapter 1’s letter: *The Unsent Words of Lady Sato, 1872–1878*. Fragile ink. Water-stained margins. A lifetime of love written to a man who never read a single word.

She dipped her brush into distilled water, then touched it to the edge of a brittle page. The paper softened slightly, responding like skin to warmth. Restoration wasn’t about fixing. It was about listening. About asking the past how it wanted to be remembered.

“Tanaka-san,” said a voice at the door.

Emi didn’t look up. “Good morning, Rina.”

Rina lingered in the doorway, clipboard in hand, hair pinned up in its usual messy knot. “Haru-san called. Said the washi paper shipment arrived late. They’ll deliver it tomorrow.”

Emi nodded. “Tell him I’ll wait.”

“You always do,” Rina said, softer now. She stepped inside, eyes flicking to the open diary. “That one’s sad, isn’t it? Writing every day… and never sending a letter.”

Emi’s brush paused. “Maybe she didn’t need him to read them. Maybe she just needed to write them.”

Rina tilted her head. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No,” Emi said quietly. “One is about being heard. The other is about not disappearing.”

A silence settled between them, thin as tissue paper.

Rina left without another word.

When the door clicked shut, Emi exhaled. Her fingers trembled—just slightly—against the edge of the page.

And then, unbidden, the memory came.

*Tokyo, 2019. A rainy Tuesday in April.*

The Waseda University Library was nearly empty. Cherry blossom season had drawn most students outside, chasing beauty under pink clouds. But Emi had stayed. She was researching *The Tale of Genji* for a seminar, buried in the poetry section on the third floor, when she reached for a volume of Bashō’s *Oku no Hosomichi*—and so did he.

Their fingers brushed.

She pulled back first.

“I’m sorry,” she said, already turning away.

“No, I—” He smiled, quick and warm. “I’ve been looking for this one all morning. But you go ahead.”

She looked at him then. Really looked.

Kaito Sato. Late thirties. Hair slightly too long, falling into his eyes. A scar above his left eyebrow—thin, silvery, like a comma in a sentence she couldn’t read. He wore a black sweater with one button missing, and around his neck, a thin silver chain.

“No,” she said. “I can wait.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I’ve read it before.”

“You’re a poet,” he said.

She blinked. “No. A literature student.”

He grinned. “Same thing.”

And then, because the moment demanded it, because the rain tapped the windows like a rhythm waiting to be played, he recited a line from Bashō:

> *“Kareeda ni / karasu no tomarikeri / aki no kure.”*

> *On a withered branch / a crow has alighted— / autumn evening.*

She finished it:

> *“Yamazato wa / sato wa aware nari / aki no kure.”*

> *The mountain village— / how desolate it is— / autumn evening.*

He laughed. “You’re dangerous.”

“So are you,” she said.

They went for coffee. Just one. Just to talk about poetry.

But when it started to rain again, he offered her his umbrella.

She refused.

So he walked her home instead.

Six blocks. One shared umbrella. His shoulder pressed against hers.

And the whole time, the world felt like it was holding its breath.

Back in the archive, Emi blinked.

The memory faded like ink in water.

Her hand was still on the page.

She didn’t remember crying. But her cheek was wet.

She reached for the tissue box, dabbed her face without looking. Then turned the page of Lady Sato’s diary.

There, in faded ink, a line that made her chest tighten:

> *“Today, I burned the letter I wrote you. But I wrote another. I think I will never stop.”*

Emi closed her eyes.

Outside, a temple bell rang—once, slow, echoing through the mist.

She thought of the scarf in her drawer.

Of the letter she’d written that morning.

Of the man who would never read it.

And for the first time in two years, she wondered:

*What if he had answered?*

But of course—

he never could.

Because she never sent it.

> **Dear Kaito,**

>

> I dreamed of you last night.

>

> Not the way I usually do—fragmented, half-remembered, like a song playing behind a closed door. No. This was clear. So clear I could smell the cigarette smoke on your coat, the bergamot soap you used, the faintest trace of whiskey on your breath. You were sitting at the piano in your old apartment, playing that piece you wrote for me—the one without a name. The one you said didn’t need one.

>

> I stood in the doorway. You didn’t turn. But you said, *“You came back.”*

>

> I said, *“I never left.”*

>

> And then I woke up.

>

> My heart was pounding like I’d been running. The room was dark. Rain tapped the roof, same as yesterday. But something had shifted. I could still hear the music. Not in my ears. In my bones.

>

> I got up. Went to the drawer. Pulled out the scarf. Wrapped it around my neck. Sat on the floor and played your old recordings—low, so Haru wouldn’t hear. That same piece. Over and over.

>

> You recorded it only once. Live, at the Blue Lantern. I was in the front row. You didn’t look at me. But when the melody shifted—just before the bridge—you smiled. Not big. Just a flicker. Like a secret.

>

> I used to think you played it *for* me.

>

> Now I wonder if you played it *because* of me.

>

> Do you still play it? Or did you erase it, like I erased us?

>

> I keep imagining you in that apartment. The light from the streetlamp outside casting shadows on the wall. The way you’d hum when you couldn’t sleep. The way you used to say my name—not all at once, but in pieces: *E… mi…*

>

> I miss saying yours.

>

> I miss saying anything at all to you.

>

> They say silence is golden. But it’s not. It’s heavy. It sits on your chest like a stone. It makes you wonder—did any of it matter? Did I matter?

>

> I told myself I left because I needed space. Because I was suffocating. Because love shouldn’t feel like drowning.

>

> But that’s not the truth.

>

> The truth is—I was afraid.

>

> Afraid that if I stayed, I’d become someone who couldn’t breathe without you.

> Afraid that if I stayed, and you ever left *me*, I’d shatter.

> So I left first.

> I broke myself to keep from being broken.

>

> Is that love? Or cowardice?

>

> I don’t know anymore.

>

> But I wrote this.

> And I won’t send it.

> Because if you read it, you might see how much I still ache.

> And I can’t bear the thought of you knowing that.

>

> Especially if you don’t feel it too.

>

> Again,

> Emi

---

She stopped writing at 3:17 a.m.

The candle had burned low, its flame flickering like a dying heartbeat. Wax pooled on the desk, hardened into shapes she didn’t want to name.

She didn’t close the notebook right away.

Instead, she stared at the last line—*Especially if you don’t feel it too*—and pressed her palm over it, as if she could smudge the thought from existence.

But it was too late.

She’d said it.

Not out loud. Never out loud. But on paper, in ink, in a language only she would ever speak.

*I still ache.*

Outside, the rain had stopped. The sky was beginning to lighten, pale grey bleeding into soft blue. A single crow called from the bamboo grove.

Emi rose, stiff from sitting so long. She walked to the window, opened it just enough to let the cool morning air in. The scarf still hung around her neck. She didn’t take it off.

She thought of the recording. Of that unnamed piece.

She had named it in her head, of course.

She’d always called it *“The One Before Goodbye.”*

She wondered if he knew that.

Then she thought of Rina—how she’d found the letter yesterday.

Had she read it?

Did she know now, what Emi was trying so hard to hide?

She didn’t care.

For the first time in two years, the letters didn’t feel like a ritual.

They felt like a reckoning.

She returned to the desk.

Closed the notebook.

Slid it into the drawer.

Tapped it once—*seal it, hide it, forget it*—but the gesture felt hollow now.

Because she wouldn’t forget.

And the drawer couldn’t hold the weight of what she’d just admitted.

She lit another stick of incense.

Sat in silence.

Waited for the day to begin.

And somewhere, deep in the quiet,

a piano played a song with no name.