Episode:3

Three Years Later…

The workshop was warm with the scent of iron and oil. Outside, a soft spring rain tapped on the roof, nothing like the storm from three years ago.

Daichi wiped sweat from his brow and straightened his back. He glanced toward the small room in the back where Hikari was supposed to be napping. Silence.

Too quiet.

He set down his tools and walked toward the doorway, only to find her sitting by the window, her face pressed to the glass.

“Again?” he asked gently. “Waiting for me even when I’m already here?”

She turned with a mischievous grin. “Just in case you leave again, silly.”

He chuckled and ruffled her hair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She held out a drawing she had made—stick figures holding hands under a big blue sky.

“This is you,” she said, pointing to the tall one. “And this is me. And the shiny necklace is my magic.”

Daichi crouched beside her. “Magic, huh?”

She nodded seriously. “It talks to me sometimes. But I can’t understand the words yet.”

His smile faltered, just slightly.

He had long stopped trying to explain the locket. There were no records of it, no family crests or names carved into it. But every time he’d considered taking it off, Hikari had cried in her sleep—louder than usual.

So, it stayed.

And so did she.

She was his now, in every way that mattered.

But far beyond the quiet home they had made, someone was still searching.

And soon, the past would come knocking.

Hikari wasn’t like other children.

She didn’t cry when she scraped her knees. She didn’t pout when she lost her toys. She listened carefully, spoke thoughtfully, and sometimes stared out the window with an expression too calm for a child her age.

By the time she was four, she could memorize entire stories after hearing them once.

By five, she had started teaching herself kanji from Daichi’s old factory manuals, copying each stroke perfectly with her tiny fingers covered in pencil dust.

She didn’t play much with other kids at the park. She said they were “loud in her head,” though she never explained what that meant.

And then there was the locket.

Still always around her neck. Still glowing faintly some nights when she dreamed.

Daichi had stopped trying to understand it. He didn’t dare remove it anymore. But he began writing things down—small notes in his workshop notebook:

“She knew what I was thinking today before I said it.”

“Asked about machines she’s never seen before—blueprints?”

“Laughed in her sleep. Whispered a word I couldn’t understand. Sounded… old.”

He wasn’t afraid of her. He could never be. But something inside told him that one day, someone might be.

---

Now, Age Six – Primary School Begins

The day she put on her first uniform, Daichi nearly cried. She stood in front of the mirror, straight-backed and serious, the navy-blue fabric hanging just slightly too big on her narrow shoulders. The white socks, the bright red satchel—it made her look like every other child walking to school that morning.

But she wasn’t.

“Try not to correct your teachers too much,” Daichi joked gently, fastening her satchel. “Let them feel smart too.”

Hikari giggled. “Only if they’re wrong on purpose.”

At school, the teachers were stunned. She read faster than anyone in class. Solved puzzles meant for older students. Finished tests in half the time and then asked for more.

But what puzzled them most was her silence.

Hikari wasn’t loud. She didn’t show off. She observed. Quietly. Thoughtfully. Always watching, as if she were waiting for something to happen.

One afternoon, Daichi came to pick her up early. The school nurse had called, saying Hikari had collapsed in the hallway.

When he arrived, she was already sitting up, staring out the infirmary window with that same unreadable expression.

“What happened?” he asked gently, kneeling beside her bed.

She looked at him and whispered, “I saw a place I’ve never been… but it felt like home.”

She touched her locket.

“It was broken there. The sky was silver, and people were calling my name—but not this name.”

Daichi felt the chill crawl down his spine.

He reached out, took her hand, and smiled the only way he knew how.

“You’re safe now,” he said.

But that night, long after Hikari had fallen asleep, Daichi sat in his workshop, staring at the glowing locket beside her pillow.