Episode 3

> **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.