The rain had been falling since midnight.
Riku Minase, 18, sat in silence, the kind that grew louder the longer it lasted. The only light in his apartment came from his phone screen—half-lit, half-shadowed.
He had no social media. No games. Just notes, gallery, messages.
And one unread notification.
The name shouldn’t have existed.
ASUMI K.
Message received: 3:12 AM
The timestamp matched the moment he had woken from a cold sweat. Not because of a nightmare, but because he had heard a voice. A familiar one.
He hadn’t spoken that name in a year.
His thumb hovered over the message.
“Did you mean what you said on the hill that day?”
He dropped the phone.
He didn’t reply.
Instead, he stayed indoors for the next three days. The rain continued. The wind clawed at the windowpanes.
He checked her profile. No image. No status. No recent activity.
It was her old number.
The one that stopped working the night of the accident.
The one that should’ve been deactivated when her name was carved into a stone.
On the fourth day, another message.
“The sky’s still cracked where I left it. You said you’d wait.”
He deleted the chat.
It reappeared.
He turned off his phone.
It turned itself back on.
Riku walked through town the next day.
Nothing had changed. The same closed shutters, the same flickering traffic light near the convenience store. The same dog barking at nothing by the shrine.
He stopped at the old train tunnel—the one locals always avoided.
They called it The Mouth. Said it swallowed more than trains.
Once, just for fun, he and three others had gone there after school.
One of them never came back out.
That was the first time Riku felt a hole open in reality.
He returned home.
The mirror in the hallway had fogged over, though he hadn’t showered.
He wiped it.
The words appeared slowly, drawn from the inside:
“ONE YEAR. SUNSET. COME ALONE.”
He stared.
A low buzz came from his desk. His phone screen glowed.
Voice Message — From ASUMI K.
He listened.
Static. Then breathing. Then her voice:
“Riku. I don’t think I ever left. You just stopped looking.”
“I see the hill again. The camellias still bloom. I wait where you stopped walking.”
“Don’t let this be the last time.”
The voice cut.
The phone screen turned black.
He packed a flashlight, a voice recorder, and a notebook. Not because he believed—but because part of him knew he would go either way.
May 17th. 6:32 PM. The Hill.
The sun was sinking behind the ridge. The wind was strangely warm.
The camellia tree was still there. Bent slightly. Red petals strewn across the dirt like a warning.
He waited.
Birds chirped. A distant motorcycle roared and faded.
Then—everything stopped.
Even the wind.
The silence dropped, heavy as stone.
He turned.
A figure stood at the far edge of the hill.
Not glowing. Not flickering.
Just standing.
The light didn’t hit her face right. Her hair didn’t move. Shadows clung too tightly.
“Riku,” she said.
He stepped back.
The figure moved closer.
“You said I’d be fine.”
Her voice was calm. Detached. Repeating.
“You said I’d be fine.”
He gripped the flashlight. It flickered. Then failed.
The sun dipped.
Everything dimmed.
“You said I’d be fine.”
“I was wrong,” he whispered.
The world shifted.
Behind her, the sky split like cracked glass. An endless void beyond—cold, wide, buzzing.
Something wrong seeped through.
A shape without outline. A sound without tone.
The camellia tree snapped at the base. Fell without a sound.
“You left me behind,” the voice said. It was no longer hers.
It belonged to something older than memory.
Something wearing her shape.
“You moved on. But I didn’t.”
Riku stumbled backward.
The air tasted like iron.
“What do you want from me?”
“To remember,” it said. “To return.”
“To return where?”
“To the last place you were honest.”
Riku’s breath hitched as the shadowy figure spoke.
“To return to the last place you were honest,” it repeated.
The cracked sky beyond the hill seemed to pulse, threatening to swallow everything whole.
Riku gripped the fallen camellia petal in his hand — a fragile remnant from that day.
He looked into the figure’s blurred face.
Then, with unexpected calm, he spoke:
“I was never honest with myself. I ran away.”
The figure hesitated, flickering like a broken signal.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” Riku continued. “But I want to try.”
The darkness around them trembled.
The cracked sky began to mend—slowly, painfully.
A gentle breeze stirred the fallen petals, lifting them upward like soft rain.
The figure’s shape sharpened, becoming clearer.
Not Asumi. But something she left behind.
“Thank you,” it whispered, voice softer than before.
And then it was gone.
The sky was whole again.
The camellia tree stood tall.
Riku closed his eyes.
For the first time in a year, he felt the weight inside him ease.
He took out his phone and wrote a message — not to send, but to remember.
“I’ll be honest with myself now.”
The screen stayed dark, unread.
But he didn’t need a reply.
Because sometimes, the hardest message is the one you send to yourself.
Riku doesn’t talk much now.
He lives far from Hoshinaka.
But sometimes, when the rain hits at 3:12 AM, he checks his phone.
It’s always blank.
Until it’s not.
And when he sees the message again, he never replies.
Because he knows the next time he answers…
She won’t be the only one who returns.
The End
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