Chapter 1: The Letter She Never Sent
The train pulled into Shirahama Station just as the sun began to dip below the horizon, casting golden ribbons over the sea. It was the kind of quiet coastal town people came to in order to forget something—or find something they'd lost.
Yuki Arai stepped off the train with a suitcase that had seen better days and a heart that hadn't truly been whole in years. She was 23, freshly graduated, unsure of everything—except that she needed to breathe again.
City life had been loud. Exhausting. The kind of place where people passed by like ghosts with headphones. But this place? It was still. It smelled of salt, seaweed, and early spring. It smelled like memories.
Her grandmother's house stood at the edge of the cliffs, where the ocean could be heard even in sleep. The garden was wild now, and the mailbox crooked, but the wind still carried warmth through the wooden halls.
That evening, as she unpacked in the attic, she found a box tucked away behind old sketchbooks and dried lavender. Inside were letters—written, but never sent.
They were all addressed to one name.
Ren Hayashi.
Yuki paused.
That name...
She hadn't heard it in years.
Not since they were both fifteen.
Ren—the boy with ink-stained fingers and a bicycle with a broken bell. The boy who read poetry aloud under the stars, even when no one listened. The boy who once told her she was "a story that hadn't been written yet."
The boy she had loved.
And the boy who vanished without saying goodbye.
She picked up one of the letters. Her own handwriting, uneven and emotional, stared back at her.
> "I waited for you at the lighthouse again. I know you won't come, but my heart doesn't seem to understand logic. If by some miracle you ever find this—know that I never stopped hoping you'd return. Even now."
Yuki sat there in silence, the letter trembling in her hands.
The wind rattled the windows.
And then, a sound.
A knock at the door.
She hurried downstairs, confused. No one knew she was here yet—not even her friends back in Tokyo.
She opened the door.
There he was.
Older. Taller. Eyes just as unreadable.
Ren.
Holding a letter.
One of hers.
He said nothing for a moment.
Then quietly:
> "I never stopped hoping either."