[Sunday – 9:47 AM]
The sun filtered through gauzy white curtains in the dorm room. It should've felt warm. Soft. Safe.
But Mio's hand hovered over her sketchbook, unmoving.
Her pencil rested on the outline of three girls: one sitting at a piano, one holding a violin, and one—shattered in a mirror.
Reika was gone.
But the silence she left behind was not peace.
Downstairs in the courtyard, students murmured about the "lecture scandal." Some called it bold. Others called it fake drama. Most had moved on.
But not Aika.
She hadn't spoken much since that night.
[Cafeteria – 11:12 AM]
Sora poked at her cereal. "You'd think exposing a manipulative predator would feel like a win," she muttered.
Mio sipped her tea quietly. "It doesn't feel like winning. It feels like breaking something that already had cracks."
Aika slid onto the seat beside them.
"I'm not hungry," she said.
"You came all the way down here to say that?" Sora raised a brow.
Aika didn't answer.
Instead, she reached into her pocket and placed a folded sheet of paper on the table.
It was a letter.
> To Aika, from Reika. Unsent.
"I loved you the way a song loves its silence. That doesn't make it right. But it makes it real."
Her hands shook.
[Flashback – Friday Night: Post-Lecture Chaos]
After Reika had been escorted offstage, Aika had snuck into the faculty lounge.
Her fingers trembled as she broke into the desk drawer she knew Reika used.
She found three letters — one each for her, Sora, and someone named "Mina."
Mio and Sora never got theirs. Aika never told them.
[Present – Dorm Rooftop – 3:00 PM]
Sora lit a cigarette. She didn't smoke, really. But she needed to hold something that burned slower than her thoughts.
Mio sat next to her, wrapped in her blanket like always.
"So," Sora said. "We tore down the devil. What now?"
Mio leaned against her shoulder.
"We rebuild the girls she tried to break."
Aika didn't come up that night.
Instead, she stayed in the music room.
Again.
She played Moonlit Prayer in G Minor for the third time.
The keys had never felt colder.
💥 Monday Morning – 7:30 AM
The school halls buzzed again.
New posters.
New whispers.
And a new student.
Her name: Kiyomi Tachibana.
Transfer from an elite school in Kyoto. First-year prodigy. Ballet. French. Piano.
And… Reika's cousin.
Sora's eyes narrowed the moment she saw her.
Silky black hair in a ballerina bun. Ice-blue uniform perfectly pressed. Smile? Too polite to be innocent.
"She's here to watch us," Sora muttered.
Mio wasn't so sure.
Kiyomi sat next to her in Music Theory.
"Hi," Kiyomi said with a soft bow. "Your drawing of the falling piano? It's brilliant."
Mio blinked. "How did you…?"
Kiyomi smiled. "Reika showed it to me. Before… everything."
[Lunchtime – Garden Benches]
Aika watched from the distance.
Mio and Kiyomi were laughing about something.
Sora stood beside her.
"She's not your enemy, you know."
Aika frowned. "Then why does she make my chest hurt?"
Sora smirked. "Because you're feeling something again. And it scares you."
Aika looked away. "I'm not ready."
"No one is," Sora said softly. "But some chapters won't wait."
[That Night – Dorm Corridor – 10:40 PM]
Mio opened her sketchbook again.
New page.
Kiyomi's face, mid-laugh.
Delicate strokes. Gentle ink.
Then a second sketch behind it.
Sora, watching from the shadows. Hands in pockets. Expression unreadable.
Then a third sketch forming on its own — Aika, alone at the piano, but this time her reflection was smiling.
[Scene: Kiyomi's Room – Late Night]
Kiyomi sat in her own dorm room, laptop open.
A message window blinked.
> [Sender: R.Aoyama]
"How are the girls?"
Kiyomi typed:
> "Healing. But the fire isn't out yet. Especially not in Sora."