It had been eight Tuesdays.
I'd stopped keeping count after six, but it turns out that absence has a calendar of its own, and it never misses a date.
Then, on a humid afternoon that didn't smell like ghosts or goodbyes, I noticed her.
Except—it wasn't her.
Wrong face, wrong height, no ironic half-grin and no Tuesday aura.
But the shoe. The left one, pale blue and familiar. Out of place but perfect.
She—this junior girl with earbuds in and no clue about metaphysical footprints—was wearing the shoe. Mismatched, without concern. A black sneaker on the right foot and the historical loafer on the left.
I pointed, "Where'd you get that?"
She blinked like I'd just asked what day it was in another language.
"Oh this? Found it by the library. Weird, right? But it didn't feel right to throw it away."
I nodded and smiled. I didn't explain and I didn't need to.
"Do you believe in ghosts?" I asked.
She laughed. Not the same but not different enough to ignore.
"Only on Tuesdays," she said as she ran away in a hurry. One shoe in the past. One in the present. And I stood still, watching until she rounded the corner and vanished—not like a ghost, but like someone late for something entirely alive.
I didn't follow her. Instead, I walked to the vending machine. Bought a drink. Of course, the Calpis soda. And sat where we used to sit. On the ground that had held both of us, and now held neither.
She wasn't haunting a vending machine. She was haunting the idea that someone might remember her kindly.
The shoe?
The shoe wasn't a signal. It was a seed and it had sprouted. Not into tragedy, but into a girl who saw something strange and decided to keep it. Because it felt worth keeping.
Sitting there with my Calpis soda, I wondered that you don't move on by forgetting, you move forward by walking with one shoe in the present, and one still echoing in the past.
And now someone else was walking forward—with one ghost fewer behind her.
Or maybe—just maybe—that's what moving on means.
You don't forget the ghost.
You wear their left shoe on a Tuesday and walk anyway.
---The End---