After Isabella hung up, Aiko sat holding her phone in the quiet of her dorm room, trying to process everything she had just learned. The mention of her mother—that Javier believed he had spoken with her during his coma—sent chills through her entire body.
"What details could he possibly have?" she whispered to herself, her mind racing through childhood memories she had never shared with anyone.
Mari looked up from her studying, noting Aiko's pale expression. "Was that about the Spanish guy?"
"His sister. She says... she says he thinks he has a message from my mother." Aiko's voice was shaky. "Details about my childhood that only she would know."
"Do you believe that's possible?"
Aiko closed her eyes, thinking about her mother's death, about all the things left unsaid between them. "I don't know what I believe anymore. But Mari, what if it's true? What if there are things my mother wanted to tell me that I never got to hear?"
"And what if it's not true? What if you disrupt your whole life chasing something that was just his mind creating meaning after trauma?"
"Then at least I'd know," Aiko said quietly. "But if I don't find out, if I just ignore this... how can I live with wondering forever?"
Her phone buzzed with a text from Hiroshi: "Thinking about you. Whatever you're processing, I'm here when you're ready to talk."
The sweetness of his message made her heart ache with guilt. Here was someone offering unconditional support while she wrestled with feelings for someone else.
"Mari, what would you do? If you had to choose between someone who's been there for you and someone who might have answers about your mother?"
"I think," Mari said carefully, "I'd need to know what those answers were before I could make any other decisions."
Aiko spent the rest of the evening staring at her phone, drafting and deleting messages she couldn't bring herself to send. Part of her wanted to reach out to Javier immediately, to demand he tell her what he thought her mother had said. But part of her was terrified that hearing those details would change everything—not just her understanding of her mother's death, but her feelings about the person who claimed to carry her final words.
The international competition Isabella had mentioned felt like a distant threat and a terrifying inevitability at the same time. If both she and Javier were progressing in their careers at the rate Isabella suggested, they would end up at that competition whether she made contact now or not.
The question was whether she wanted to face that reunion on her own terms or be ambushed by it in the most public setting possible.
As she finally drifted off to sleep, Aiko's dreams were filled with images of her mother's face and the sound of Javier's voice calling her name across an endless competition floor.
The choice was approaching faster than she was ready for, but it was no longer a choice she could avoid.