Chapter 4"What was my Dream Again?"

It was the next day and I was taking a stroll along the beaches of Akaruijima recalling the conversation I had with Himari looking out at the endless Ocean and whispered:

“My dream? What was it again? I vaguely remember doing something and the…”

The words escaped my lips like the last echoes of a song I’d long forgotten. I stood on the old pier near my grandfather’s house, the sea breeze tugging at my hoodie, eyes lost somewhere between the waves and the sky.

Suddenly, the scent of summer grass and the sound of cheering flooded my ears.

Flashback.

The stadium lights were blinding. My heart pounded in rhythm with the roar of the crowd. I stood on second base, dust on my knees, sweat rolling down my face. This is it, I told myself. This play decides everything.

The pitcher wound up. The bat cracked.

I ran.

Faster than I ever had.

But then—
A sharp pain.
A flash of white.
The world spun.

Something had gone wrong.
The ball hadn’t cleared the field.
It had struck me.

Right in the head.

The cheering stopped.
Replaced by gasps.
Then silence.

End of flashback.

I opened my eyes. My fingers were trembling. Even after all this time, just thinking about it made my chest tighten. One unlucky ricochet. One freak accident. And the future I’d dedicated my entire life to—

Gone.

Doctors called it a miracle that I could walk again. Said I should be grateful. But no one knew what it was like to have everything stripped from you in a single second. I was a prodigy once. A rising star. "The Japanese Flash," they called me.

Now, I was just... a boy on an island, pretending I came here just to visit his grandfather.

But part of me had come here to disappear. To figure out what came after a dream dies.

Or maybe—
If I’m honest—
To see if something new could take its place.