Chapter 11: The Forgotten Confession

The abandoned house looked the same as the last time I saw it—empty windows, chipped paint, and a silence so thick it felt like even the birds avoided it. Yui had led me here once, smiling like she was showing me her childhood secret base. I should’ve noticed then. Normal people didn’t laugh in houses where the wallpaper peeled like old scars.

I stepped inside again, the air musty with years of dust and abandonment. The floor creaked under my weight. It was the kind of place where you expected a ghost to jump out at you. Irony really didn’t know when to quit.

I searched the same desk where I’d found her diary. My fingers brushed against a small box wedged behind the drawer. Inside was a photograph.

A class photo.

Yui stood in the middle, school uniform crisp, smile radiant. She looked like every other ordinary high school girl in the picture. Except she didn’t.

The others had color. She didn’t.

Her figure was slightly faded, as though the sun had stolen her from the image. Even surrounded by friends, she looked like a shadow.

I stared at it for a long time. There’s a difference between “knowing” something and “facing” it. My gut had known for days, but my brain still wanted proof, like it was clinging to the hope that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t talking to the dead every day.

But here it was. Proof pressed on cheap photo paper.

I slipped the photo into my pocket and walked into town.

---

The old shop near the station had always looked like it belonged to another century—wooden shelves stacked with things nobody needed, a dusty clock that ticked five minutes behind reality, and an owner whose face looked carved from wrinkles.

“Excuse me,” I said, placing the photo on the counter. “Do you… recognize this girl?”

The old man adjusted his glasses, squinting at the picture. His expression softened, and for a moment, he almost looked young again.

“Ah… Yui-chan.” His voice cracked gently, like a door opening to the past. “Such a sweet girl. Always full of energy. Came here almost every day after school to buy snacks.”

I held my breath. “She… was?”

He nodded slowly. “It’s been, what… ten years now? She passed away just before graduation. An accident, they said. Poor child. Such a shame.”

The words landed like stones in my chest.

Passed away.

Right before graduation.

The diary’s abrupt end wasn’t just bad handwriting or forgotten days. It was the silence of a life cut off mid-sentence.

The shopkeeper sighed, sliding the photo back toward me. “Funny, isn’t it? How quickly people are forgotten. The world moves on, but the past stays right where it is.”

I clenched the picture in my fist. Forgotten. No. She wasn’t forgotten. Not as long as I remembered her laughter echoing down empty hallways. Not as long as her diary sat heavy on my desk.

I walked out before my throat betrayed me.

---

When I returned home, the sky was already bruised with evening. My room was dim, curtains drawn, and yet she was there.

“Welcome back, Haruto-kun!” Yui said cheerfully, sitting cross-legged on my desk like always.

But this time… she flickered.

Like a bad TV signal. Like a candle flame about to go out.

I froze, heart hammering. It wasn’t just my imagination. Her outline blurred every few seconds, her presence weaker than before.

“Yui…” My voice cracked.

She tilted her head. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She giggled at her own joke.

I didn’t laugh. I couldn’t.

I finally broke. “Yui… you’re gone, aren’t you?”

The words tore out of me, raw, unpolished. They hung heavy in the air, more real than anything I’d ever said.

Yui’s smile faltered. For a second, her eyes glistened—not with her usual mischief, but with something achingly human.

Slowly, she nodded.

Her voice was soft, trembling. “I wanted someone to remember me. That’s why you can see me, Haruto-kun. Because… you cared.”

It should’ve comforted me, but it didn’t. It felt like a knife slid between my ribs.

I wanted to deny it, to shout that she was lying, that she was here, alive, breathing, teasing me every day. But denial is a coward’s bandage, and it always peels away in the rain.

My hands shook around the diary I had carried back. The cosmos flower pressed inside felt like it would crumble with my heartbeat.

“Then tell me,” I forced out, voice breaking. “Who was it? Who did you want to confess to?”

Her lips trembled. For the first time since I met her, she looked fragile—not like a girl, not like a ghost, but like a wish too delicate to exist.

“…Does it matter?” she whispered. “It wasn’t you.”

The words hit harder than they should have.

Of course it wasn’t me. How could it be? She’d lived her story long before I ever came to this town. I wasn’t part of her past. At best, I was a spectator she dragged into her epilogue.

But it still hurt. God, it hurt more than I expected.

I gripped the diary tighter, knuckles white. My heart ached, but I forced the words out anyway:

“Then I’ll confess for you. I’ll give your words the life they never had.”

Yui’s eyes widened, shimmering with unshed tears. For a moment, she looked both grateful and unbearably sad.

The silence stretched between us, broken only by the faint hum of the rain outside.

And in that silence, I realized something:

Her story was unfinished.

But maybe… just maybe… I could be the one to write the last page.