(One Month Later)
Aqua didn’t recognize herself anymore.
Her first week back, she barely left her bed. She lay there listening to her mom’s old Alanis Morissette CDs, telling everyone she had the flu. The tissue boxes piling up helped sell the lie.
Now she drifted through the Sasaki Mansion like a ghost — quiet, hollow, unreachable. Her parents tried to pull her back with gentle questions and soft touches, but nothing stuck. Food tasted like nothing. Sleep came in broken pieces. Every morning she woke with the same ache in her chest, like someone had carved out a piece of her and forgotten to put it back.
She avoided her phone.
She avoided work, taking an extended leave.
She avoided anything that smelled like pine or rain or Kieran.
Yesterday, her mother found her staring at the koi
