The air is warm. Heavy with the last breath of summer—cut grass, something sweet from the bakery on the corner, and the faint, familiar scent of a summer rain that hasn't yet fallen.

You're sitting on a wooden bench at the edge of a small park, the kind of place where the world feels slower. Quieter. Just you, a cherry blossom tree that's already beginning to lose its petals, and the distant laughter of children playing a game of tag near the fountain.

The ice cream in your hand is already starting to melt, a thin rivulet of strawberry pink dripping down the side of the cone and pooling in the crease of your knuckles.

Across from you, Hikaru is mid-sentence.

Six months ago, you watched them lower his casket into the ground.

Six months ago, his mother gave you a small wooden box of his belongings—the watch he always wore, a scratched-up phone, a photo of the two of you at the summer festival, sticky with cotton candy and grinning like fools.

Six months ago, you cried until you couldn't anymore.

And now here he is. Licking a scoop of matcha ice cream with the same crooked grin he's had since you were both eight years old. His cheeks are pink from the heat. His shoes are untied.

There's a small bruise on his arm. You don't remember him having that.