***
In another life — or perhaps the same life, folded back upon itself — fluorescent lights hummed overhead, cold and relentless.
The corridor smelled of antiseptic and quiet despair. Outside, rain streaked the windows, turning the city into trembling silver lines.
Ciel sat hunched on a narrow bench, sketchbook balanced on his knee. His charcoal-stained fingers trembled so badly he could barely keep the pencil steady.
Page after page — her face, always her face. Sometimes smiling. Sometimes weary. Always slipping away the moment the line was finished.
Behind the closed door, Elara lay in a white-sheeted bed, monitors tracing the fragile rhythm of her heart.
She was awake — but barely.
Fragments of memory clung to her like seaweed after a storm.Faces she should have known felt distant; her own name tasted foreign on her tongue.
A nurse emerged, gentle-eyed and tired.
"She's asking for you," she murmured.
Ciel stood, sketchbook clutched to his chest as if it were the only thing keeping him upright.
His boots squeaked softly on the polished floor, each step echoing in the silence.
Inside, Elara looked up, eyes wide and lost.
"Do I know you?" she whispered.
The words cut deeper than any blade.
"You do," he rasped, throat raw. "It's me — Ciel."
For a moment, her brow furrowed, as if fighting through fog.
"Ciel," she repeated softly, testing the name on her tongue.
"Every Tuesday," he whispered, voice cracking. "We'd meet by the fig tree. Do you remember?"
"Tuesday…" she murmured, gaze drifting to the rain beyond the window. "Fig tree…"
The words trembled in the air, untethered.
"I drew you," he said, flipping through the sketchbook with shaking hands. "Look — here, here — I drew you every week so we wouldn't forget."
Her fingers traced the charcoal lines, lips parting in wonder.
"She looks like me," she whispered, voice breaking. "But I don't remember being her."
Tears blurred his vision, dripping onto the page.
"It's all right," he choked. "I remember enough for both of us."
"But what if you forget too?" she asked, voice small as rain on glass.
His breath caught.
"Then," he whispered, "maybe the part of me that loved you would remember — even if I couldn't say why."
"And if neither of us remembers?" she asked, the words barely audible.
"Then maybe we'll still find each other," he whispered. "Even if we don't know what we've found."
The monitors beeped steady but frail.
Elara closed her eyes, breath shallow.
"Will you stay?" she murmured.
"Always," he breathed.
He sat beside her, sketchbook open on his lap, pencil poised though his hand shook too much to draw.
Outside, the rain kept falling, endless and patient.
Inside, two hearts tried to hold onto a story written on paper and breath —fragile as charcoal, fading with every hour.
By dawn, the lines on the page had blurred where tears had fallen.
Yet still, in that hospital corridor, Ciel whispered the same promise he had made in lives he barely remembered:
"Even if you forget… I will keep looking for you."
***