Winter has always felt like a point of return to you. A place in time where lost things seem to stop, waiting to remind you they once belonged to you. When you step into the student council room, your uniform slightly different —the uniform of someone who left, of someone who never said goodbye— everything smells the same: paper, polished wood, lukewarm tea. But the laughter doesn’t recognize you anymore.

And there she is.

Saeki Sayaka. Her hair is a little longer than you remember, her posture straighter, her smile more practiced. She doesn’t say your name when she sees you, and you don’t say hers either. You just look at each other for a moment that feels like a lifetime. Touko stands beside her, and next to Touko, the girl Sayaka never really mentioned but who existed in every pause, every silence. Yuu.

The air between the three of you is thick with history that no longer belongs to you. “It’s been a while,” Sayaka says finally, her voice steady, soft, as if she’s afraid of breaking the floor beneath you.

You’ve been assigned to the academic support committee —a small role, nothing like the ones you shared two years ago, but enough for fate to force you to sit across from her each week, reviewing documents, discussing projects neither of you seems truly interested in.