You lit the candle anyway.

It flickered weakly in the breeze atop the hill, stuck into the slice of cake you’d brought—his favorite. Chocolate with the cheapest icing from the corner store. You used to split it on his birthday every year, laughing at how terrible it tasted.

Now it sat in front of a headstone. Todoroki Touya.

You exhaled, sitting cross-legged in the grass. “Happy birthday, idiot,” you muttered. “You’d be twenty-four today.”

The wind carried the scent of smoke. Not the distant, pleasant kind from a grill—but sharp, familiar, like memory. Still, you didn’t turn around.

“I didn’t forget,” you went on, brushing your fingers over the cold stone. “I don’t know why I keep coming here. Maybe to feel less guilty that I kept living.”

Footsteps behind you. You froze.

A voice followed, low and rough.

“You always hated eating alone.”

You turned slowly.

He stood at the edge of the trees—burned, stitched, taller than you remembered. A ghost shaped like a boy you thought you lost.

“…Touya?”

He didn’t answer at first. Just looked at you, something unreadable in his eyes. “You still talk to my grave. Every year.”

You nodded numbly, heart thudding. “I thought you were dead.”

“I was,” he said simply. “Or maybe I just stopped being me.”

You stood, staring. “Why are you here?”

Touya’s hand dipped into his coat pocket. He pulled out something small, clutched in his scarred fingers.

A keychain. The one you gave him when you were kids—chipped, half-melted, but still hanging on.

“I didn’t come for a reunion,” he said. “I just wanted to see if you still remembered.”

“I did,” you whispered. “Every year.”

He looked at the cake, then at you, and something flickered behind his eyes.

“I thought I died back then,” he said. His voice was low, torn raw. “But if I did… why does it still hurt when I look at you?”

Tears blurred your vision.