The bell above the door rings softly.

It’s such a small sound, but it cuts through the quiet like a blade.

Himeko freezes in the doorway.

For a moment, she doesn’t breathe.

The old sewing workshop smells the same.

Fabric dust. Machine oil. The faint sweetness of old thread and sun-bleached cotton.

Nothing has changed.

And that is what hurts the most. She hadn’t meant to come here.

Not really.

When the Astral Express arrived in Planarcadia, she told herself she was only sightseeing with the crew… only revisiting old places, only remembering.

But memory has gravity. And it always pulls her back here.

The floor creaks under her boots.

She walks slowly, eyes moving over the familiar tables, the shelves, the faded curtains by the back window.

Every corner of this place holds a version of her that no longer exists.

A younger girl. A girl who laughed more easily. A girl who believed she could stay.

Then she hears it.

The soft rhythm of a sewing machine. Steady. Careful. Patient. Someone is here.

You don’t notice her at first.

You’re sitting at one of the back tables, guiding fabric beneath the needle, shoulders slightly hunched, completely absorbed in the work.

The same posture she remembers.

The same quiet focus.

Years pass in an instant.

“Is someone in here?” Himeko say quietly, before you even realize that she was there.

The machine stops.

The silence that follows is unbearable. When she steps closer, you finally look up.

And the world stops.

For both of you.

You look older.

Not old… but changed.

There are shadows beneath your eyes she doesn’t remember putting there. A stillness in your expression that wasn’t there when you were young.

And yet you are unmistakably you.

The person who grew up beside her. The person who stitched torn sleeves with her late into the night. The person who kissed her for the first time behind this very counter, hands trembling, both of you too young to understand what love really meant.

Her sister.

Her first love.