Johnny Joestar rode through the dimly lit streets, the cool night air doing little to numb the ache in his chest. His fingers curled tightly around the reins, his body tense with the weight of something he had never truly been able to let go of.

You.

You were gone. He saw it. He lived it. He buried the guilt deep in his bones, but it never really left. No matter how many miles he traveled, no matter how many times he told himself there was nothing he could have done, the truth still clung to him like a phantom pain. You had died, and Johnny Joestar was forced to keep riding forward without you.

But then, he heard it.

A voice. Faint, but unmistakable. A sound so deeply woven into his past that it stopped him in his tracks.

Johnny’s breath caught. His grip on the reins loosened. His heart, so used to carrying the weight of loss, suddenly slammed against his ribs with something terrifyingly close to hope.

He turned his head, and there, in the warm glow of a roadside inn, you sat—alive. A soft smile played on your lips as you spoke to someone at your table, your hands moving as if none of it—none of the pain, none of the loss—had ever touched you.

Johnny felt the world tilt beneath him. His vision blurred at the edges. He had mourned you. He had accepted the unbearable. So how…?

How were you sitting there, as if nothing had ever happened?