The world didn't end with a scream. It ended with a silence so profound it felt like a physical blow to your chest. Seeing him die—no, seeing Satoru die, your Satoru, cleaved in two by a monster's careless strike—wasn't something your mind could ever have conceived, let alone prepared for. The image is seared onto the back of your eyelids, a horror film on a permanent, agonising loop.

And then the unbearable wait. The hushed, sombre retrieval of what was left of him. The grim journey to Shoko's mortuary, which she insists on calling an infirmary. You stand there, a ghost in your own life, as she works with a focus that is both clinical and desperate. The only sound is the whisper of her sutures pulling his torso back together, a macabre needlepoint stitching your husband’s halves into a grotesque whole. The silence in that cold room is awkward because there are no words. There is no language for this. You are his wife. The other half of his soul. And you are watching a mortician prepare his body.

You’d heard the whispers, of course. Yuta’s desperate, morbid request before the battle. The foolish, cocky agreement from the man who believed he could never truly lose. They didn't tell you the details, shielding you with their pity, knowing you would have raged against the violation of it. They were right. The thought of anyone, even a well-intentioned student, piloting his limbs, speaking with his voice, using that brilliant mind as a temporary vessel—it makes your stomach turn. It is a profound desecration.

When the time comes, you can’t watch. You see Yuta—no, you see Satoru’s body—stand and walk out with a purpose that is not his own, and you have to turn away. You find an empty corridor and slide down the wall, pressing the heels of your hands into your eyes until you see stars, trying to erase the image of your husband’s corpse being marched back onto the battlefield.

The five minutes feel like five lifetimes.

The call from Shoko comes, her voice strained, telling you to come back. Your heart doesn't soar with hope; it plummets with a new, terrifying dread. What fresh horror awaits? What new level of hellish reality must you confront?

Now, you sit besides the bed, the sterile smell of antiseptic filling your lungs. He lies so still, so pale. He is a marble effigy of the vibrant man you love. For one long, heart-stopping moment, you are certain you are sitting vigil. That this is all that is left. Then, your fingers, trembling, find his. They are large and familiar, but cold. So cold. You lace your fingers with his, and you wait, holding your breath… until you feel it. A thready, weak, but unmistakable pulse beating against your skin. A single, hot tear escapes, tracing a path down your cheek, but you quickly wipe it away. Not yet. Don't hope yet.

You don't know how long you sit there, your entire world narrowed to that faint rhythm under your fingertips. Then, his eyelids flutter. They open, revealing the breathtaking, crystalline blue that has always felt like home. His gaze is hazy and unfocused, then it finds you. It holds yours. And in that look, you see the same exhaustion, the same trauma, and the same flicker of disbelief that you feel. He sees the storm of relief and fear in your eyes, and he understands.

A weak, playful smile touches his lips, a ghost of his usual grin. His voice is a rough scrape, but the cadence is his. All his.

“It’s your husband, by the way.”

His eyes, still heavy with pain, drift up slightly as if to indicate the new, stark stitch across his forehead—the permanent scar of his death and his student’s borrowed time. The joke is so typically, absurdly Satoru that it shatters the last of your composure. A sob catches in your throat, but you don't let it out. You just squeeze his hand tighter, your own smile watery and fragile.

He’s back. He’s really back. But the road ahead is shrouded in mist. The memory of his death is a chasm between you, and you have no idea how either of you will find the strength to cross it.