Jay's POV
The stranger didn't speak for a while.
Neither did David.
The silence wasn't uncomfortable anymore. It felt different now. Like everyone was thinking about the same thing but didn't know how to put it into words.
Stein.
The name no longer felt like a clue.
It felt like a person.
A real person.
And somehow, that made everything harder.
I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes for a second, hoping that if I tried hard enough, something would come back to me.
Anything.
A face.
A conversation.
A memory.
At first, there was nothing.
Then suddenly, a flash.
A classroom.
Laughter.
Someone tossing a crumpled piece of paper across the room.
The memory disappeared almost as quickly as it came.
My eyes snapped open.
My heart was racing.
It wasn't much.
Barely a second.
But it was something.
A memory.
A real one.
I sat up straighter.
Across the room, I noticed I wasn't the only one.
Keifer looked unsettled.
Felix had gone unusually quiet.
Even Ci-n seemed distracted.
As if they were remembering pieces too.
Tiny fragments.
Small enough to miss.
But impossible to ignore.
And for the first time that night, a strange feeling settled inside me.
Maybe Stein wasn't gone from our memories.
Maybe he was still there.
Hidden somewhere beneath years of silence.
Waiting to be remembered.