Jay's POV
Nobody admitted it at first.
Maybe because we weren't sure.
Maybe because we were afraid of being wrong.
But something had changed.
I could see it in the way everyone looked at each other. The confusion was still there, but now it was mixed with something else.
Recognition.
Small.
Faint.
Incomplete.
But there.
The stranger seemed to notice it too.
He remained silent, allowing us to sit with our thoughts instead of pushing us toward another answer.
For once, nobody complained.
Nobody asked questions.
The entire auditorium felt lost in memories that refused to fully return.
I looked down at my hands.
That brief flash from earlier kept replaying in my head. The classroom. The laughter. The feeling that someone had been there.
Someone important.
The frustrating part was that every memory ended before I could see who it was.
Like my mind was stopping me from reaching the truth.
I glanced toward David.
He was watching us now.
Not with fear.
Not with guilt.
But with something that looked dangerously close to hope.
As if he had been waiting for this moment.
Waiting for us to remember.
And somehow, that realization hit me harder than anything else that night.
Because if David had spent years carrying the memory of Stein alone...
Then maybe the real tragedy wasn't that we forgot him.
Maybe it was that he never did.