Jay's POV
The more I thought about it, the more unfair it seemed.
For years, we had lived our lives without Stein.
We laughed.
We made memories.
We moved forward.
Meanwhile, David had remembered.
Every single day.
The thought sat heavily in my chest.
I glanced at him again, trying to imagine what that must have felt like. To remember someone everyone else had forgotten. To carry a story nobody else could recall.
No wonder he looked exhausted.
No wonder he had been afraid.
The stranger quietly closed the folder and rested a hand on top of it.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
The questions were still there.
So many questions.
But they felt different now.
Less like accusations.
More like pieces of something broken.
Something we were slowly trying to put back together.
Then Ci-n suddenly broke the silence.
"What was he like?"
The question caught everyone off guard.
Including me.
Because throughout the entire night, nobody had asked that.
Nobody had asked about Stein himself.
Only about the mystery surrounding him.
David looked up.
For the first time, a small smile appeared on his face.
A sad one.
The kind that carried more memories than happiness.
And somehow, seeing that smile made me realize something.
We had spent hours searching for answers.
But maybe what we really needed...
was to know the person we had forgotten.