The stone floor of the innermost corridor was cold. Erika remained on her knees, her hands folded over her lap. Six years of weight seemed to have transformed into the gravity of stone itself, making her body reluctant to move. The air of the dream realm had gone still. Should she reconstruct the barrier and return to numbness? Or should she—accept as emotion the burden she had carried alone for six years? Two choices lay quietly before her. Nothing rushed her. The corridor walls had begun to emit a faint glow, but it was not a light that cornered her. It simply existed. It was the kind of light that waited. Erika traced inward. Fear—her mother's back reflected on the walls of the labyrinth of confusion. She faced directly the night when her mother wept in darkness, and for the first time, that sensation of thorns returning. The feeling. Loneliness—the mirror-like lake had reflected only her own face infinitely. Standing motionless in complete silence, she had realized—the loneliness she felt was the absence of a specific voice. Regret—the thorns of the abandoned garden recorded, one by one, each moment she wished to redo. The instant she touched the dark purple brambles, memories of that young night flooded in explosively. When Hal told her "that's enough for today," she felt an impulse for the first time—the desire to resist. Anger—something she realized in the flames of the forge. At the root of anger lay traces of love. Her anger toward her father's back was a form born from love. Four emotions, each settling into their own place. They had all returned for this moment—that understanding descended slowly, before words could form. For the child she had been, it was too heavy a burden. That was all it was. Not sin, not weakness. Simply too heavy. The ten-year-old version of herself had built the barrier because there was no other way to survive. Erika did not use words. She placed both hands on the floor and stood up. That was all. Just that single motion was a choice. In an instant, the corridor walls began to glow from within. The gray stone turned white, white, and then transparent—she could see the light spreading beyond the walls, deep into the dream realm. Ripples of transformation spread across the entire wasteland. Erika felt that expansion as vibrations through the soles of her feet. She took one step forward. --- Color seeped into the desert that had been nothing but ash. At first, it was too faint to notice. A faded blue bled across the sand's surface. Next, orange was born in the distance of the horizon. Thin gold began to trace the edge of the sky. Erika stood in the center of the ash wasteland, watching the change. As her emotional barrier crumbled, the dream realm regenerated. She had never felt so acutely that this desert was the geography of her inner landscape. Then her eyes turned toward the entrance of the corridor. Hal was there. In his usual student uniform, his dull blue-green hair swayed in the dream realm's light. His pale silver eyes looked toward Erika. But— His outline was dissolving. The distortion was incomparably deeper than anything she had seen before. Hal's boundaries were diffusing into the dream realm's transforming colors. Like water dissolving into water, the edges of his existence were beginning to blend with the surrounding light. Erika tried to take a step forward—in that instant. The dream realm turned white with saturation. It was not mist. It was like a flood of light. She tried to call Hal's name, but no sound came. Her throat moved. No sound was born. Only that fact remained as residue in her throat—and her consciousness was pulled upward. --- She saw the ceiling. Seven stains. A six-mat room on the second floor. Erika remained still for a while, gazing up at the ceiling. Light entered from outside the window. The edge of the curtain was bright. It was morning. A ship's whistle from the fishing port reached her from far away. Before, the whistle would have been processed only as sound. Now it was different. The low resonating sound faintly shook something deep inside her chest. A small but certain vibration. Erika quietly confirmed that it was functioning as emotion. The pillow was wet. When she touched it with her fingertips, it was cold. She understood she had cried in her sleep. She also understood what the tears were for. They were tears for that night six years ago—for the weight she had accepted, for that heaviness itself. She opened her right palm. The residual sensation of cold stone and the residual sensation of Hal's hand existed overlapped. One was the memory of the hand that touched the floor tonight, the other was something carried over from after the trial of anger—they were different kinds. For a while, she gazed at her palm, confirming that difference. When she opened the window, the scent of the sea entered. The smell of salt. The smell of tide. The smell of life. It reached her nose not as mere scent, but as something that stirred something within. Erika breathed in slowly, quietly. There was school today. --- The hallway of Mikage Hama South High School grew crowded as soon lunch break began. The east corridor on the third floor, where Class 2-B's classroom was located, became lively with students carrying their lunches. Erika walked down the hallway. The way the world looked had changed slightly since morning. The light coming through the windows was clearer than it had been in the first episode. She could see that the color of the hallway walls was not just white but slightly cream-colored. The smell of bread someone was eating drifted past, and it touched somewhere deep in her stomach. It was a fragile world. Vivid and fragile. When she had the barrier, nothing reached her, so she was never hurt. Now everything reached her. Small lights, small scents, the laughter of someone walking down the hallway—everything came directly without passing through a thin membrane. It was richness, and at the same time, it was rawness. Then Takahashi Rina came from the other direction down the hallway. Her bright chestnut-colored long hair waved and swayed on her shoulders. Her lustrous green eyes stood out even in the crowd. She was walking quickly, holding bags of bread in both hands—and then her eyes met Erika's. Rina's feet stopped. Erika had not been conscious of it. The corners of her mouth moved. She had not decided to do so. But when she saw Rina's face—just slightly, the corners of her lips rose. Emotion had converted into expression. The return of a lost function. Proof that it had come back. Only Rina, who had watched six episodes of expressionlessness, would have noticed this subtle change. A rise in the corners of the mouth so slight it could barely be called that. But— Rina's face crumbled. She froze for about three seconds, her expression one of shock. Her green eyes were wide open. As if to confirm something, she looked at Erika's face again. Looked. Looked again. And then she began to cry. In the middle of the busy hallway, with her voice. "...Erika" That was all. Just those words, and then sobs. Her chestnut hair fell in front of her face, and she made no move to brush it away. Tears traced down to her chin, wetting the place where her dimple was. Erika felt like laughing. Rina crying was so strange, so absurd—no, not absurd, but her chest grew warm from the inside, and the urge to laugh came at the same time, and the two mixed together. Erika received Rina, who could cry like this in the middle of a crowded hallway, head-on. "Rina, we're in the hallway" "I know!" She probably doesn't, Erika thought. But she didn't say it aloud. Instead, she placed her hand on Rina's arm and quietly pulled her toward the end of the hallway—in front of the infirmary, to a passage where few people passed. At that moment, she heard small footsteps behind her. When she turned around, a first-year student was peeking around the corner of the hallway, looking at them. Looking back and forth between the crying Rina and Erika, apparently judging it to be some kind of trouble—they quickly retraced their steps. Erika watched their back disappear down the hallway. Rina, still crying, said, "We were seen." The laughter Erika had been holding back leaked out a little. It was a small sound, but it was real. The two of them sat down with their backs against the wall in front of the infirmary. Erika briefly recalled the scene on the rooftop from the fourth episode. Back then, Rina had sat beside her, and Erika could only give emotionless responses. Now it was reversed. Rina was crying, and Erika was holding back laughter. The form of sitting side by side against the wall was the same, but the contents had completely switched places. Rina's shoulder touched Erika's shoulder. Body heat transmitted from there. It was warm. Rina's body temperature was the same as the temperature in her memory, but now it reached her properly through her skin. Erika did not flee from that temperature. She simply accepted the fact that the distance had closed. For a while, the two said nothing. Rina's sobs gradually subsided. There was the sound of her sniffling, and the sense of her wiping her eyes with her sleeve. "...I've been thinking about this for a while" Rina opened her mouth. Her voice was still slightly wet, but she was returning to her usual self. "Erika, you're cuter than I thought when you smile" "I wasn't smiling just now" "You were about to" Erika did not deny it. Looking up at the hallway ceiling, she continued to accept the temperature from Rina's shoulder. --- After school, Erika walked alone to the Mikage Hama Seaside Park breakwater. The road through Shiokaze Street to the coast was lit by orange light falling on the stone pavement in the evening. The shopping street, with its thirty percent vacant stores, was quiet as always, with only a little sign of people in front of Sugar Coast. The sweet smell of Okano baking dough drifted through the street. Standing at the tip of the breakwater, Sagami Bay spread before her. She remembered coming to this place in the first episode. Back then, it was a "sea that felt nothing." Looking at the horizon, listening to the sound of waves, smelling the salt air—nothing happened. Now it was different. The evening light dissolved into the water's surface. Orange, gold, and pale purple mixed together. Erika quietly examined how that color functioned inside her chest. It functioned. It reached her properly. The sound of waves regularly washing against the breakwater became rhythm, entering her body. A fishing boat's engine sounded in the distance. A seabird flew toward the horizon. The world where emotion had returned was vivid, but not everything was resolved. Her feelings toward her father still lingered in the middle of the corridor. Neither anger nor pure love, but something in between. The first vibration of yearning—the desire to seek someone—that she had touched in last night's innermost corridor still remained undefined within her. The realm of shame. The realm of sorrow. The realm of yearning. Three remained untraversed. Beneath the joy of liberation, that fact lay quietly. It was not heavy. It was simply, certainly there. Confirmation that the story had not ended. Erika sat down at the edge of the breakwater and listened to the sound of the waves. For a while, she simply sat there, not thinking of anything in particular, just watching the sea at dusk. It felt like she was allowed to do this—at least for tonight, just being here was enough. --- The moment Erika opened the front door, she stopped. From beyond the door came the smell of dinner. Erika stood still for a while, key in hand. During the period without emotion, she could only produce this word as sound. Vibrating her vocal cords, deforming the air—nothing more than a mechanical action. Tonight was different. "I'm home" Three