Who is Mai?”
“I’m not going back to the clinic. They want to ‘adjust’ more, but I understand now. You don’t cut out grief without cutting out love. They’re the same thing. Two sides of the same coin. So I’ve decided to stop trying to forget.
She had never told him about that scar. He’d just… known, somehow. He’d traced it once, softly, and said, “This is my favorite map.”
“Then let me remind you,” she said.
The search had officially ended on day 14. The online tributes had faded by day 21. By day 39, only Mai still left his apartment exactly as it was—the unmade bed, the half-drunk mug of coffee that had grown a galaxy of mold, the sticky note on the monitor that read: “Build something that outlasts you.”