Chapter 41: That Which Floats, That Which Sinks.
Silence.
Not the warm kind that wrapped itself around you.
The kind that stretched-thin, awkward, trembling.
The kind that filled every crack in the room with invisible pressure.
Sensei didn't speak right away.
She just looked at me.
Not shocked. Not angry.
Just... quiet.
Her soft yellow eyes blinked once, then again.
She set down the papers in her hand. Folded them neatly.
"...I see," she finally said.
That was all.
Not a laugh. Not a gasp. Not a flustered shriek.
Just I see.
And in that moment, I understood something:
She hadn't expected this.
No matter how mature I seemed.
No matter how often I caught her gaze lingering a little
longer than it should've.
She didn't see it coming.
Or maybe-she refused to.
"... Tokusake-kun," she said, her voice dropping the nickname for the
first time all day.
Just my name.
Plain. Direct
That told me everything.
"I appreciate your honesty," she continued, calm but distant now. "Really, I do. And I don't want to pretend I didn't hear you. That would be unfair."
She stood and walked slowly toward the desk. Her footsteps felt heavier than before.
I followed her movement, every muscle in my body stiff. It was like waiting for a verdict I already feared.
"But you need to understand something," she said as she turned back to face me. "I'm your teacher."
That line again. I'd heard it a thousand times in books, dramas, manga.
But now, hearing it said by her-with tired, human weight -it wasn't a trope.
It was a boundary.
"I'm your teacher," she repeated. "Not because I don't feel... empathy. Or affection. Or care. But because this job demands that I protect that distance."
She sat down.
Folded her hands. Looked up at me.
Her expression was conflicted-but still soft. Still her.
"You're smart, Ren. And kind. And sharper than most people your age," she said gently. "Sometimes you say things in a way that makes me forget I'm talking to a high school student."
I looked down.
Because I wasn't.
Not really.
"But this...?" She exhaled. "This is more complicated than you realize."
If only she knew.
Or maybe she did. Maybe she felt it-that there was something off about me. Something older. Something detached.
But she didn't ask.
Didn't need to.
This moment wasn't about my past life.
It was about her.
About now.
She stood again and walked over to the window. The last light of day colored her hair amber.
"I've had students develop crushes on me before," she said plainly, not unkindly. "Most of the time, it's fleeting.
They grow out of it. Move on."
I opened my mouth-"I'm not-"
She raised a hand gently. Not to silence me, but to pause me.
"I know. This isn't a crush," she said. "I can feel that. And that's why this is even more dangerous."
She turned, finally looking at me again.
"I'm not rejecting your feelings to be cruel. I'm doing it because I respect you. Because I don't want to blur lines you can't uncross.'
The words didn't sting.
They ached.
Not because they were unfair.
But because they were true.
"I don't want to hurt you," she said.
And maybe, in another life, she already had.
I nodded slowly, the heat in my chest slowly fading into something cold and still.
"...Thank you for listening."
That's all I could say.
She gave me a bittersweet smile.
"You're braver than most adults I know."
And for the first time since I returned to this world, I didn't know whether I was the boy trying to grow up-Or the man pretending he wasn't broken.
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That night, I didn't cry.
I didn't scream.
I didn't spiral into regret.
But when I looked in the mirror, I didn't recognize myself.
Not because of my face.
But because I no longer knew which part of me was real.
The teenage boy who fell in love with his teacher-Or the tired man who never stopped loving her, even after death.
And that's when the question began to bloom inside me:
If I'm no longer that man...
But I'm not really this boy...
Then who exactly am I now?
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That night, I dreamed.
And the world I fell into was not mine.
It was an ocean.
Endless.
Still in some places. Violently crashing in others.
Its color was sickening-deep red and bitter amber, like blood mixed with liquor. The air reeked of salt and alcohol, a drunken sea that burned the nostrils and stung the eyes.
I stood barefoot at the edge of the water.
The sand beneath my feet wasn't sand at all.
It was shredded paper. Torn pages, some still fluttering as if desperate to escape.
I looked down.
One of the pages bore my handwriting-my real one, from my adult years.
Another had a test paper from high school, half-scored, my teenage name written in lazy strokes.
They weren't memories.
They were pieces of me.
Floating past, dissolving in the red tide.
The waves pulled in, and I stepped back.
But something caught my eye.
Glass.
Hundreds of shards, half-buried in the wet sand. Some were clear. Others were tinted-like fragments of bottles, windows, mirrors.
They reflected faces I knew and ones I didn't.
My mother's smile.
A younger me, eyes blank with burnout.
A laughing Ren who'd never seen war, heartbreak, or funerals.
A version of me that didn't exist anymore.
Then a man stood far out in the ocean, waist-deep in red water. Motionless.
His posture was straight. Military. Familiar.
I knew him.
I feared him.
And yet he was me.
〔Are you going to stay here?〕 the man called out. His voice echoed like thunder inside a bottle.
I didn't answer.
Because what would I say?
He took a step forward. The ocean didn't resist him-it welcomed him.
"You're in the middle of the sea, and you don't know if you're supposed to float or drown."
The sky cracked.
A monsoon of broken rocks began to fall in the distance-huge, jagged pieces plunging into the red water with deep, world-ending splashes.
Each time one landed, a piece of my past flashed in my mind-
Me quitting my job.
Me holding my father's cold hand at the hospital.
The silence of the night I collapsed.
Each impact louder than the last.
The man kept walking toward me.
〔You think you were sent back to fix something,〕 he said. 〔But maybe this isn't a gift.〕
He was close now.
The sea crept up my legs, warm like spilled blood.
〔Maybe this is punishment.〕
I fell to my knees.
Not from pain.
But because I no longer knew which version of me I was supposed to protect.
The boy who still wanted to be held.
Or the man who forgot how to ask for it.
Tears didn't come.
But the salt in the air burned just the same.
The man knelt in front of me.
〔You can't pretend anymore.〕
A mirror floated between us.
In it-my face.
Not young.
Not old.
Just... exhausted.
A reflection that didn't belong anywhere.
Then came the whisper-not from the man, but from the ocean itself.
It was a child's voice.
〔You left me behind.〕
I looked down.
A small figure stood ankle-deep in the water, clutching a page from an old storybook. It was soaked. Illegible.
〔You forgot I ever existed, 〕the child said.
His eyes were hollow.
But I knew them.
They were mine.
The man spoke again.
〔You can't kill one version of yourself to let the other live.〕
And for the first time-l understood.
I wasn't supposed to choose.
I wasn't supposed to become the boy again.
Or bury the man I was.
I had to carry them both.
The waves began to pull back.
The glass receded.
The torn pages flattened into the tide.
The blood diluted.
The alcohol faded.
And the sea whispered:
〔Remember who you are. But don't forget who you've been.〕
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I woke up gasping.
The taste of iron still lingered on my tongue.
My sheets were damp with sweat.
I looked at my hands.
One was trembling.
The other was steady.