The photo sat on the nightstand. Two halves pressed together. A whole, broken thing.
She stared at it. He stared at the floor.
The rain had stopped. The room was a vacuum. No sound. Just the hum of the mini-fridge. A low, constant drone.
"The promise," he said. The word was dust.
She didn't look up. "What about it."
"We could."
A laugh. Short. Hollow. "Could what, Kenji? Get in your cab? Drive to nowhere? What's the plan? Motel rooms? My credit card? Until the reality hits. And it will hit. It's not a rooftop. It's the open road. And we're not kids. We're… this." She gestured between them. At the tired space.
"We don't have to go anywhere," he said. Voice low. "We could just… stay. Be. In the same city. In the same room. Without the ghosts."
"The ghosts are in the room," she shot back. "They're sitting right here. You're haunted. I'm haunted. Putting two haunted houses together doesn't make a home. It makes a bigger haunting."
He stood up. Paced. Two steps. Turn. Two steps. A caged animal. "So that's it? We just walk away? Again? After all this?"
"What's the alternative?" She stood too. Faced him. "Play house? Pretend? I have a life. A messy, beige, grown-up life. With a fiancé I don't love. With a job that pays for this hotel room. You have a cab. A routine. We have ruins. Separate ruins. You don't build a future on two piles of rubble."
"We could try." It sounded weak. Pathetic.
"Try?" The word was a knife. "We're fifty. We're not trying. We're surviving. You want to try? What does that even look like? You move in? We get a cat? We talk about the weather? While this…" She pointed at the photo. "…this ghost sits between us at the breakfast table? Every day?"
He was silent. She was right. He knew it. The fantasy was a car. A drive. A clean escape. The reality was a morning after. And another. And another. With the weight of all the mornings they'd already lost.
"The promise was about tomorrow," she said, quieter now. Drained. "We don't have tomorrow. We have today. And it's… beige. And quiet. And real."
He looked at her. At the woman in the t-shirt. The lawyer. The ghost of mint. "Do you want to?"
The question hung.
She closed her eyes. A long moment. When she opened them, they were wet. "I want the idea. I want the feeling of 1999. I want the boy who promised me a car. I don't… I don't know if I want the man who drives one for a living. That's the truth. And it's ugly."
He nodded. Swallowed. "I want the girl who believed me. Not the woman who knows better."
There it was. The core of it. They didn't want each other. They wanted the people they used to be. The people who were brave enough to want each other.
The choice wasn't about running away. It was about facing the fact that they'd already run. A long time ago. In different directions.
"So we say goodbye," he said. A statement.
"We already said goodbye. On a rooftop. This is just… making it official."
The quiet came back. Thicker.
The choice was an illusion. The real choice had been made twenty-seven years ago, by a scared kid and a girl on a train. Everything since was just the long, slow consequence.
He picked up the photo halves. Separated them. Gave her her half.
She took it. Held it. Didn't look at it.
He put his half in his pocket. Over his heart. A habit.
"This is the sentence," she whispered.
"Yeah."
To live with the ghost. To know it's just a ghost. To choose the beige, quiet, real world over the beautiful, painful, imaginary one.
They didn't touch. Didn't kiss. Didn't have a dramatic scene.
They just stood there. In the neutral room. Holding their pieces of a broken past.
The choice was already made. They were just finally admitting it.