Dance Partners || N.NK ||

Part 45/S2

A few days passed by, and everyday, you found yourself cleaning the dusty house.
Everytime you wiped the glass windows clear, you would spot a few people walking on the neighbourhood streets, taking glances at the house as if it were a haunted place.

It made you wonder, if there was a background story to this place that you didn't know of.

One day, you were out at the front porch, cleaning the untouched house stairs like any other day.
Until you came across the mail box that was overloaded with letters.

"The hell?" you mumbled, seeing the wet envelopes—now dried, all piled up together inside a small mail box.
Some were even torn at the edges, others wrinkled from rain and time.

You tried taking one letter out of the mailbox, but they were all stuck together.
With a sigh, you wiped your hands on your clothes and crouched down, trying your luck in taking the letters apart.

At first you kept failing, and the letters kept slipping back down, deep inside the box.
But even so, you kept trying.

Quite a few failed attempts after, you managed to carefully peel one envelope from the pile.
You brushed the dust off, the ink had almost faded away, but the address was still visible.

"Yoshimura...Kimiko?" you murmured, reading the name written on the front of the letter.

But in the blink of an eye, the letters blurred.

"Huh..?"

You had just read it a second ago.
So why... why couldn't you read it now?

You blinked rapidly, staring at the paper, your mind racing in confusion.

And then—it hit you.
You hadn't read the name by recognizing the characters.
It was muscle memory.
But where did the memory come from..?

The realization sent a chill down your spine, a strange feeling settling in your chest.
The same way it did when you first saw the photo of the elderly woman inside the house.

Somewhere, deep inside you, something remembered.
Even if you didn't.

Slowly, you turned the envelope over and ran your finger along the edge.
You wanted to open the envelope and read what was written inside.
But you hesitated, for a moment, before carefully tearing it open.

Inside, the paper was yellowed, the ink slightly faded.
Your brows frowned, trying to read the unreadably familiar characters.
But despite that, the only thing you could read was the numbers of when the paper was printed.

"20.08.2021..?" you read the date aloud, the numbers rolling off your tongue with an unsettling familiarity.

The moment the words left your lips, something stirred inside you.
A distant echo.
A memory just out of reach.

You knew this date meant something.
It had a backstory—something important.

But no matter how hard you tried to recall and grasp it, the answer just slipped through your fingers like sand.

The answer was there.
Beyond your reach.

The sun was starting to set slowly, so you took that one letter with you and went back inside the house.

Taking off your slippers, you walked up the stairs, to the room you now called your bedroom.
Once you reached your room, you immediately threw yourself onto the bed.
You were really tired, not physically but mentally.

The house was filled with mysterious things that sparked your curiosity and led you to overthink.
The dust covered furniture and photo frames, the untouched rooms, the language people outside spoke—it all made you overthink out of curiosity.

But worst of all, your identity—would you ever figure out who you truly were?
Or if you had any loved ones at all?

~ To be continued