The clinic held its shape again.
The walls stopped bending. The light softened. The smell of lavender and ash drifted slowly back into the edges of the room. It could've been mistaken for peace, if not for the weight that settled on all of us.
Erich hadn't moved.
He sat cross-legged near the center of the room, back straight, hands resting lightly on his knees. His breathing was quiet. Focused. Intentional.
The chaos was gone, but it left something behind.
Clara sat on the floor a few paces from him, watching—not studying, not waiting. Just… there. Her posture said more than her silence. It said, we're still here.
Konrad leaned against the wall near the door. One sleeve was torn. Blood at his collar. He hadn't spoken since the dimension collapsed. His hands were steady, but his eyes fixed on Erich like he was watching a fire that might still catch again.
I stood.
The thread behind my ribs had gone still again. Not silent. Just listening.
"You alright?" I asked.
Erich opened his eyes. He looked at me like someone waking up—not from sleep, but from a life he hadn't realized he'd been living.
"I am," he said.
His voice didn't shake. It didn't need to.
I nodded once.
His gaze passed over Clara, then Konrad, then landed on me again.
"I remember you," he said quietly. "From before," he hesitated. "I don't know the names, but… I know the feeling."
His eyes still focused on me.
"You were there at the end."
Clara exhaled quietly.
"I didn't think I'd forgotten," Erich said. "But now that I've remembered… it feels like grief."
I stared at him in silence, unable to respond—offer him an answer.
Helene stepped forward, quiet as breath. She carried a cloth and a cup of cold water. Without speaking, she knelt beside Erich and handed it to him.
He took it—dipping the cloth in, and putting it over his forehead, laying down. Their eyes met only briefly.
"You were right," he said to her.
"I've only ever offered questions," Helene replied.
It was modest. Measured. Practiced.
But Clara watched her differently now.
Konrad finally moved. "We should rest."
No one argued.
***
Helene offered a second room—smaller, unlit, with two worn couches and a wool blanket folded over the edge of a cedar chest. We didn't ask why she had it ready.
Erich sat alone for a while longer before joining us. He didn't say a word, just took a seat in the far corner and stared at the flame of the stove.
Clara lay with her back to the wall, eyes half-lidded but not asleep. Konrad leaned against the frame of the door, watching the street through a thin slit in the curtain. I sat near the center table, journal unopened, hands idle.
I had thought regaining one of us would bring clarity.
But the silence between us held something heavier.
Erich had remembered. And yet it didn't feel like a victory.
It felt like standing on the edge of something deeper.
After an hour, Konrad moved into the room and sat without a word. Clara stirred beside me and whispered, "We're still missing someone."
I looked at her.
She didn't meet my eyes.
"We haven't stopped looking for him." I assured her.
"I don't mean Shuji." she added.
My breath caught. Because I had felt it too. In the quiet, in the gaps between our voices.
I looked toward Erich.
He was listening.
"Then we haven't remembered," he said.
"No," Clara replied. "Not yet."
Helene entered the room, wiping her hands with a towel. "Memory isn't always complete," she said. "Sometimes we remember the shape of what's missing before the color."
Clara looked up sharply. "How do you know that?"
Helene smiled faintly. "I've watched others try to remember."
Her answer was soft, reassuring—but it didn't land the way it used to.
I stood again.
"We need to figure out what's next."
Konrad nodded. "We move soon."
"To where?" Erich asked.
"Somewhere new," Konrad said. "Where the thread leads next."
We earned our rest that night.
But something had shifted.
A thread pulled taut beneath the quiet—and none of us could ignore it.