She laughed once, sharp and surprised. “Better?” she echoed. “Better for whom?”

She aimed, missed, cursed softly, and tried again. Her last life ended with a high score that was nothing to write home about, but she felt something shift: a tiny, hot ember of competence. The man clapped like someone who hadn’t had a reason to celebrate in a long stretch of gray days.

“Yui.” She guarded the syllables as if names were currency. “I’m skipping school today.” The admission arrived in a rush, embarrassed and defiant.

“I used to come here when I was your age,” he said. His voice carried a map of places he’d been and choices he’d lived through. “Better times, maybe. Or different. That’s the trouble with memory—sometimes it dresses things up to be kinder than they were.”