I woke up the next morning sluggish and drowsy as I checked the clock on my nightstand for the time. After realizing I had slept in until 11am, I suddenly remembered everything that happened the night before. I smiled stupidly to myself thinking about dancing with Yui and seeing her laugh and have so much fun.

After the dance was over and I said goodbye to my friends, Miyoshi picked us up and drove us back to the house. Yui was so exhausted I could tell she was trying not to fall asleep the whole ride back. I hugged her one last time before going home, wishing I could have stayed the night with her but felt too uncomfortable to ask in front of Miyoshi. I had promised to take her out again soon before I left, and thinking about that made my wallet groan.

I had known for awhile that I would need to get a job during the school year if I wanted to pay for dates with Yui on top of my expenses for food, my phone bill and saving up for a car once I got my license. I wasn't completely broke, but I needed a job if I was going to be spending money every week. The thought of applying to a job and doing interviews and having to work during school made me anxious, but I needed to start sometime.

I swung out of bed and glanced at the tuxedo jacket and pants in a pile on my floor. I rubbed my eyes in the bright morning light and walked into the kitchen to see my mom sitting at the table drinking tea while watching the news.

"Good morning honey."

"Hi mom."

"How was the dance last night?"

I sat down at the table and she got up to get me some toast and eggs. "It went great, actually. Yui had a lot of fun and I got to introduce her to my friends," I yawned.

"That's good, I'm so glad you two had fun. I'm so sad I missed seeing you all dressed up though. You'll have to show me pictures."

I took out my phone from my pocket to pull up some photos for my mom and saw I had a text message. I opened it curiously and saw it was from Otonashi, who I hadn't spoken to in a few weeks.

Hi Hinata. Just checking up on you and Yui- how are you guys? Kanade and I will be in town this weekend if you want to meet up and talk again. I know it's been awhile but it's still on our minds

The strange connection we had all felt to one another had slipped my mind the past couple weeks since I had been so focused on Yui's health and going to the dance with her and solving my own problems I hadn't thought about Otonashi and Kanade. They seemed like such nice people; only knowing them for a short time I felt like they cared about Yui and I.

I wrote a reply,

Hi Otonashi. Sorry for not checking up sooner, life has been busy. I'd love to meet up again, and I'm sure Yui would too. Where should we meet you?

I took a bite of my toast and showed my mom the pictures Miyoshi had taken of Yui and I, and she did the thing that moms do where they take your phone out of your hands and try to zoom in on everything.

"You look adorable honey, I've never seen you smile so much in pictures before!"

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The next day I arrived at Yui's house, much to her surprise, and told her about the text I got from Otonashi.

"You want to see them again right? Because I basically already told them we're coming," I said, sitting on the edge of her bed.

"Yeah, I actually thought about Kanade the other day and how much I missed talking with her. She was so sweet when she visited me in the hospital."

"Okay good, because we have to be at the park in approximately…" I checked my watch. "13 minutes."

As Yui freaked out and told me I should have come sooner because there way so way she'd be ready to go in that amount of time, I thought about our connection to one another. It was true that when I first saw Yui there was a strong sense of familiarity, and a strange magnetic pull that I felt when I looked at her. Now that we had grown so close and were dating, I already felt like I knew her. The strange thing was, I felt like I knew her before we even met, and that still remained true. But I also wanted to figure out why I felt the same way about Otonashi and Kanade, because there had to be something connecting us, right?

After Yui was ready with the help of Miyoshi and I, I wheeled her out down the sidewalk and double checked my phone that we were headed in the right direction.

Yui hummed some song she had heard on tv and moved her head side to side cheerfully. "I wish they lived closer to us. I think I would hang out with them all the time if they did."

"Yeah, me too," I replied. "I have this weird feeling Otonashi wouldn't make a bad baseball player."

"Why does everything have to be about baseball?"

I scoffed in disbelief. "I don't make everything about baseball do I?"

Yui stopped humming and thought for a moment. "Well you make at least two baseball references every time you see me."

"I guess I don't notice it. I just talk about it naturally," I let out a laugh. "I guess I should step up to the plate and come up with new things to talk about."

She opened her mouth, about to scold me but closed it and tried to hide her smile. "Stop it."

We arrived to a local park a few minutes later, knowing that we were a little late. The park seemed pretty empty except for a few kids running around with their parents, and we saw Otonashi and Kanade right away waiting for us on a small bench.

"Hey guys," Otonashi said, waving at Yui and shaking my hand. "It's been a little while!"

"Hello," Kanade said in her soft voice. "You look much better, Yui. I'm so happy you're alright."

Yui smiled as Kanade gave her a small hug. "Thank you. I feel a lot better too."

We sat at a picnic table under a large tree and I parked Yui's chair on the end of it. I sat on the edge so I could hold her hand under the table. Otonashi and Kanade sat across from us, and I had this feeling that none of us knew what we were even doing together. We didn't really have a reason to come together like this, but we all wanted to figure out this mystery.

"Kanade and I have been talking," Otonashi began after a few moments of silence. "And we haven't come up with a lot, but we thought we should share it anyway and see what you guys think."

"Sounds good to me," Yui said.

Kanade took a small breath. "Both Yuzuru and I feel strongly that we know both of you. The first time we met you, Hinata, we felt like you were an old friend or someone we hadn't seen in a long time. But we also feel like there are large pieces that are missing. We didn't know where you came from, who your family is, where you went to school or anything like that. But the things we remembered about you seemed so trivial, like the fact that you liked baseball or liked to make jokes."

Otonashi continued. "And with Yui we remembered her singing and playing a guitar, and running around being active, but we all know that's impossible. Yet these memories we have feel so real and so specific we know they can't just be made up. So we thought perhaps we all were together in some other lifetime… and I know how crazy that sounds but we don't know what else to make of it.

I thought about what they said to me and I rubbed my thumb across Yui's hand. What they said did sound crazy, but not entirely insane. The truth was, I had small visions of Yui walking and running before, but I didn't know if they were memories or just images I put into my head. The line between those things seemed too blurred.

"I feel the same about you guys," I said. "When I saw you two on the train that day I instantly felt like I knew you, and I thought I was just the crazy one for forgetting where or how I had met you. But knowing you guys feel the same must mean something, right?"

Yui nodded. "I don't think what you said was crazy, Otonashi. Maybe we did meet in some other lifetime and we've been reunited by forces so powerful we can't even imagine them."

The thought of retaining memories from another lifetime seemed impossible to me, but since meeting Yui I've started to open my mind up a little more and not rule out any possibilities like she would. The world works in mysterious ways sometimes, and I wasn't going to disregard the fact that there was definitely something connecting us all.

Yui turned and looked at me. "Do you have any of those memories of me, Hinata?"

I gazed up at the clouds and concentrated. The only sort of things I felt like were memories were the images of Yui walking and the sense of familiarity when first saw her face. Other than that…

I blinked. Suddenly my head was filled with explosions of images and sounds and color. I saw Yui singing on stage with a guitar, dancing freely in front of a crowd of people. I saw her playing baseball with Otonashi and I. I saw her talking and laughing and being social with a large group of people. I saw Yui on the baseball field, making her final wish to be happy and only wanting one thing- marriage.

I…

I…

remembered.