At 6:58 p.m., the story continued without XH.
The patrol officer reached the overturned Bugatti eight seconds after the clock changed.
He found the driver suspended by the seat belt, one hand closed around a broken telephone. Blood covered the left side of his shirt. Rain entered through the shattered window and moved across a face that no longer responded to it.
"Sir, can you hear me?"
The officer placed two fingers against XH's neck.
Nothing.
He shifted his hand and checked again.
"Driver unresponsive," he called toward the road. "No pulse. Begin priority extraction."
The telephone screen remained awake inside XH's hand.
A recording continued beneath the cracks.
00:57.
00:58.
00:59.
It preserved the officer's voice, the warning alarm, and rain falling into a car that would never move again.
The officer tried to reach the seat-belt release. The crushed door frame blocked his arm. He could not lower XH without allowing the body to fall against the roof.
"Stay with me," he said, because training had given him the sentence before the evidence could take it away.
Above them, his partner called dispatch.
"Probable cardiac arrest. Driver trapped. We need rescue equipment now."
"Medical arrival twenty-two minutes."
"Send anyone closer."
NeverMore's volunteer fire unit was eight minutes away.
They were sent.
At seven, the palace clock began to strike.
June counted each bell beneath the Lovers Statue.
One.
The western road remained empty.
Two.
HS called XH again.
Three.
A.V. spoke to the guards at the palace gate.
Four.
June lowered the umbrella and listened.
Five.
Rain moved through the trees like an approaching engine.
Six.
She stepped into the road.
Seven.
Nothing came through the gate.
The final bell faded across NeverMore.
June returned to the statue.
She opened the Memory Atlas to the page she had dated less than half an hour earlier.
6:30 P.M. — I am waiting by my own choice.
Beneath it, she wrote:
7:00 P.M. — XH has not arrived. This is not yet an answer.
At Utopia, the university bell sounded the same hour.
Kitty's telephone vibrated on the bench.
She seized it before the second vibration.
The message came from XH.
Not text.
A recording.
Sent forty-eight minutes earlier and delivered too late.
Kitty pressed play.
His voice entered the rain around the Grand Fountain.
"Kitty, I owe you an answer, and this is not the way you deserve to receive it."
She stopped breathing.
Across the courtyard, NS stood without shelter.
He knew the message before she heard the next sentence.
"I am returning to NeverMore. June remembered."
Kitty sat down slowly.
The blue coat folded around her.
"I cannot ask you to keep one part of your life waiting for me. I love you, but not in the future you have been protecting."
She closed her eyes.
Rain struck the empty fountain bowl.
"NS has loved you inside the present. Please don't make him wait because I did."
The recording ended.
Kitty did not replay it.
She looked across the courtyard and found NS standing where the memorial garden opened toward the fountain.
The ring box remained inside his coat.
She knew it was there without seeing it.
"How long?" she asked.
NS crossed the courtyard but stopped beyond the reach of her hand.
"How long what?"
"How long have you known he was going back to her?"
"Since six twelve."
The truth hurt her more because he gave it without defense.
"And you let me wait."
"It had to be his answer."
"You could have told me."
"Then every word would have sounded like I wanted his place."
Kitty looked toward the south gate.
"He chose her."
"Yes."
Her face folded once before she recovered it.
"Then why isn't he there?"
NS's telephone rang.
The screen displayed an unknown regional number.
He almost ignored it.
Then he remembered the emergency card inside the Bugatti's glove compartment.
His name had been written first.
He answered.
"This is Officer Ren from the NeverMore western district. Are you NS?"
"Yes."
"Your number is listed as the emergency contact for a vehicle registered to XH."
NS looked at Kitty.
She read the name from his face.
"What happened?"
"The vehicle left the western forest road. It overturned below the barrier."
"Is he alive?"
The officer paused.
"He has no detectable pulse. Rescue and medical personnel are responding."
Kitty stood.
"What did he say?"
NS could not answer her while the officer continued giving directions.
"We need someone to confirm identity and contact next of kin."
"I'm coming."
He ended the call.
Kitty caught his sleeve.
"What did he say?"
"There was an accident."
"Is XH alive?"
NS looked toward the fountain where she had waited for a man already dying on another road.
"They are trying to reach him."
It was the last hopeful sentence he could say without lying.
At 7:04, they left Utopia together.
NS did not touch the ring in his pocket.
At the crash site, the officer freed the telephone from XH's hand.
The recording timer showed 06:12.
He pressed stop to preserve the battery and saw the unsent message beneath it.
I AM CLOSE
The contact name above the words was JUNE.
He placed the telephone inside a clear evidence pouch, not yet understanding that it contained the final fifty-two seconds of a life followed by five minutes of rain and rescue voices.
The second officer reached the car.
Together, they tried to open the passenger door.
It moved two inches and stopped.
"Come on," the first officer said.
The word was not for the door.
At 7:07, the volunteer fire vehicle reached the broken barrier.
Red emergency lights moved across the wet trees.
From the NeverMore palace gates, A.V. saw their reflection beyond the western hill.
One light.
Then another.
Too low to be lightning.
Too many to be a guest's car.
He called the guard station.
"Ask the western district what happened."
The guard hesitated.
"They may not release—"
"Tell them a vehicle expected at the palace has not arrived."
HS joined him at the gate.
"You saw it too."
A.V. nodded.
Neither looked toward June.
She remained beneath the statue, writing something inside the Atlas.
At 7:10, the fire crew carried hydraulic cutters down the slope.
They stabilized the Bugatti between the cedar trees and covered XH's face before breaking the remaining window. One rescuer crawled through the passenger side and supported his shoulders while another cut the belt.
The last recording on the telephone remained inside the officer's evidence pouch.
The navigation display continued to glow upside down.
DESTINATION: NEVERMORE PALACE
5.8 KM
One firefighter photographed the screen for the collision report.
No one there knew how much the destination mattered.
At 7:12, Palace Security reached the western district dispatcher.
The dispatcher would confirm only that a red sports car had crashed on the forest road.
A.V. asked the question the guard could not.
"Was the driver XH?"
The line became quiet.
"Identity has not been formally confirmed."
"But you have an identity."
"Sir, notify the family that an officer will contact them."
The call ended.
A.V. lowered the telephone.
HS watched him.
"It's his car."
"We don't know that."
"It's his road."
They turned toward the statue.
June had seen them speaking.
She closed the Atlas and began walking toward the gate.
A.V. moved first.
"Stay with her," he told HS.
"Where are you going?"
"To find out before rumor reaches her."
June reached them.
"Find out what?"
Rain gathered on A.V.'s eyelashes.
He had promised her honesty on the day she agreed to marry him.
He had honored it when she canceled.
Now honesty stood before him like another cruelty.
"There has been an accident on the western road," he said.
June's expression did not change.
"Whose accident?"
"We don't know."
She looked beyond him toward the distant emergency lights.
"Then go."
"June—"
"Go and find out."
A.V. gave his keys to the palace driver because his own hands were shaking.
The gate opened.
He left for the western road at 7:15.
June returned to the statue.
HS followed this time.
He opened the umbrella above her without asking.
She did not tell him to leave.
At 7:18, rescuers removed XH from the Bugatti.
They placed him on the wet ground between the trees. The first officer began compressions while a firefighter prepared an automated defibrillator.
The machine analyzed.
NO SHOCK ADVISED.
They continued.
The nearest medical unit was still four minutes away.
NS's car approached the northern junction from Utopia. Kitty sat beside him with XH's message open on her lap.
She had listened to it three times.
On the fourth, she stopped before her own name ended.
"He said he loved me," she whispered.
NS kept both hands on the wheel.
"He did."
"And he still chose her."
"Yes."
"Both can be true?"
"They have always been true."
Kitty looked out at the rain.
"I thought being chosen would prove which one of us he loved."
NS slowed for the flooded junction.
"Love was never the part he couldn't decide."
"Then what was?"
"Which life he could still reach."
At 7:22, the ambulance reached the crash site.
The paramedic attached leads to XH's chest.
The monitor displayed a straight line.
They administered medication and continued resuscitation while asking when he had last shown signs of life.
"None when I reached him," the patrol officer said. "That was six fifty-eight."
The vehicle's emergency record showed severe impact at 6:47 and loss of detectable driver movement at 6:58.
The paramedic checked the monitor again.
Rainwater traveled beneath his gloves.
He looked at the physician connected through the emergency channel.
The physician asked for the time of the first pulseless assessment.
"Eighteen fifty-eight."
The official record accepted it.
TIME OF DEATH: 6:58 P.M.
At 7:24, NS received the confirmation call.
He pulled the car onto the shoulder.
Kitty watched him answer.
He said nothing for eleven seconds.
Then he closed his eyes.
The ring box pressed against his heart while the future it represented became impossible to speak about.
Kitty did not ask again whether XH was alive.
She knew.
"What time?" she whispered.
"Six fifty-eight."
She looked at the timestamp on XH's message.
It had reached her at seven.
Two minutes after he died, his voice had told her not to wait.
Kitty bent forward and covered her mouth with both hands.
NS reached toward her.
He stopped before touching her shoulder.
She crossed the distance herself and held his wrist.
Not as an answer.
Only because neither of them could remain alone inside that minute.
"June," Kitty said.
NS understood.
He called HS.
At NeverMore, HS answered beside the Lovers Statue.
June stood close enough to hear only his half of the silence.
"Tell me," HS said.
NS did.
HS lowered the telephone.
June looked at his face.
"No."
He had not spoken.
"June—"
"No. A.V. went to find out."
The palace gates opened in the distance.
A.V.'s car returned slowly.
It had taken him only as far as the police barrier. He stepped out before the driver stopped completely.
June walked toward him.
Her bare feet crossed the flooded path.
The umbrella fell behind her.
"Is he hurt?" she asked.
A.V. could not make the lie she needed.
"He was coming here."
"Is he hurt?"
"June."
She struck his chest once with both hands.
"Answer me."
A.V. held her wrists, not to restrain her but to keep himself standing.
"He died."
The rain seemed to stop before reaching the ground.
June looked toward the gate behind him.
"No."
"His navigation was set to NeverMore. He turned back for you."
"What time?"
"Six fifty-eight."
June looked at the palace clock.
7:27.
"I kept waiting."
"You were supposed to."
"I kept waiting after he was gone."
A.V.'s grip loosened.
"He knew you remembered," he said. "He knew you canceled. He was coming."
June's knees gave way.
A.V. caught her before she reached the stone. HS knelt beside them, but June did not seem to know either man was there.
She looked back at the Golden Lovers.
Rain moved over their extended hands.
"He was six kilometers away," A.V. said.
June reached toward the empty road.
Her hand stopped in the space between herself and the gate.
For the first time, the distance did not mean rejection.
That was what broke her.