The Last Smile

In a world reduced to smoke and broken stone, a mute girl named Chisa wanders alone through the ruins, barefoot and hollow-eyed, clutching a small silver locket as if it were the last piece of her heart. The war has taken everything from her except silence. Amid ash and grief, she finds herself at a quiet lake where the world, for a moment, forgets to burn. There she meets Iori, a gentle mute boy with a warm presence and tired kindness. Without words, they share food, days, and fragile moments of peace, searching for scraps, running through broken hills, laughing without sound.

Iori's small acts of care slowly crack the shell around Chisa's grief. When he climbs a tree to bring her honey and falls clumsily to the ground, something inside her finally breaks open, not in pain, but in light. For the first time since the world collapsed, Chisa smiles. She laughs softly, then steps forward and hugs him, clinging as if afraid he might disappear if she lets go. For a brief moment, hope exists on a mountaintop while the war smolders far below.

Later, at the same lake where they first met, Chisa tries to give Iori her locket: a promise, a future she dares to imagine. But reality fractures. Iori flickers between presence and absence, between life and death, until only a tombstone remains where he once sat. Before Chisa can understand, her mother pulls her away in panic as the world erupts again. The locket slips from her hands and falls at the foot of the grave. As they flee, Chisa looks back, reaching toward what she has already lost.

From the direction of the lake, the tombstone stands alone, bearing Iori's name, while people run and the sky darkens. The world holds its breath. Then, in a sudden blaze, fire consumes everything: memory, hope, and stone alike. In the ashes of a dying world, Chisa's smile existed only once, but it was real, and it mattered.