Chapter 4 THE LETTER IN THE ATTIC

Juliette didn't remember falling asleep, only that the moonlight had spilled across her floor like silver ink, and the mirror had glowed with the soft pulse of a heartbeat.

When she woke, her fingers were still resting against the glass.

Outside, Paris was beginning to stir-early trams, clinking café cups, the quiet hush of footsteps on cobblestones. But inside her heart, something louder was moving.

The letter.

She hadn't thought about it in years. It had been found among her great-grandfather's belongings, tucked into a box of war memorabilia stored in the attic. At the time, she hadn't understood its significance. She'd been fourteen, curious but impatient, and the unfamiliar name it was addressed to hadn't meant anything.

Now, it meant everything.

The attic was exactly as she remembered it-dusty, close, filled with forgotten things. Sunlight cut through a narrow window like a blade, illuminating the faded boxes and crates that smelled of cedar and old paper.

She found it beneath a stack of yellowing newspapers, inside a tin marked "Letters – 1944."

The envelope was brittle, the ink faded. But the name was still legible: To Lieutenant Haruki Nakamura.

Ren's grandfather.

Her hands trembled as she opened it. The letter inside was written in French, careful and clear. Her great-grandfather's handwriting-sturdy and elegant-spilled across the page in a way that made her eyes sting with emotion.

> Haruki,

If this reaches you, it means fate has not forgotten us. I still see your face when I close my eyes-dust-covered, wide-eyed, standing beside me when the mirror called out from the rubble.

We were two men taught to see each other as enemies. But that day, we were just humans, stunned and silent, standing before something we could not explain.

I have kept my shard. It speaks sometimes, though I pretend not to hear. My wife says I lose myself in it. Maybe I do.

Do you ever hear the whispers?

I believe the mirror chose us for a reason.

If one day our children-or theirs-find their way to this glass, I hope they are braver than we were. I hope they listen.

If love can pass through war, maybe it can pass through time too.

With hope,

Étienne Laurent

Juliette clutched the letter to her chest, the words sinking into her like roots. Étienne and Haruki hadn't just found the mirror-they had been chosen by it. And now, across decades, so had she and Ren.

She ran downstairs, heart pounding, and placed the letter gently beside the mirror.

Ren was there. Waiting.

She held the letter up to the glass.

He read, eyes scanning slowly, lips parted in wonder. When he was done, he leaned back in silence. Then, reaching beyond the frame, he held up a photo she hadn't seen before-a second one. In it, Étienne and Haruki stood together outside a bombed cathedral, young and solemn. The mirror sat between them.

They had known. Somehow, they had known.

Ren wrote: "My grandfather never spoke of it. But he carved something into the base of the mirror. I only found it last night."

He angled the glass, and Juliette squinted. Four kanji symbols were etched into the wood.

She didn't recognize them-but as she stared, the mirror shimmered, and the characters translated themselves faintly across the surface:

"Those who see must carry the love."

She pressed her hand to her mouth. It was too much-too beautiful, too impossible.

They sat in silence for a while, two souls an ocean apart, yet closer than ever.

Finally, Juliette wrote: "Do you think we're falling in love?"

Ren hesitated only for a second. Then: "I think we already did."

A smile ghosted across her lips.

The mirror pulsed-just once. A single, soft thrum. Almost like agreement.

That night, Juliette dreamed of a place she'd never been.

A forest. Mist curling through trees. The air humming with electricity.

She was not alone.

Ren stood across from her, real and breathing. His hair was damp with dew, his eyes wide with disbelief. They reached for each other.

Their fingers brushed.

And she woke up.

The mirror stood still and quiet on her vanity.

But on the glass, scrawled faintly as if written in moonlight, were three words neither of them had yet dared to say:

"Don't stop believing."