Fingers shaking, Lottie grabbed a pen and jotted the numbers down on some scrap paper, along with the Japanese characters underneath. Even if she didn’t know what the other three numbers were, it had to link up; there had to be a reason for them all being together.

Her mind racing at the thought that she might have found something actually useful, Lottie’s shaking hands struggled to hold the diary steady as she placed it back in the box. And it was then that she felt it, the way the leather at the back of the notebook gave slightly, something hard underneath it, an odd feeling as if it were a creature trying to shed its skin.

Turning it over once more, Lottie ran her index finger along the seam on the inside of the back page to find that the paper tucked into the crease. All it took was a little push in the right direction and the inner page popped out.

The second it came loose, a dark obsession was revealed: pictures, drawings and notes tumbling to the floor, and every single one of them was connected to Jamie.

It was easy to identify Jamie’s elegant handwriting on the smaller scraps of paper, poetic notes he must have written down absent-mindedly while helping Haru with work, meaningless but pretty thoughts that Haru had felt precious enough to hold on to. Lottie rifled through, finding a dark wad of string that she held up to her eyes, and gasped, dropping it immediately as she realized it was a lock of Jamie’s hair.

Continuing to look through the items with a thundering calm, Lottie picked up each one with the same quiet dread of someone identifying a dead body.

Along with the scavenged musings of Jamie’s were photos and drawings of her Partizan, each one distinct in its own way, including a rare depiction of his smile. It was like a ghostly, twisted version of Lottie’s own art book. But there was one that stood out above the others, and the most confusing thing she’d seen so far. The photo was old, showing Jamie when he was much younger, no more than a child, yet staring at the camera with that same stony face he still wore now. It was strange enough that Haru would have such a thing, and yet there was something else that drew her to it. Haru had adorned Jamie’s head with gold ink to give him a crown of antlers.

Lottie picked up the photo with extra care, tilting it in the light to get a proper look, and, when she turned it over, the world stopped. Written on the back at the bottom in English were the words THE LITTLE PRINCE OF MARADOVA.

‘No.’ The word escaped her lips before her mind had even caught up, the truth of what she was seeing slowly emerging from the fog of denial in her head.