“There’s something peculiar about that grapefruit,” Yuki said, examining the perfectly spherical fruit sitting on her kitchen counter. The morning light filtering through her 23rd-floor apartment window gave it an almost ethereal glow.

I watched her from across the granite island, steam rising from my coffee cup. “It’s just a grapefruit, Yuki.”

“No, Hiro. Look closer.” She picked it up, turning it in her delicate hands. “The skin is too smooth, the color too uniform. And it’s been sitting here for three weeks without showing any signs of decay.”

I had to admit, she had a point. The grapefruit maintained an impossible perfection that seemed to defy natural law.

“Remember that strange vendor?” she continued, her dark eyes reflecting the fruit’s golden hue. “The one at the night market who wore that outdated suit?”

“The one who gave it to you for free?”

“He said it would ‘show me what I needed to see.’”

I sipped my coffee. “That sounds like something from one of those novels you’re always reading.”

Yuki placed the grapefruit back on the counter and walked to the window. The city sprawled below us, a maze of glass and steel reaching toward the morning sky. “I’ve been having the same dream every night since I got it,” she said quietly.

“What kind of dream?”

“I’m in an empty train car. The grapefruit is sitting on the seat across from me, glowing. Then you appear, but you’re different somehow. You tell me something important, but when I wake up, I can’t remember what it is.”

I joined her at the window, our reflections overlapping in the glass. “Maybe we should cut it open.”

She turned to me, her expression unreadable. “I did. Last night.”

“And?”

“It was empty inside. Completely hollow. But this morning, it was whole again.”

I laughed nervously. “That’s impossible.”

“So is a grapefruit that doesn’t rot.” She returned to the counter and picked up a knife. “Watch.”

The blade sliced through the fruit with surprising ease. Inside, instead of pulp and juice, we found a small piece of paper with an address written in elegant script.

“That’s… my old apartment,” I said, recognition dawning. “From five years ago.”

Yuki’s hands trembled slightly. “The one where we first met?”

“Before the fire. Before everything changed.”

She looked at me intently. “Hiro, what if… what if you’re not really here?”

The morning light seemed to dim slightly. I looked down at my hands, suddenly uncertain of their solidity.

“The accident,” she whispered. “The train…”

Memory rushed back like a flood. The screech of metal, the flash of light, the grapefruit rolling across the floor of the train car.

“I’ve been trying to tell you something,” I said, finally understanding. “Every night in your dreams.”

Yuki reached out to touch my face, her hand passing through where I stood. The grapefruit on the counter began to glow.

“It’s time, isn’t it?” she asked, tears streaming down her face.

“No,” I smiled. “It’s time for you to wake up.”

Yuki opened her eyes in a hospital room, the steady beep of monitors filling the silence. On her bedside table sat a perfectly ordinary grapefruit, beginning to show the first signs of decay.

Next to it was a note in her own handwriting: “Some dreams are worth remembering.”