Chap­ter 136 begins with the pro­tag­o­nist return­ing to his old house, a space that holds the weight of many unre­solved emo­tions and mem­o­ries. Sur­round­ed by items from the past—old news­pa­pers, frag­ment­ed cat­a­logs, and yel­lowed maps—he finds him­self once again lost in the chaos that once brought him clos­er to Grace. The shelves sag under the weight of these reminders, filled with rem­nants of a time when life seemed more tan­gi­ble. Among the clut­ter, he finds care­ful­ly pieced-togeth­er out­fits and mis­matched images that he’s col­lect­ed over the years—faces cut from mag­a­zines, hair­styles paint­ed with a brush, and words scrib­bled in note­books. These items, cre­at­ed in the soli­tude of the night, serve as a strange form of preser­va­tion, allow­ing him to relive mem­o­ries of Grace in a dis­tort­ed and frag­ment­ed way. The pas­sage of time, how­ev­er, has fad­ed the sharp­ness of these mem­o­ries, leav­ing him with only hazy rem­nants of what once felt real.

As he stands amidst these relics, the pro­tag­o­nist is forced to con­front the absur­di­ty of his obses­sion. His attempts to pre­serve Grace’s mem­o­ry have only served to tie him down, trap­ping him in a cycle of remem­brance that pre­vents him from mov­ing for­ward. In this moment of reflec­tion, he begins to feel the weight of his actions—he has clung to these things in an attempt to keep the past alive, but in doing so, he’s only kept him­self locked in a painful present. The real­iza­tion dawns on him that Grace is gone, and his des­per­ate attempts to hold onto her are futile. In an effort to regain some con­trol over his life, he decides to purge the col­lec­tion that has kept him in lim­bo for so long. Each item he dis­cards is a step toward let­ting go, a painful but nec­es­sary action that will free him from the grip of his past.

With a deep breath, he begins the process of destruc­tion, tak­ing the rem­nants of his for­mer life out­side and set­ting them ablaze. As the flames con­sume the objects that once defined his mem­o­ries, the pro­tag­o­nist is filled with a strange sense of release. The smoke ris­es into the sky, and with it, so do his memories—slowly fad­ing into the air, becom­ing part of the past he can nev­er retrieve. As he watch­es the fire burn, he is over­whelmed by the sight of his for­mer life crum­bling to ash, and yet, in the destruc­tion, there is a cathar­sis. The mem­o­ry of Grace, how­ev­er, remains with him, haunt­ing him even as the phys­i­cal rem­nants of their shared past are lost to the fire. Her voice, so vivid in his mind, calls out to him from the past, remind­ing him of the days when she tried to save him, when she vowed to pull him from the dark­ness he’d fall­en into.

Her words echo in his mind, “Wake up, Patch. I’ll try and pull you out. I’ll try and keep you with me.” These words, filled with love and des­per­a­tion, rever­ber­ate in his ears as the smoke swirls upward, car­ry­ing with it the weight of his grief. The real­iza­tion that he has been left behind by Grace, that her promise was nev­er ful­filled, crash­es down on him like a wave. Yet, as the fire rages on, he begins to under­stand that the path to heal­ing isn’t about hold­ing on to what’s been lost but about find­ing the strength to move for­ward. With the ash­es of his past smol­der­ing in the fire, the pro­tag­o­nist stands still, his heart heavy but strange­ly clear. He looks up at the night sky, now unob­struct­ed by the haze of his grief, and finds a qui­et peace in the vast­ness of the world around him, a world that con­tin­ues to turn, indif­fer­ent to the loss that has shaped his life.

In this moment, the pro­tag­o­nist under­stands that the clo­sure he seeks can­not be found in the objects of the past or in the ghosts of his mem­o­ries. The fire, while it has con­sumed the rem­nants of his for­mer life, has also offered him a new beginning—one that he must nav­i­gate alone, but with the knowl­edge that the past no longer holds the pow­er to con­trol him. His jour­ney for­ward will not be easy, and the pain of loss will nev­er ful­ly fade, but for the first time in a long time, he feels the pos­si­bil­i­ty of heal­ing. The night sky, once so dark and oppres­sive, now seems vast and open, offer­ing him a sense of free­dom that he had not known was pos­si­ble.