Years passed.
The building had changed a little — new paint, a different sign above the doorway. But The Still Room remained.
Now it was run by people I didn't know. Caretakers of silence, just like we had been.
I hadn't returned in a long time. Not because I'd forgotten.
But because part of me believed it didn't need me anymore.
Still, that winter evening, something pulled me back. The library had grown.
Dozens of shelves now, each one filled with stories. Some thick, some threadbare.
And the old bench — the one where it all began — still sat quietly near the back wall.
My book was still there.
Worn. Dog-eared. Softened by hands I'd never met.
As I stood in the doorway, someone else was already sitting on the bench — her back to me, hair tucked into a faded scarf, one hand resting gently on the page.
She was reading it slowly, the way you read something that feels familiar but not yet understood.
I didn't move.
Just watched as she turned another page, her eyes still, her breath soft.
And in that stillness, something inside me stirred — not recognition, but resonance.
Not certainty, but wonder.
I didn't need to know if it was her.
Maybe it was.
Maybe it wasn't.
But that was never the point. I turned and left without a word.
And for the first time in a long while, I felt what the story had always meant to be:
not a beginning, not an ending.
Just a quiet moment of being seen —without ever needing to be known.
The End.