The calendar betrayed time's quiet cruelty. Weeks bled into months before Ren even realized the seasons had changed. Where once there was the soft green of spring and Tulip's laughter, now autumn leaves crunched beneath his shoes, and the air carried a colder bite.
He hadn't spoken to her since that night. Her number remained on his phone, but the temptation to text was crushed every time by his friends' voices echoing in his head.
"Don't, Ren. Don't go back. She made her choice. You need to make yours."
And so, he did.
Instead of long midnight conversations and impulsive chess matches, Ren poured himself into the only thing that made sense: his work. His sketchbooks became war zones of lines and colors, projects he once shelved came alive, and for the first time in his life, he applied the relentless discipline he used to reserve for games into something real.
Days blurred together. Mornings meant coding and designing, afternoons meant deadlines, and nights meant sitting under the yellow lamp, drawing until his fingers ached.
It wasn't that he stopped missing her. The balcony was still empty. The playlist she once sent him still lingered in his headphones. The difference was he didn't let the memories paralyze him anymore. He let them push him forward.
Recognition came quietly at first. A mentor shared his project online. A professor pulled him aside after class to ask if he'd considered submitting his design to a competition.
Then came the bigger things: his name mentioned at workshops, his work posted on digital forums, strangers leaving comments like "brilliant,""fresh,""who is this guy?"
Ren, who once doubted if he was worth anything beyond a quiet corner of a classroom, was being seen.
It was Maya who noticed the change first. She stumbled upon his name in an article about rising student creators. One evening, she messaged him, hesitating before hitting send.
"Ren, is this really you?"
He replied, not with the long paragraphs he once used to fill silence, but with a simple:
"Yeah. I guess I'm different now."
Their conversations returned in fragments cautious at first, like rebuilding a bridge after a storm. She was still the Maya who teased him, still the friend who cut through his walls, but now she noticed something in his voice she hadn't before: steadiness.
But in the stillest moments, the ghosts came back. He'd be walking home after a presentation, holding the certificate they gave him, and suddenly he'd imagine what Tulip would've said.
"See? I told you. You just needed to believe."
Her absence was stitched into every success, every smile that never fully reached his eyes.
Once or twice, his hand hovered over her profile picture. His thumb itched to tap. To just say "I did it." To let her know she'd been right about him.
But then Harvey's words replayed like a shield:
"She's not the destination, Ren. She was the spark. Don't burn yourself trying to chase smoke."
So he let the phone fall.