The train ride back to Madrid felt different from the journey to Valencia just two days earlier. Aiko sat by the window watching the Spanish countryside pass by, but instead of the nervous anticipation that had consumed her on the way there, she felt a strange mixture of peace and profound sadness. The kiss still lingered on her lips—the softness of Javier's mouth, the warmth of his skin under her hands, the weight of nearly three years of love finally expressed.
But alongside that sense of completion came a crushing realization: he had been unconscious for over two years. Two years of her working toward this moment, two years of building her life around the hope of reuniting with him, two years during which he had been fighting for consciousness in a hospital bed.
Carmen was waiting at the apartment when Aiko returned, taking one look at her expression and immediately preparing tea without asking questions. They sat together in the small kitchen while Aiko tried to process everything that had happened.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" Carmen asked gently.
"Yes and no," Aiko replied, staring into her teacup. "I found him. I was able to thank him, to tell him how much that day meant to me. But Carmen, he's been in a coma for over two years now. The accident happened the same day he helped me—it will be three years this winter."
Carmen absorbed this information with the wisdom of someone who had lived long enough to understand that life rarely provided the neat resolutions people hoped for.
"And how does that make you feel?"
"Guilty," Aiko said immediately. "Like I've been building my entire life around someone who couldn't participate in his own. While I was transforming myself, learning to style hair, getting accepted to programs, winning competitions—he was unconscious in a hospital bed."
"But would he want you to feel guilty about building a beautiful life?"
The question stopped Aiko short. She thought about everything Isabella had told her about Javier's character, his dedication to helping others, his joy in seeing people overcome difficult circumstances.
"No," she said slowly. "He would probably want me to thrive. But that doesn't make it easier to accept."
"What exactly is difficult to accept?"
Aiko set down her teacup and really considered the question. "I think... I think I've been waiting for him without realizing it. Not consciously, but some part of me has been living in a state of suspension, like my real life would begin when I found him again."
"And now?"
"Now I realize that my real life has been happening all along. These past few years of growth, of learning, of becoming someone capable and confident—that was my real life. And he wasn't part of it, not because he didn't want to be, but because he couldn't be."
Carmen nodded encouragingly. "That sounds like an important realization."
"But it also feels like I've been in love with a memory. The Javier I kissed yesterday—he's real, he's alive, but he's not the same person who helped me in the park. How can you love someone who's been unconscious for longer than you actually knew him?"
The question hung in the air between them. Aiko had been carrying this love for nearly three years, had built her identity around it, had traveled across the world because of it. But what did that love actually mean if its object was unable to participate in any kind of relationship?
"Maybe," Carmen suggested carefully, "the love you feel isn't really about him as a person you could have a relationship with. Maybe it's about what he represented—the first person who showed you that you deserved kindness."
"But that feels like diminishing what I feel. Like saying it wasn't real."
"Or maybe it was completely real, but it was always meant to be transformative rather than lasting. Maybe he came into your life to change it, not to stay in it."
That evening, Aiko sat on her small balcony overlooking the Madrid street, thinking about the weight of waiting she had been carrying without fully acknowledging it. For nearly three years, some part of her had been holding space for Javier, maintaining emotional availability for a reunion that could never happen the way she had imagined it.
Her phone buzzed with a message from Miguel: "How did your trip to Valencia go? Are you okay?"
She realized she hadn't told any of her Madrid friends about finding Javier, about learning the truth of his condition. The search that had driven her to Spain had been so private, so internal, that she had processed most of it alone.
"It was complicated," she texted back. "But I got the answers I needed. Can we talk tomorrow?"
"Of course. I'm here whenever you need to talk."
The simple offer of friendship felt both comforting and significant. Miguel represented something Javier couldn't—presence, availability, the possibility of mutual relationship. Not romantic necessarily, but real connection with someone who could participate actively in her life.
As she prepared for bed, Aiko found herself thinking about time in a way she never had before. She was sixteen years old. If Javier woke up tomorrow—which was possible but unlikely according to his doctors—he would be waking up to find that the fourteen-year-old girl he had helped was now a young woman who had built an entire life during his absence.
And if he never woke up, she could spend decades waiting for someone who might never return to consciousness. The thought was both heartbreaking and clarifying.
She had honored his gift by becoming someone worthy of the kindness he had shown her. Perhaps the next step in honoring that gift was learning to accept love and connection from people who were available to offer it.
The weight of over two years of his waiting was something she couldn't change. But the weight of her own waiting—that was something she could choose to carry or choose to set down.
Tomorrow, she would begin the difficult but necessary process of figuring out how to build a life that honored her past without being imprisoned by it.
The kiss had been her goodbye to waiting. Now she needed to learn how to say hello to whatever came next.