The days that followed were slow, heavy with thought. Rian didn't go back to the abandoned house right away.He told himself he was busy — that he had exams, errands, a life to live — but the truth was simpler and harder: he was afraid of seeing it empty.
The silence of that house might feel too much like the silence she left behind.
Still, the thought of her lingered everywhere.In the rain puddles outside his school gate, in the faint smell of cigarettes clinging to his jacket, even in the ache that followed when the world grew quiet.
He began to notice how easily people lied to themselves.How a dream could start as something pure — a wish, a spark — but then twist into something desperate when the dreamer refused to let it go.And he realized he was doing exactly that.
One evening, he walked through the same alley where he first found the house. The sun was setting; the light was thin and golden, catching on every broken window.The house stood still — fragile, forgotten — as if waiting for him.
When he stepped inside, the air was cool and damp. The same chair, the same smell of dust and wood, but no trace of her.Only the echo of her voice.
"You'll start mistaking kindness for love."
He sat where she had sat. For a long while, he said nothing. Then he took out his notebook and began to write — not poetry, not dreams — just words that hurt to put down:
"She didn't fall in love with me.She just remembered what it was like to be seen by someone who still believes."
His hands trembled as he wrote it.But with every word, the ache in his chest loosened, just a little.
He thought of her again — not the woman he imagined her to be, but the one she really was.A tired, kind soul who had already seen the world strip its color.Someone who, for a brief moment, let him glimpse what it meant to care, not just want.
Maybe that was what love truly was — not possession, not forever, but a quiet crossing of paths that left both people changed.
When the wind blew through the broken window, the pages of his notebook fluttered.He smiled faintly and whispered into the empty room:
"Thank you."
And for the first time since meeting her, he meant it without expecting anything in return.
The boy who once believed that love was something to chase now sat still — not as a dreamer, but as someone who had finally started to understand the truth of it.
He wasn't sure if that made him wiser or lonelier.But he knew this: the rain would come again, and when it did, he wouldn't wait for her anymore.
He would simply walk through it — on his own.