**WHEN THE LIGHT STAYS ON**
*Book Two: The Distance Between*
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**PART ONE: THE WAY TIME WORKS**
Five weeks is either nothing or forever, depending on what you're doing with it.
He found that out properly for the first time that October.
The first week passed normally. School, the corner, the bench, Mia's running commentary on how he was definitely more cheerful than usual and definitely should stop pretending otherwise. The trees on Aldermere Road began turning — the same slow process as the year before, gold creeping in at the edges, the cycle starting again exactly on schedule.
He found he didn't mind it this time.
Last year the turning leaves had felt like a countdown he wasn't ready to read. This year they felt like something else — a marker. *This is where we are now.* Not an ending approaching. Just a season doing what seasons did, while something good was also, separately, approaching.
He texted Lena a photograph of the first properly gold tree on the corner.
*It's starting again,* he wrote.
*I know,* she said. *Hana found a maple here that's doing the same thing. Different tree. Same colour. I took a photo.*
She sent it.
He looked at it.
Amsterdam gold, next to Havenbrook gold.
He saved both.
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**PART TWO: THE LIST**
The list grew.
She sent updates most days — not the whole thing, just additions, the way someone shares a project they're proud of without making a production of it.
*Added: the bridge near the flower market. You'll like it. It creaks.*
*Added: a bakery that does something with apple that I don't have words for yet. I'm saving the words for when you're here.*
*Added: the bench by the canal. It's not OUR bench. But it's good. Has a similar quality.*
He read these in the evenings, after homework, the lamp on, the notebook closed in the drawer because he didn't need it for this — this was happening in real time, no need to write it down to keep it.
Though he did write some of it down anyway.
Old habits.
On the Tuesday of week three, she sent something different.
*Can I ask you something?*
*Yeah.*
*Are you nervous?*
He thought about it. Properly. The way she'd taught him to think about questions — taking the time, finding the actual answer rather than the quick one.
*A little,* he typed. *Not about you. About — I don't know. The trip itself. I've never done this before. Gone somewhere on my own.*
*That's allowed,* she said. *Being nervous about the unfamiliar bits doesn't mean anything about the parts that aren't unfamiliar.*
*Are you nervous?*
A pause.
*Yes,* she said. *But not about you either. I keep thinking — what if Amsterdam, with you in it, feels different than Amsterdam without you. And then what if Havenbrook, after, feels different to both of us because of it.*
He sat with that.
*Is that a bad kind of different?*
*I don't think so,* she said. *I think it's just — different. Like the trees. They don't go back to exactly how they were. They go forward into the next version of themselves.*
He looked at the photograph of the Havenbrook tree, gold at the edges.
*The next version,* he typed.
*Yeah,* she said.
*I like that.*
*Me too,* she said. *I wrote it down.*
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**PART THREE: PACKING**
The Thursday before, he packed.
It didn't take long. He wasn't bringing much — five days didn't require much, and he'd never been someone who needed more than the essentials anyway.
His mother came in while he was folding things into the small case that had, until this week, lived under his bed since some forgotten holiday years ago.
She looked at the case. At the neat, sparse contents.
She picked up the scarf from the chair — the dark wool one, freshly washed, folded — and looked at it for a moment.
"This is the one," she said. Not quite a question.
"Yes."
She held it for a moment longer than necessary. Then she folded it properly — better than he had — and placed it on top of the other things in the case.
"She'll like that you brought it," she said.
"Hana told me to."
"Hana's right." His mother looked at him. "You'll be fine, you know. Over there."
"I know."
"I mean it." She sat on the edge of his bed — something she rarely did, the kind of small gesture that meant the conversation mattered more than its size suggested. "You've spent a year learning how to be present with someone you couldn't touch. Being present with someone you *can* touch is easier. Not harder."
He looked at her.
"Is that from experience?" he said.
She smiled — a small, private smile, the kind that belonged to a part of her life he didn't know much about and hadn't ever asked.
"Something like that," she said. She stood, smoothing the bedspread where she'd sat. "Text when you land. Both ends. I don't care what time it is."
"I will."
"And Ren—" She paused at the door. "Have a good time. Properly. Don't spend it worrying about whether you're allowed to be having a good time."
He thought about that.
He thought it was, in its way, the same thing Lena had said about the snow.
*You don't grieve the snow while it's here. You just look at it.*
His mother, in her own register, was saying something close to that.
*Don't grieve the good thing while it's happening either.*
"Okay," he said.
She left.
He finished packing.
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**PART FOUR: THE LAST CORNER**
Friday morning — the day before he left, not the day itself, because his train was an early evening one and the morning was still, technically, ordinary — he was at the corner at seven forty-three.
Mia was there at seven forty.
Early. Properly early, not her usual almost-on-time.
She had two cups of something from the bakery near the school — the one that did the cardamom pastries, the one he'd gone to once in December for Lena.
She handed him one.
"For the journey," she said. "Well — for today. You'll be packing all evening, you won't eat properly."
He took it.
"Thank you," he said.
They walked.
The trees were properly gold now — the full turn, the canopy overhead a ceiling of colour instead of the green that had been there all summer. The light came through it differently than it had in April, in May. Warmer, somehow, despite the cold underneath it.
"Tomorrow this time," Mia said, "you'll be on a train."
"Yes."
"And the day after that, you'll be there."
"Yes."
She was quiet for a moment, eating her pastry, looking at the trees.
"I'm happy for you," she said. "I know I keep saying it. I just — I want it to be on record. Multiple times. So you can't say I didn't say it enough."
"Noted," he said. "Multiple times."
"Good." She bumped his shoulder with hers, lightly, the way she'd done since they were children. "Bring back something for me. Not a present. Just — tell me one thing when you're back. One specific thing. About the trip."
"What kind of thing?"
"I don't know. Whatever's true." She looked at the trees. "You're good at that. Finding the one true thing in a lot of other things."
He thought about the notebook. Thirteen lines now. Each one the result of finding the one true thing among everything else that had happened.
"Okay," he said. "One true thing."
"Deal."
They reached the school gate. She stopped.
"Have a good trip, Ren," she said. And then, because she was Mia and couldn't leave it entirely without teasing: "Tell Lena I expect a full report. Cross-referenced with hers. I'll be checking for consistency."
"I'll tell her."
"Good." She went inside.
He stood at the gate for a moment.
He thought: *this is the last ordinary corner for a while.*
He didn't feel sad about it.
He felt — ready.
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**PART FIVE: THE EVENING BEFORE**
That night, his bag packed and waiting by the door, he sat at his desk one last time before the trip.
He opened the back drawer.
The notebook. Thirteen lines.
He read them all, the way he sometimes did — not searching for anything, just reading, the way you might walk through a house you knew well before leaving it for a few days.
*I missed her too.*
*I know.*
*Don't wait.*
*Do you want this?*
*She looked back too.*
*Twelve months left.*
*Not a countdown.*
*She stayed for the whole cycle.*
*She'll take it with her.*
*She was here. And it was enough.*
*She is there. And I am here. And it is still enough.*
*The distance is not the whole story.*
*Five weeks. Then a canal. Then her.*
He looked at the last one.
Five weeks had become — tomorrow.
He thought about what came after this line. What the fourteenth would be.
He didn't know yet.
He thought that was right. He thought some lines needed to be lived before they could be written — the way the tenth line, *she was here and it was enough*, could only be written after she'd gone, not before.
This one would need Amsterdam first.
He closed the notebook.
He didn't put it back in the drawer.
He picked it up, and the pale green poetry book — which he'd had returned to him, the original, when she'd left him the Havenbrook notebook in exchange — and he put both of them, carefully, into the outer pocket of his bag.
Not because he needed them.
Because some things travelled better with you than without you.
He looked out the window.
Down the street, three houses down, her window was lit — Amsterdam was an hour ahead, but she'd told him she'd be up late, finishing the list, making sure everything was ready.
He picked up his phone.
*Packed,* he typed. *Train's at six tomorrow evening. I'll be there by ten your time.*
*I know,* she said. *I've checked the times eleven times. I might check again before bed.*
*You don't have to meet me at the station. If it's late.*
*Ren.*
*Yeah?*
*I am one hundred percent going to be at the station.*
He smiled at his phone.
*Okay,* he typed.
*Goodnight,* she said. *Last goodnight before. Tomorrow I'll say it in person.*
He looked at the words.
*Tomorrow.*
*Goodnight, Lena.*
He put his phone down.
He looked at the window. Her light, three houses down. Steady. Warm. The same light that had been there for a year, on and off, marking the place where she was.
Tomorrow it would still be there.
But he would be looking at it from much closer.
He turned off his lamp.
He went to sleep — properly, easily, the kind of sleep that comes when something you've been waiting for has stopped being a date on a calendar and become, simply, *tomorrow*.
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*End of Chapter 38*
> **Next:** The train. The ferry. And the platform in Amsterdam — where someone is already waiting.
**Author's Note:**
*The night before something good is its own small, perfect thing. Not anticipation exactly — more like standing at the edge of water you already know is warm.*
*📖 Webnovel & Wattpad | mohithstoryhub.blogspot.com*
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