Midnight in this city did not arrive gently. It seeped through cracked windows and unfinished conversations, through neon reflections trembling on rain-slick asphalt, through the kind of silence that only existed when everyone was pretending not to be lonely.
Alden Rey stood on the narrow balcony outside his apartment, five stories up, staring down at the street below like it might confess something if he watched long enough. From this height, everything appeared manageable. Cars shrank into obedient lines of light. Arguments softened into harmless murmurs. Even regret looked smaller, almost decorative, as if it could be rearranged like furniture and ignored.
The melody returned without invitation.
Three notes, careful and restrained, as though they feared being recognized. Alden stiffened. It had been following him for a week now, arriving precisely at midnight like a reminder set by a past version of himself. Three notes and then a pause that felt deliberate. The missing middle lingered in the air like a swallowed word.
He exhaled slowly and pressed his palms against the cold railing. "This is stupid," he muttered, not expecting an answer. The city, as usual, did not argue.
He wasn't a musician anymore. Not officially. Not in any way that required ambition. The keyboard he once obsessed over had been sold years ago to cover rent during a month he preferred not to remember. The dream of composing had dissolved into something more practical—steady shifts at a coffee shop, predictable income, manageable disappointment.
Still, the melody persisted.
It felt familiar in a way that made his chest tighten. Not like a song he'd heard on the radio. Not like background noise from a passing car. It felt personal. As though it had once belonged to him and was now demanding to be claimed.
He closed his eyes and tried to follow it, to force the next notes into existence. Nothing came. Only that blank space where something important should have been.
Alden opened his eyes again and looked down at the city, wondering how something so vast could feel so indifferent. Somewhere below, someone laughed too loudly. Somewhere else, a door slammed. Life continued without hesitation.
Up here, suspended between concrete and sky, he felt the quiet press in around him.
The melody came once more, softer this time, almost patient. It wasn't loud enough to prove it existed, but not faint enough to be dismissed as imagination.
He had the unsettling feeling that he hadn't forgotten the song.
He had buried it.
And midnight, apparently, had decided it was time to dig.