The morning sun barely touched the earth, its light filtered through tired clouds and the swaying branches of the old neem tree. Haruki sat on his usual bench, the wood worn soft by time and silence. Notebook open. Pen in hand. But for once, he wasn't writing. His eyes were distant, tracing the sky, like they were trying to find something or someone. She hadn't said much yesterday. Just a few words. But they lingered.
"Bring your pen tomorrow."
It wasn't just a sentence. It was a key.
A small, quiet invitation to something new something fragile. He looked down at his ink stained fingers and wondered
Did she really see him?
Or just the writer in him?
Either way, it felt like the beginning of something.
He scribbled one line across the page:
"Some silences don't hurt. They hold hands with hope."
And for the first time in weeks, he smiled without knowing why. Haruki reached school early. Earlier than usual. He carried his pen. The one he only used when something mattered. The one she asked him to bring. His eyes scanned the corridors. The notice board. The window seat in the third row. She wasn't there.
Maybe late?
Maybe absent?
He opened his notebook anyway. Waited through first period.Waited again through lunch.By the last class, waiting started to ache.The chair beside the window stayed empty all day. No soft glances. No "quiet" conversations. No "pen" to bring tomorrow, Just silence.
After school, while stacking chairs, Haruki overheard two classmates talking :
"Yeah, she left. Her dad got transferred or something. Moved to another city. Sudden, huh?"
Haruki didn't turn. Didn't ask. Didn't react.
He just stood still like the air had thickened around him. The professor called attendance. He paused at her name.
"Aoi Tanaka… left the school. Transferred."
Aoi.
That was her name.
Haruki didn't cry. Didn't ask "why."
He just… waited. Like broken clocks still hoping for someone to wind them.
Every day, after morning roll call, he slipped away. Not to hide.nBut to hope.
The old bench under the neem tree became his new classroom. The wind, his only classmate. His notebook, the only one he spoke to. He brought his pen. Every day. In case she came back. He didn't care for lunch. Didn't notice the mirror anymore. Clothes wrinkled, hair uncombed, eyes tired. He wasn't trying to look okay. He was just surviving. One poem at a time.
"Rain again today," he wrote, "like the sky remembers her too."
Weeks passed. Then months. Seasons changed. She didn't. Didn't return. But Haruki did. To the bench. To the rain. To the coffee he started to like bitter. To the silent company of falling leaves and forgotten afternoons. He stopped waiting.
Not because he gave up. But because something softer grew in that silence.
Solitude. The kind that didn't ache anymore. The kind that didn't need loud friends or promises. He began to smile at the way the wind touched the pages of his notebook. He noticed how the light fell through the trees. How crows argued in the distance. How the world was loud, yet he felt quiet inside.
"I don't know what healing looks like,"
he wrote, "
but I think it sounds like rain and feels like
not needing answers anymore."
Haruki still skipped class. Still ignored calls. Still walked under streetlights alone.
But now, he wasn't chasing someone. He was walking beside himself. Still broken, maybe. Still searching. But a little more at peace with the silence.
At first, it felt like peace.
The world was quiet. Haruki was quieter. No expectations, no noise, no people pulling at his silence. He thought maybe this is what I was searching for. No one to fake a smile for. No conversations that emptied him. No reasons to explain why he didn't feel okay. But peace, real peacedoesn't ache this much. It started small. A cold cup of coffee that tasted more bitter than usual. A sunset he watched without writing a word. A bird he saw every day that just… didn't show up.
Then it grew louder.
He stopped talking to anyone even at home. His parents called him for dinner. He didn't answer. Not out of anger.
Just tiredness. Like his voice forgot how to exist.
"The more I disappear from them,"
"the more I feel like I was never really here."
Haruki wasn't sad. Not in the way people cry or scream, He was quiet. So quiet, it scared even him sometimes. He walked slower. Ate less. Smiled never. He didn't feel lonely at first because there was no one left to feel lonely for. But some nights, when he sat in the park with his notebook open and no words coming out, something changed. The silence began to weigh on him. It didn't comfort. It choked. And one evening, he whispered to himself:
"Is this really peace. or did I just learn how to be okay with disappearing?"
The rain still came. The bench was still there. But now, even the things that once made him feel seen the coffee, the walks, the poems felt distant. He had built a world where no one could hurt him.
But he hadn't noticed he'd locked himself inside it too. He stared at the empty page.
Not stuck. Just blank. Like even his pain had grown quiet. Like even his words had left. That night, the rain was softer than usual. Like it didn't want to disturb him.
Haruki sat on the same park bench notebook in hand, pen between fingers, untouched coffee by his side. He hadn't written anything in three days. Not because he had nothing to say. But because he didn't know how to say it anymore. Words used to spill when he was hurting.
But now he was beyond pain.
He was in something else. Something colder. Something quieter.
"I thought loneliness was loud,"
"but mine whispers."
He looked around the park. The trees didn't wave. The wind didn't hum.
Just stillness. Then he saw it.
A paper.Folded, placed gently on the bench beside him. He hadn't seen anyone come. He hadn't heard a sound. No name on it. No handwriting he recognized. Just a single sentence inside:
"You still write, don't you?"
Haruki froze.
His eyes scanned the empty path. No one.
His fingers trembled slightly as he closed the note. A beat of something ran through his chest not fear, not hope.
Something.
Was it from her?
Or someone else?
Was someone watching?
Or was he just imagining things now?
He didn't know what the note meant. But for the first time in weeks, his heart didn't feel silent. He picked up his pen. And for the first time in a long time.
He wrote.
"Maybe I'm not alone in this silence after all."
Who was that person ?