The park still smelled of last night's rain.
The ground was soft under Haruki's shoes, and the air carried that damp quiet that made everything sound farther away like the world had decided to speak in whispers. He walked to his bench, the one under the old neem tree. The bench that had memorised the weight of his solitude.
Today, something waited for him there. A folded paper. Placed neatly, like someone had been here before him, careful not to disturb the stillness. Haruki's eyes scanned the path, the trees, the nearby swings. No footsteps. No shadow slipping away. He sat, picked it up slowly, and unfolded it.
"Your words sound like rain that refuses to fall."
The handwriting was neat deliberate. Each letter curved with patience, as though the writer had thought about where it should sit. Not rushed. Not careless. Haruki closed the note, holding it in his palm longer than necessary. It wasn't just a sentence. It was a quiet knock on the door of his world someone saying I see you. And he wasn't sure if he wanted to open it.
Two months earlier…
Ayumi Midori stood between the library shelves, sliding a history book back into its place. Her eyes wandered and then caught sight of a black notebook lying on a table near the window. Its corners were worn soft, the edges slightly frayed. She looked around. No one. She picked it up, assuming it belonged to the library. But when she opened it, there was no printed text only handwriting. Ink pressed deep into the paper, as though the words had weight. The first page was a short poem:
"The world talks too loud.
I wish it spoke like rain
brief, soft, and gone."
Her fingers stilled. This wasn't casual writing. This was someone's inside voice on paper. She turned the pages carefully.
Each entry felt like stepping into a place she wasn't supposed to be a place that was part ache, part hope.
The words didn't search for love.
They searched for peace.
She didn't have to check for a name.
She knew whose it was. The boy who always sat by the window in class. The boy who never laughed, never rushed, whose eyes seemed to be somewhere else.
Haruki.
She read until the faint echo of approaching footsteps pulled her backHer heart jumped. She slid the notebook back to where she had found it, its cover facing the same way, its position unchanged. The next day, it was gone. Returned to its owner. But not from her mind.
From then on, she began noticing him without meaning to his slow steps past the vending machine after lunch, his stillness in the corner desk of the classroom, and the way his hand always rested near a pen even when he wasn't writing. Once, she stopped behind a line of trees in the park and just watched.
Haruki sat on the bench, head slightly bowed, writing with a patience she'd never seen. He didn't scribble. He didn't rush. It was as if he weighed each word before letting it land. That day, she decided she would leave him notes. Not to disrupt him. But to step quietly into his silence without him knowing.
Now.....
Haruki didn't know any of this. All he knew was that sometimes the park felt less empty, though he couldn't explain why. A faint thread of curiosity had tied itself around his thoughts. Later that week, he went to the library to escape the noise between classes. The poetry section was empty except for one table.
She was there. Hair loose, sweater sleeves slightly covering her hands, a thick book open in front of her.
As he passed, she looked up. Her gaze wasn't shy, but it wasn't challenging either.
It was steady. Quiet. Knowing.
"Do you read poetry?" she asked,
her voice soft, as though she was trying not to scare something away.
Haruki hesitated. "Sometimes."
"I think everyone who writes does,"
she replied, turning a page without looking at him again.
Something caught in his chest.
"How do you know I write?"
She didn't look up.
"People who carry silence that carefully… always write."
He had no reply. By the time he thought of one, she was already on her feet, sliding the book back into the shelf and walking away without a goodbye.
That evening, the bench held another note. This one was longer
"Some people search for peace.
Others carry it inside them,
even when they don't notice."
Haruki read it twice.
It didn't feel like a compliment it felt like someone telling him something he hadn't dared to believe.
That night, for the first time in months, he wrote for someone. Not himself. He tore a page from his notebook and wrote:
"If you're reading this,
then you already know me more than anyone else.
But do I know you at all?"
The next morning, he left the page tucked under the corner of the bench before walking away. When he returned the next day, the page was gone. In its place, in that same neat handwriting, were just two words:
"Not yet."