The city was loud that night.
Car horns blared, neon signs flickered against the drizzle, and voices of strangers clashed in the narrow streets. Yet for Aria, all of it blurred into the same meaningless hum. She pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders, walking faster, her heels clicking against the wet pavement.
She hated this kind of night. The kind where the noise outside felt louder than the noise inside her chest.
Her phone buzzed again—another message she didn't open. She knew what it would say. More reminders. More obligations. More voices demanding something from her.
"Aria, you can't keep running from them," her best friend had said earlier that evening.
Maybe she couldn't. But she was tired of listening.
She ducked into a side street, away from the traffic, away from the voices. Her breath misted in the cool air as she stopped in front of a small café tucked between a bookstore and an antique shop. Its windows glowed with a soft amber light, and unlike the chaos outside, the world inside looked quiet.
Without thinking, she pushed the door open.
A bell chimed. The warmth of coffee and cinnamon wrapped around her.
The café was nearly empty—just two elderly men playing chess in the corner, a waitress wiping down tables, and a lone man sitting by the piano near the window.
Aria froze.
The man wasn't playing. His hands rested on the keys, his head tilted down as though he was listening to something invisible. A faint scar traced his jawline, catching the light when he moved. There was an aura about him—stillness, heavy and magnetic, as if the entire room revolved around his silence.
Aria's chest tightened.
She didn't know why, but she couldn't look away.
The waitress gave her a tired smile. "Sit anywhere you like."
Aria nodded, forcing herself toward a small table near the counter. She ordered tea, though she didn't really want anything. Her eyes kept drifting to the man at the piano.
Something about him was haunting. His presence filled the room without a single note, without a single word. And the strangest part—she recognized him.
Not his face, exactly, but the feeling.
Like she had seen him before in another lifetime, in a dream she had long forgotten.
The silence between them grew louder than the noise she had run from outside.
Her tea arrived, steaming, fragrant with chamomile. She wrapped her hands around the cup, grounding herself in the heat. Still, her attention refused to leave him.
He moved suddenly. Fingers brushing the keys—soft, tentative. A single note echoed, fragile as glass. Another followed, then another, until a quiet melody filled the café.
Aria's breath caught.
The music was imperfect, almost broken, like someone trying to remember how to breathe after drowning. Yet it pierced straight through her, stirring something raw and aching inside her chest.
The old men paused their game. The waitress leaned against the counter, listening. Even the hum of the espresso machine seemed to bow to the melody.
And Aria… she felt her throat tighten, her vision blur.
It was ridiculous, she told herself. She didn't know this man. She didn't know his story. Yet somehow, his music was telling hers.
When the last note faded, silence fell heavy again.
The man didn't look up. He closed the piano gently, as though the instrument might shatter if handled too roughly. Then he stood, slipping on a worn coat, and headed for the door.
On instinct, Aria rose.
The bell above the door chimed as he stepped into the rain.
She hesitated only a moment before following.
The street outside smelled of wet asphalt and faint smoke from a vendor's cart. The drizzle had turned to steady rain, soaking the city in silver. The man walked ahead, unhurried, as though the storm meant nothing.
"Wait," Aria's voice escaped before she could stop it.
The man slowed. He turned, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, eyes shadowed beneath the streetlight.
Her heart lurched.
There was no recognition in his gaze, only distance, as if he stood behind a wall she could never reach.
"I—" Aria swallowed hard. The rain chilled her skin, sliding down her face like tears. "That song… what was it?"
The man's lips parted. For a heartbeat, she thought he might answer. But instead, he simply studied her, his silence sharper than any words could be.
Then he turned and kept walking.
Aria stood frozen, rain dripping from her lashes, watching him disappear into the night.
The city roared around her again—cars, voices, thunder overhead. Yet all she could hear was the silence he left behind.
And deep inside, a whisper she couldn't name:
You'll see him again.
Aria didn't move for a long time.
The rain soaked through her clothes, chilling her skin, but she stayed rooted to the spot, eyes fixed on the direction the man had gone. Each drop against her cheeks felt like a reminder—she had let him slip away without knowing his name.
She pressed her hands into her coat pockets, searching for warmth that wasn't there. The echo of that unfinished melody still rang inside her chest.
It wasn't just music. It was grief.
Raw, unpolished, unhidden.
And something in her bones whispered that this wasn't the last time she'd hear it.
As she turned the corner, something brushed against her ankle. She looked down and froze.
A thin sheet of paper lay half-folded on the wet pavement, the ink blurred but still legible. She bent down and picked it up carefully, afraid the rain would wash it away completely.
It wasn't just any paper. It was a music sheet.
Her eyes traced the title scribbled on the top in rushed, almost desperate handwriting.
"Silence."
Her pulse quickened. The very word that had haunted her all night, the very word that seemed to define the stranger, was staring back at her in black and white.
Aria clutched the paper to her chest, heart hammering.
Had he dropped it? Was this meant for her? Or had fate decided to shove her deeper into a story she wasn't ready for?
Either way, she knew one thing: the silence was no longer just around her.
It was inside her, pulling her toward him.