The first rain of August came without warning.
It began as a whisper on the rooftops and turned into a steady rhythm — like the sky had something to confess.
Sjha sat by the studio window, watching water slide down the glass.
It had been ten days since she returned from the coast.
Ten days since the note.
Every morning, she checked her phone, her email, her doorstep — hoping for a letter.
But silence was all she got.
She had learned to stop expecting.
Almost.
---
The studio was different now.
She had reopened it under a new name: "Lightspace."
She told people it was for art workshops, but deep down, she knew it was her way of keeping Arin close.
Children came, laughed, spilled colors on the floor.
Sometimes, when she saw their messy excitement, she felt something warm — like a heartbeat returning after a long sleep.
Still, the emptiness stayed in quiet corners.
---
One evening, she came home drenched from the rain.
Her mother looked up from the couch.
"You'll fall sick," she said.
"I already was," Sjha replied softly.
Her mother didn't press further. She just handed her a towel.
That was their language now — quiet care.
---
A week later, a small brown envelope arrived.
No sender name. Just her name, written in the same slanted handwriting she could recognize anywhere.
Her heart stuttered.
She tore it open.
> "You always said the rain feels different when you have nowhere to go.
I'm learning what that means.
The sea here is wild. It never stays still.
Maybe that's why I came — to find peace in something louder than my thoughts.
I'm not gone, Sjha. Just quiet.
— A."
She read it three times, then pressed the letter to her chest.
It smelled faintly of salt and paint.
---
From that day, she wrote back.
Every night, she'd sit on her bed with a dim lamp and write her own letter — words she never knew she could say aloud.
> "Arin, the kids spilled blue on the floor again. I didn't clean it. It looks like sky."
"I painted your old bench white. It still creaks."
"Sometimes I wonder if missing someone means we still belong somewhere."
She posted them to the coastal address she'd found, even though he never mentioned it.
No replies came.
Still, she kept writing.
Because silence didn't scare her anymore.
---
One afternoon, a man visited the studio.
He looked about Arin's age, tall, with windburned skin.
"You run this place?" he asked.
"Yes."
He smiled faintly. "I was told to give this to you."
He handed her a folded sketch and left before she could ask more.
Inside the fold was another letter.
> "You once said every painting begins before the first stroke.
I think that's true for people too.
I'm still learning to hold the brush again, but this time, I want to draw something that stays.
Don't wait for me, Sjha.
Just keep painting.
— A."
Underneath, a rough sketch — her face, turned toward the wind, eyes half-closed.
He'd drawn it from memory.
---
That night, she didn't cry.
She cleaned the brushes, rearranged the studio, and hung the sketch on the wall.
Her friend Meera, who'd recently joined her classes, noticed.
"Who drew this?" she asked.
"A ghost," Sjha said with a small smile.
Meera laughed. "Then he draws better than the living."
---
Weeks passed.
Lightspace started to grow — small exhibitions, local artists joining in.
And somewhere inside, Sjha started to feel grounded again.
One evening, she stood outside the studio watching the city lights flicker in puddles.
For the first time in months, she realized — she wasn't waiting anymore.
She was living.
---
But stories have their own timing.
That same night, at a post office near the coast, a letter slipped through the cracks of a desk drawer and fell behind a stack of papers.
It was addressed to her.
> "Sjha,
The storms have calmed. I think I'm ready to come back.
If I do, will you still be there?
— Arin."
It stayed there, unseen, as weeks turned to months.
--------------------------------------------