Theme song:"Empty Note by Ghostly kisses"
"Some silences scream louder than words ever could."
— Mira
---
Elian didn't come to the café for two days.
I told myself he was busy. I told myself maybe the doctor appointment had gone well, or maybe it hadn't happened yet. I told myself not to check my phone every hour for a message that wouldn't come.
But none of those lies held their shape for long.
By the third morning, I was stirring oat milk into a stranger's latte when he walked in.
He didn't look like himself.
His hair was still swept back in that perfect, careless way. The coat still expensive. The scent—clean, a little musky—still familiar. But there was something missing in his posture. Like he wasn't standing inside his own body.
He didn't order anything.
He just looked at me. Like he didn't know how to speak. Like if he said the wrong thing, the world would split open.
"Come sit," I said softly, my voice already tired with worry.
We took the table by the window again. Rain tapped gently on the glass behind us. The kind of rain that didn't make noise in your ears but left a heaviness in the chest.
"I didn't mean to vanish," he said.
I shook my head. "You don't owe me—"
"I do," he cut in. "Mira, I do. I keep pushing people away, but you—you just stay."
I didn't answer. Not yet. I let the silence settle between us, heavy like wet clothes.
Then I asked, "What did the tests say?"
He stared out the window. "They're still running more. But… it's not good."
My hand instinctively reached across the table for his, like muscle memory.
He looked at our hands like he might cry—but didn't.
"It's something in my heart. Genetic. My dad died from it, actually."
He paused.
"I've been pretending not to think about that part."
"Elian…" I whispered, barely breathing.
"I don't know how to tell people. I don't want their pity."
"You don't get pity from me," I said. "You get my presence. You get my time. You get my hand when yours starts to shake. That's it."
He looked at me like no one had ever said that to him before.
"I didn't think people like you were real," he murmured.
I gave him a broken smile. "Neither did I. But here we are."
We sat like that for an hour.
We didn't talk about the illness again that day.
Instead, we talked about how he hated olives, how I once nearly set my hair on fire baking a cake, how neither of us really liked the color orange.
It was ordinary. And that made it everything.
---
That evening, as I closed the café alone, I found a paper napkin under the table. Folded. Written in that familiar, slanted script:
"Thank you for staying. Even when I couldn't ask you to."
—E