Chapter: Coincidences That Aren't Really

The days began to blur together, like gray brushstrokes on the same canvas. Sometimes it felt like all I was doing was surviving—checking boxes, moving my body just enough not to disappear completely.

And then... he showed up.

First at the café, again. He greeted me with a small nod, like sharing a quiet corner had already become its own language. I didn't sit with him that time, but his glance made me feel less alone.

Then I saw him in the library, flipping through poetry books. I walked over without knowing why, as if something inside me remembered what it felt like to be curious.

"Do you always read with that serious face?" I asked in a whisper.

"Only when the poem's good," he answered without looking up, but smiling.

He placed a bookmark in the open page and handed me the book.

"Read this."

I took it a bit cautiously, as if touching something so intimate might break me. But I read it. A simple verse, an image of rain falling silently, washing memories without completely erasing them.

A lump formed in my throat.

"It's beautiful," I whispered.

"I knew you'd like it," he said, and went back to reading like nothing had happened. But I stayed still, that fragment pulsing in my hands.

After that, I saw him again leaving class, under the rain. He didn't say anything, just offered to share his umbrella. We walked in silence. Halfway through, I realized I didn't know where he was going, and he didn't know where I was headed. But we kept walking, because in that moment, the company mattered more than the destination.

Every time he showed up felt like a new page between broken chapters. He wasn't trying to take anyone's place, didn't demand answers. He was just there. Like someone who quietly sits beside you when the world gets too loud.

And though he never said it, there was something in his gestures that whispered: you're not alone.