Misaki slowly raised her head, as if emerging from a gray cloud she had been dwelling in. The thud of the notebook hitting the ground still echoed in her ears, but it was no louder than the surprise that bloomed in her eyes the moment she saw the person beside her.
A young man she had never seen before...
He stood calmly, close without invading her space, strange in his appearance, yet familiar in his presence. His clothes were not like those of others. His calm, henna-colored hair looked like a warm sunset carried by the wind from a distant land, and as for his features... they held a warmth she was unaccustomed to from faces used to coldness.
She slowly pushed her headphones away, as if listening for the first time, not to the sounds around her, but to a new voice that was seeping in from a deep place... from a heart whose gaze had met hers in a look she could not explain.
Ahmed gently extended his hand, holding the sketchbook.
Then he said, in pure Japanese, in a soft voice like an autumn breeze:
"Are you alright? Your things fell."
It wasn't what he said that astonished her...
It was how he said it.
Her eyes widened, as if she were seeing a dream that spoke. Who was this young man who spoke her language with such fluency? Where did all this serenity come from? And why did his voice sound as if he had known her for a long time?
She took the notebook with a trembling hand, as if she were afraid to touch him, or afraid the scene would vanish if she blinked.
She looked at him with a depth she did not intend, as if she were searching for something she had lost and suddenly found in his strange features.
Then she whispered in a voice barely audible, but it was more honest than all the noise:
"Thank you..."
Another silence was born between them, but this time it wasn't the silence of sadness...
It was the silence of a beginning.