The wind pulled gently at the edge of Kael's coat as he sat on the edge of the half-collapsed rooftop, watching the clouds drift like aimless thoughts across a sky too wide for him to name. Below, the city moved on — slow, unaware, distant. Nothing about it had changed, not really. But something in him had.
He twirled a rusted gear between his fingers, one of the many scattered remnants he'd picked up from the old station. It didn't belong to anything he knew, and yet… it felt familiar. Like a leftover piece from a forgotten version of himself. Not broken, just misplaced.
Behind him, soft footsteps approached, but Kael didn't turn. The rhythm was light, hesitant — not someone hunting, just someone trying to be part of a moment without shattering it.
"Do you ever feel like you were built for something that doesn't exist anymore?" Kael asked the air.
A pause. Then a voice, soft and careful:
"Sometimes I think… we were never built. We just became."
Kael smiled faintly. "That sounds like something she would've said."
The girl sat beside him — not close, not far. Just enough that the quiet didn't feel like a wall. She had a notebook with her. Spiral-bound, pages dog-eared. On its cover was a name that had been crossed out three times, replaced each time by something else. Now, there was no name at all.
"I keep changing what I call myself," she said, flipping through the pages without looking. "It's not that I don't know who I am. I just don't want to limit it yet."
Kael nodded. "You're smart."
She tilted her head. "You're sad."
"Yeah," he said. "But I think that's okay."
Below them, the streetlamps flickered on, casting thin golden lines over the cracked sidewalks. The notebook girl closed her book and stood.
"Tomorrow," she said, "I want to ask you something important."
Kael looked up. "What?"
She smiled — not wide, not bright. Just real.
"I haven't decided yet."
And then she left, just as the sky began turning the color of old memories — the kind that come back slowly, one thread at a time.