The sky was grey in the way a quiet room feels when no one speaks, not heavy or light, just there. He stood by the gate that Saturday, hands in his pockets, waiting. He hadn't asked if it was a plan. She hadn't called it one. She'd only said, "Come if you're free." And somehow, that was enough for him to rearrange the entire weekend.
She showed up late. Of course, she did. Not in a way that felt careless, but in a way that made it clear she was used to being waited for. That was her rhythm. And he didn't mind it. Not yet.
She was wearing a loose maroon hoodie, sleeves folded in, as if she'd dressed to disappear. Yet she still stood out. He noticed the scuffed edge of her shoes. The faded bag strap. The one loose strand of hair that never obeyed her.
"Sorry," she said, breathless. "I was trying to find something."
She didn't say what. He didn't ask. That's how they worked.
They walked. Past book stalls neither of them stopped at, past a sugarcane cart whose buzz-saw whine made her wince, past the part of the street where the pavement suddenly gave up and turned into gravel. Somewhere along the way, she handed him something small.
A keychain. Shaped like a typewriter. Plastic, cheap. Probably from a gacha machine or a dusty corner shelf.
"Found this near the station," she said, like it meant nothing. "You can throw it if you want. I just… it reminded me of you."
He didn't throw it. He didn't speak. He just turned it in his palm again and again like it might whisper something.
Was this a date?
He didn't ask. He didn't want to risk the answer.
They sat on the cracked bench under the rain shelter outside an old closed-down theater. She drank a small tetra pack of guava juice. He watched a dog sleep through a passing bicycle.
"I think people always expect the worst endings," she said suddenly, juice straw stuck between her teeth. "Like, they expect people to leave. Maybe that's why we never say what we want. We already assume it'll be denied."
He didn't know if she was talking about him. Or about herself. Or someone else entirely. He wanted to say something smart. Something soft. But his throat felt like paper.
She turned to him and asked, not for the first time, "You still write?"
He nodded.
"What about?"
"Today, mostly," he said. "Things I don't understand until later."
She smiled. A small one. The kind you only notice if you're really looking.
He kept glancing at her hand. The one resting by her side. Their fingers weren't touching. But they weren't far either. And that space between? It felt louder than anything.
He thought of a sentence. One he'd write later: "Even when we don't say it, some silences are shaped like yes."
He didn't ask her if she liked him.
She didn't say she didn't.
They walked back. The sun had slipped under the clouds just enough to cast a shy amber light on the broken tiles of the footpath. At the edge of the street, she turned and said:
"Keep it, okay?"
The keychain. Still in his hand. Still warm from hers.
"I will," he said.
Later that night, he sat by the window. He didn't write a story. He just wrote her name. Over and over again. Like maybe if he spelled it enough times, he'd understand what this was.
He didn't ask if it was a date. And she didn't say.
But maybe, just maybe, some truths only survive in the places we leave unnamed.