They stayed there in silence again, but this time the quiet felt lighter, as though it had been shared between them rather than endured alone. He leaned back against the bench, hands folded loosely in his lap, while she drew her knees up slightly, tucking her arms around them like a shield she wasn't quite ready to let go of.
"What's your name?" she asked eventually, her voice soft, almost uncertain.
He turned his head toward her, surprised by the question but quick to answer. He told her. She repeated it under her breath, as though testing the sound of it, letting it settle on her tongue.
"And you?" he asked in return.
She hesitated, then gave her name too, quietly, as if it were something delicate.
For a while, they spoke in fragments. Not the big things those stayed tucked away, hidden beneath layers of memory and pain but the little things. She mentioned the park was her escape, a place she came when her mind grew too heavy. He told her he often walked there at night just to feel less like the world was closing in. Small truths, fragile and incomplete, yet enough to form a thread between them.
The lamps glowed brighter as the sky dimmed into a canvas of muted violet. She glanced at her watch and sighed. "I should go."
He nodded, though a small ache tugged at him. He didn't want the moment to end.
As she rose from the bench, she paused. "You'll… be around again?" It wasn't quite a question, not quite a promise either.
"Yeah," he said. "Same time tomorrow?"
Her lips pressed together in something that wasn't quite a smile, but close enough. She gave the smallest nod before walking away, her figure swallowed by the deepening night.
The next evening, he returned.
And so did she.