The streets had not changed, yet everything inside him had died long ago.
It had been one year and five months since she left this world—his fiancée, the only person who ever looked at him as if he deserved warmth. People around him assumed grief would fade with time. They assumed loneliness healed naturally, like wounds of the skin.
But loneliness was a creature.
It chewed.
It gnawed.
It hollowed him out day after day.
At first, he simply endured the whispers.
"Why do you still live alone?"
"You're young, you should move on."
"You'll rot if you keep mourning."
And then, at some point, he began to believe them—not because they were right, but because silence had become heavier than the words.
So he obeyed.
He began going on blind dates.
The first girl was kind.
The second talked too much.
The third asked about his parents.
The fourth laughed like she was forcing it.
The fifth said she wanted marriage immediately.
Each date felt like someone trying to weld a broken bone from outside. None of them touched the part of him that mattered. None of them resembled the truth of who he once loved.
He forced smiles.
Forced conversations.
Forced laughter.
Each night he returned home more drained, more angry at himself. Why couldn't he heal? Why couldn't he be like others, whose heartbreak lasted months, not years?
He began to hate himself for not forgetting.
A heart that refuses to forget becomes a cage.
And he lived inside it.
It happened on a Wednesday evening—ordinary, meaningless, until it wasn't.
He was crossing the marketplace when he froze mid-step.
Because there, at the bakery's window, stood a girl with the same eyes.
The same lips.
The exact same smile that once belonged to the woman he lost.
His breath caught in his throat. It hurt.
Not similar.
Not a resemblance.
She was her.
No—logic argued otherwise. His fiancée was dead. Gone. Buried. Reduced to memories and dust. This girl couldn't be her.
But his heart recognized her instantly.
He approached carefully, as if she would dissolve if he stepped too fast. And when she turned toward him, when she looked up—
Yes.
Those eyes.
Those exact eyes.
He asked her name.
She told him.
He asked if she lived nearby.
She nodded.
He asked if she would like to have tea with him.
She smiled.
She agreed.
And that was the moment his fate twisted again.
The days that followed felt unreal.
She was not his fiancée, yet she moved like her.
She was not his fiancée, yet she laughed like her.
She was not his fiancée, yet she filled the room with the same warmth.
He did not fall in love quickly—no, he collapsed into it.
They spent months together.
Walking in parks.
Reading books on rainy afternoons.
Sharing silent dinners where silence felt comforting instead of suffocating.
For the first time since his fiancée's death… he felt alive.
People around him whispered again:
"He finally moved on."
"He looks happier."
"It's good he found someone."
He wanted to believe it.
He almost did.
But reality has a habit of breaking fragile things.
One evening, she was visiting his home.
She was looking through the shelves, humming softly, when her hands froze.
She had found it.
The old photograph.
His fiancée wearing the white dress.
Standing beside him.
Smiling at the camera.
The girl stared at the photo for a long time before whispering:
"When… did I wear this? And when did you take it?"
Her voice trembled.
He felt something inside him collapse.
"That's—" he swallowed, "—not you."
"That's… someone who just looked like you."
Silence filled the room like cold smoke.
She looked at the photograph again.
Then at him.
Then back at the photograph.
She put it down gently, almost too gently, as if afraid it would burn her.
And she left.
Not running.
Not crying.
Just… walking out of his life.
Leaving the door half-open.
Leaving him half-alive.
He tried to find her the next morning.
She wasn't at her home.
Her workplace.
The bakery.
The market.
The street where they first met.
For six months, she vanished completely—as if she had never existed.
But the night she left—
He remembered that night clearly.
A bright flash of light had burst from her window.
Blinding, unnatural, pure white.
He had rushed toward it, confused, terrified—
But by the time he reached her street,
Her window was dark.
Her room was empty.
As if she had evaporated from the world.
He told himself it was his imagination.
But his heart knew better.
He never saw her again.
---
VI. A FOOL REMAINS A FOOL
Years later, sitting alone in his dimly lit room, he found himself staring at the photograph again.
He traced her face with trembling fingers.
Once, twice, a hundred times.
He whispered into the quiet:
"You should have stayed… at least told me why."
No answer came.
Loneliness sat beside him like an old friend.
He laughed weakly—not happily, not sadly, just… tiredly.
"I suppose…" he said to no one, "…a fool is always a fool."
The candlelight flickered.
The wind brushed past the windows.
And he closed his eyes.
Some wounds never heal.
Some loves never return.
Some stories never finish.
And the Fool—
the man burdened with too much heart—
remained exactly what destiny made him:
A Fool in love.
A Fool in grief.
A Fool forever.