‘Don't go.´ you say, and the words come out muffled, as if the platform has swallowed the last of your courage.

He hugs you immediately, without hesitation. His arms wrap around you as if he wants to stretch out the moment, shut it out from the world. You feel his hands, hard from work, gentle to the touch, moving across your back as if he wants to memorise the shape of your body. There is something steady in this embrace, something that says you are safe here. Your thoughts soften, and all that remains in your head is the warmth of his chest and the muffled noise of the platform.

‘I'll be back. ’ he replies, his tone low and careful, as always when he tries to appear confident.

He kisses you on the forehead, lightly, as he always did before bed, before the war began to turn your days into fear of whether tomorrow would come. The kiss leaves a tingling sensation on your skin. As he pulls away slightly, he takes a small, crumpled book of poetry out of his pocket. The cover bears traces of your morning meetings, a tea stain, the bends from turning the pages with dirty hands.

‘Take it.’ he says, looking you straight in the eye. ‘I read it to you in the grass, remember? When nothing hurt so much.'

An image immediately pops into your head. A meadow, the sky so low you could accidentally touch it, grass up to your knees, your bare feet tangled in the scents you now hold in your hand. You run, you laugh, him behind you, you in front of him, and suddenly you turn around and grab his hand, or he grabs yours, and you have this absurd plan to lose the whole world.

Those days were simple. The sun, his voice reading a poem, you learning to memorise rhymes, his fingers dirty from the soil and yet delicate as he turned the pages of the book. You remember how you used to chase each other, how he always pretended he had to slow down to catch his breath, even though he was in much better condition than you, so that you could win and laugh until your stomach hurt. You remember how he covered his eyes with his hands while you made a wreath of random flowers and put it on his head.

Now this world is squeezed to the limits of the platform and the war that came as your smiles faded. But this memory is your anchor, running through the meadow, your cheeks caught by the sun, his breath just behind your neck, his hands squeezing yours so firmly. This is what you would like to lock inside yourself and take with you now, as if it could protect you from the sound of leaving.

‘Keep it with you.’ he adds, the corner of his mouth trembling as he tries to smile. ‘When things get hard, open it. I’ll be in those lines.'

Around you, the platform comes alive with noise. Shoes clatter, shouts pierce the air, mothers hug men, children hide their faces in their sleeves. Steam rises from the locomotive's flue and covers part of the light, elsewhere someone cries loudly. The smell of oil, steam and morning rain mixes with the scent of your bouquet, of this ground, the sun and a slight sweetness. At this moment, however, there is silence only for the two of you. Words, a hug, the book in your hands, stray hairs on your face that Jay brushes away with his finger.

You hold the bouquet and the book at the same time, feeling the warmth radiating from them, one from his hands, the other from the words you knew. 

He looks at you with a mixture of courage and helplessness. A man who has to get on the train because someone called him, because that's the way the world works, and at the same time a boy who sees your shoulders tremble and doesn't want to be the first to let go. Jay raises his eyes to the crowd, to the movement, and takes a breath that sounds like the announcement of the recitation of the next verse of the poem. But what you hear is completely different.

‘I have to go now.’ 

‘No.’ you whisper, but you know that a whisper is only a thin thread that will not stop the machine.

You want to follow him, you want to run past the standing soldiers, catch him again, hide with him in some corner, press the book under his eyelids so he remembers. You feel your leg muscles already accelerating, your heart preparing to run.

But you know you can't. Your hand drops automatically, the bouquet stays firmly in place, but your feet won't move. You stand still as he takes his first step.

His friends, the ones he mentioned to you several times, pull him towards the staircase leading to the carriage.

Images flash through your mind. Him running after you across a damp meadow, the grass tickling your ankles, his laughter piercing the air, and you turning around and falling on top of him to catch him. 

But you know that this time you cannot catch him. The barrier is thicker than just a metal threshold and a few carriage steps. It is a thousand gazes gathered in one place, eyes that are now measuring your movements. Mothers who have already lost too much, young men in uniforms who have responsibilities, strangers who do not know names, yet feel entitled to decide the fate of others. These are also the rules. Silence that tells you not to scream, that commands you that a woman cannot throw herself into a soldier's arms and disappear with him under the roof of the carriage. And yet beneath all this there is something else. Fear of the price someone would pay for your gesture. The thought that your attempt could complicate his life more than it already is complicates your throat like a knife. You can't risk it.

So you just watch. His friends, the ones he told you about in your evening conversations by candlelight, are already gathering. One of them grabs his suitcase, another helps him climb the narrow steps. Their movements are quick to avoid catching the sad gaze of their loved ones.

You feel something inside you break and harden at the same time. His eyes meet yours once more, there is tension there, like a cracked surface of glass, and in that crack everything else is reflected: duty, necessity, a shadow of fear. 

You would like to ignore reason. You see yourself in this rush, you see yourself crossing the platform, passing the newspaper stand, throwing yourself over the metal barriers, rushing into the crowd and pulling him out of the throng. Your memory plays with you, bringing back happy memories where each of your split ups was just a temporary obstacle to fun. Now, the same goodbye is difficult.

His friends are now whispering briefly, one sentence after another, urging him to get on the train. Friendship acts here as a soft force that pushes towards duty. And Jay lets himself be pushed because he also knows that sometimes there is no choice.

His hand squeezes yours one more time, the grip serving as a bridge. You want to hold on to this moment, to preserve the freshness of his skin's scent and its warmth. 

He takes another step. Then another. He is already on the last step. You notice how his uniform wrinkles unprofessionally under his shoulder, as if he is not yet skilled at wearing this role. This gives you relief and sadness at the same time because you see a boy who has to become someone else.

Then you feel a movement on your waist. A sudden movement flashes in your eyes, the air seems to be cut, and you already know who is behind this gesture. Jungwon, Jay's close friend, whom he showed you in photographs. You recognise his smile, wide, slightly cheeky, like someone who can both amuse and correct. His blond hair is a mess from his sudden movements, his uniform, like your boyfriend's, slightly too big, showing that this future role does not suit him.

Jungwon's movement is quick and confident. His hands grab you with practical efficiency. You feel your body lift. In this one decision, in this one quick set of movements, others join in. A circle of hands forms, warm and firm. You don't analyse their faces, you only see the movements and the pace, which are so smoothly synchronised that even the noise of the platform cannot break them.

You are lifted up. The station beneath you becomes a canvas where every movement of people is blurred and the sound becomes muffled, as if someone had put cotton pads in your ears. Steam from the locomotive blows against your cheeks, mixing with the scent of your bouquet, and this blend of scents becomes your shelter. 

Jay leans out of the window. His eyes are wide, his gaze wavering between seriousness and a shy smile that never quite disappears. His hair is blown by the wind and steam, his cheeks slightly pink, as if the cold and his emotions are mixing together. When he looks at you, you feel like everything else disappears. Places that were out of reach, plans you had for the future. 

He leans in closer and his lips seek yours, the whole entire platform suddenly seems to take a step back. A single whistle blows, someone shouts, someone laughs nervously, but these sounds are like distant rain to you. Noise that does not affect your attention. His face fills your vision, you can count every eyelash, every crack in his lip, every tiny movement of the muscle by his ear. His breath mixes with yours. 

The kiss comes suddenly and slowly at the same time. First, there is a muffled smash. Lips meet lips, the edges of a distant future rub against each other. The taste of his lips is familiar. You taste tea with milk and honey. You feel your lipstick smearing on his lips. That red mark is like proof, a seal of unforgettableness. The sight of that red mark on his lips makes you feel both triumphant and despairing. Proud that you left a mark, despair that this mark may soon be the only thing he takes with him.

The kiss ends as naturally as it began, with heavy breaths, half-closed eyes, and decreasing pressure. His forehead touches yours for a second, warm and soft, like a mark to be remembered. You hear another whistle, different this time, short and sharp. The signal to go. The unfamiliar hands of a friend tug at him lightly, reminding him of his responsibility. His finger squeezes your hand for a moment, as if to give you strength, then he lets go and pulls his head back inside.

In that second, you are so aware of the tear. As if all the cracks in your soul suddenly became visible, as if every shadow and every wound that had been hidden in the corners of your memory came to light and pulsed with pain. You feel it inside you. The vibrations of your own fragility, your heart pounding like crazy, your breath seeming too heavy. You don't know where this realisation comes from, maybe it's the echo of loneliness, maybe the echo of the absence of someone who was everything to you. You don't notice that tears are already rolling down your cheeks, only when a drop runs down your cheek you realise that you are crying.

He sees it immediately. Jay leans over again, this time for a shorter moment. His hand touches your cheek with such tenderness, as if he were afraid that his touch might break the glass.

‘Don't cry.’ he says quietly, but it's not an order, it's a request.

He pulls a handkerchief out of his uniform pocket, white, made of soft cloth, the edges expertly hemmed with tiny stitches. Your heart flutters at his first movement. This piece of fabric is important to him. You notice the embroidery, tiny initials stitched with dark thread, the letters arranged carefully, as if someone had made them with incredible care.

He presses the fabric into your hand, and you feel a weight on your heart. He could have kept this handkerchief with him, like a little piece of home, he could have hidden it and been careful never to lose it. And yet he gave it to you, as naturally as if he assumed it should be where you are.

Your fingers clench around the fabric. The fabric is soft, but not too soft. You can feel traces of use, stained spots, the smell of homemade soap. You soak up the scent. The cool fibres carry with them a piece of the kitchen, conversations, his mother's hands working with a needle. The handkerchief has a story that he will not tell, you read it with your eyes, with your touch, and you understand that you have received a fragment of someone who had the right to keep it.

You do not want to accept it with indulgence, as if out of duty. You take it slowly, as if you were accepting a rather fragile thing. Your hand feels something inside you set off. Maybe gratitude, pain, embarrassment. In one short breath, you take in everything that this gesture means, that he prefers you over the memory, that he chooses for you to have something of his. Finally, he moves away from the window, and the train is about to leave.

You see Jungwon and the others walking away. Their figures become part of the crowd, their steps directed towards their own carriages. You know that behind them lies a different pain, different partings, but the same future as your beloved. 

The wheels rattle, metal rubs against metal, the air ruffles your hair. You are left with a bouquet, a book pressed to your chest, a handkerchief slightly crumpled in your fingers. The lipstick on his lips remains like a piece of your presence, and the echo of the kiss vibrates in your chest. Jay waves his hand from the window, his voice interrupted by the clatter of the train.

‘I'll write letters!’ you hear him say for a moment before he disappears into the noise and wind.

The sound of the wheels distant in the background, as if pulling all the breaths, all the words, all the gestures with it. You stand on the platform and suddenly the world seems too big, too quiet, as if it has sucked you into an empty space that knows no boundaries. The echo of his smile, the softness of his hand remain in your head, and alongside these memories spreads a silence that cannot be filled. Every movement seems slowed down. Even the air seems heavy, and the footsteps in your head echo as if someone were knocking on an invisible door that cannot be opened. You feel that something has been taken out of you. A piece of your heart, a piece of reassurance, a piece of home that has suddenly disappeared. The emptiness is not just the absence of your loved one, it is the awareness that everything that was clear, warm and simple has suddenly changed its place.

You look at the handkerchief in your hand and press it tightly to your chest. 

And you squeezed it every time you read the letters he promised to send. 

They lay on your table like little islands, envelopes arranged in order of arrival, yellowing edges, unevenly stamped. You opened them slowly, as if you were afraid that a quick movement would damage them, or perhaps you were afraid of what you would read. The pages rustled in your hands, the ink had different shades depending on whether he wrote by lamplight or by open fire, in a hurry or during a meal.

At first, the letters came often, filled with details, trivial and therefore so precious. He described little things, such as the bad breakfast he had to eat, the clumsy joke of a comrade that reminded you of your evenings together, a drawing of a small, lonely tree behind the trench so that you could imagine it. He wrote that at night he thought about the meadow, about the book of poems, about the smell of cornflowers on your fingers. Closing your eyes, you saw him kneeling in that meadow, reading you a poem, smiling silly at you. The words were warm, the writing slanted towards a lively line, the strokes trembling with emotion in places.

You read them over and over again, by the light of the lamp, in the kitchen, at the window overlooking the street, in bed in the dark. Always with a handkerchief in your hand. The one he gave you that day on the platform. When you wiped the corner of your eye, the fabric unexpectedly reminded you of home. Some sentences tore you apart from the inside, and at the same time you found yourself returning to them to read them again.

There were little routines in those letters. He always started with how much he missed you. He sometimes drew little sketches. Flowers, animals, hearts in the margins, and those sketches became maps for you. He once wrote a fragment of a poem in the middle of a letter, mixing personal words with someone else's verses. A quote that then circled in your head like a mantra for a week. The book he gave you on the day you said goodbye became a book of those returns. You put letters in it, hid his words between the pages.

Sometimes the letters carried stories, sometimes short messages about the health of friends, sometimes tempting descriptions of the landscapes he had seen. Each sentence was a bridge, taking you to the place where he was, and at the same time bringing his voice back to your living room. You read them over a cup of cold tea, on the stairs of your apartment building, hiding from the gaze of your neighbours, who didn't need to know that for you, a few lines could build a whole world.

And always, between the words, there was that tone of love and longing.

Slowly, however, the frequency of the letters decreased. First, you noticed longer breaks, weeks between envelopes, and then months. Each letter was a celebration. You checked the postbox with such tension, as if the whole day depended on that one piece of paper. When the letter arrived, you read it standing up, then you sat down, then you cried with relief. Even a short sentence:

I'm thinking of you. turned your joy up a level. 

The routine of war changed the style of writing. There were more and more deletions, long words replaced with shorter synonyms. In one letter, you found three sentences. 

Today I saw the sunset. I thought of you. Take care. In another, a short drawing of a small bird and a note

It was flying towards home. I'll be back there someday too.   

Every word had weight, emotions were more raw, unfiltered.

You also read a poetry book without letters. He asked you to read these poems when you were having a hard time. So you did. Over time, the book looked different. The pages were worn at the corners, scraped from being turned over and over again, and the cover had a greasy fingerprint on the edge. The book swelled with stored secrets. The pages absorbed the ink, the paper became soft from frequent touching, with letters placed between the lines and tear stains becoming an integral part of almost every page. When you read his favourite verse, you saw his handwriting in the margins, small letters that added his own thoughts. These little notes became part of your everyday life.

And although the letters became shorter and less frequent, they never lost their tenderness. They contained little promises like a leaf that refuses to fall. Each sentence was like carving a name on a tree. Permanent, even if worn out.

You kept the letters carefully. Just like the bouquet Jay gave you on the day he left. You decided to dry the flowers and hang them in your kitchen doorway. You did everything you could to remember his touch. 

Sometimes, when you picked up the book, you felt like you were touching his presence. You read and read, because reading was bringing him back to your home for a moment.

When the last letters became extremely short, one sentence, a few words, you still waited for the next one with hope.

Waiting to see you was enough.

It filled the empty space between sleep and day. Your fingers knew the texture of the paper, every arrangement of the letters. They seemed to read like the notes of a melody, the melody being his voice.

Until his letters stopped coming.

At first, you explained it away with the simplest explanations. Postal delays, division relocation, loss of communication. You repeated these words like a mantra, as if repeating them over and over again would lock them away in some safe box of reality. You went through every possible scenario. Maybe he wrote, but the letter got lost, he didn't have time to sit down now because the day was too hard, only when the situation stabilised would he sit down and write again. These thoughts tasted of hope, bitter but giving you the strength to breathe.

Then the breaks got longer. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. Every day without his letter was like shifting a step under your feet. Suddenly, it seemed that you didn't know what step you were on. You started counting the days, marking them with a pencil on the calendar, calculating how many days could pass before the message arrived. There was no answer, and in that absence, something grew that had an increasingly bitter taste.

Uncertainty.

You tried to keep your hands busy, because unmoving hands would multiply your increasingly negative thoughts. You learned responsibilities that you had once neglected, you cleaned faster, you cooked more fancy dishes so that it would take you longer to prepare them, you rearranged things as if tidying up your space could somehow tidy up time. You read poetry books more often, until the letters began to wear away under your fingers. Everyday life tried to be a sort of cure. You went shopping, visited the local market, met up with friends. But their words often slipped away like drops on glass, meant to comfort but unable to do so. Your neighbours said: 

‘Wait, he'll come.'

‘Letters from the front are often late.’ 

These phrases were like breadcrumbs thrown to a hungry dog. The loneliness did not go away, and at times you felt as if you were in a state of constant waiting that will never end. 

In the evenings, you opened the letterbox with a ritual regularity. It was something you could control. You would go up to it, open the flap, and pull out any leaflets promoting enlistment in the army. How ironic.

During the day, you searched for information, asked your friends in the city, looked at newspapers, listened for rumours. You analysed the rules of the field post office, the rules of shipping, the movement of the battlefront. And the uncertainty became a burden that you carried on your back like an invisible rucksack.

There were also days when anger took over. Why did he stop writing? Why did the world he promised to build together with you begin to disappear in silence? The outbursts of anger were short. Sometimes you slammed the door, scattered papers around the room, threw a book of poems into the corner. Then, in the middle of the night, that anger turned into guilt. After all, he was putting himself at risk so that others could live supposedly normal and safe lives.

In search of hope, you also started talking to people who knew what it was like to wait. You met women from the neighbourhood who held envelopes just like you, and you exchanged half-words, stories about what it means to wait. There was strength in these conversations, the community of waiting softened the sharpest edges of loneliness. Sometimes you went to the post office together, sometimes to a café, so as not to sit alone with your thoughts. The presence of another person acts like a band-aid.

Often, however, you returned to what was constant. To the poetry book, to your places, where you spent the simplest and at the same time the happiest moments. You opened the pages at random, whispered the poems aloud until the words became safely familiar, like a melody, and allowed you to forget for a moment that he was not there. Over time, you learned to live with this painful waiting. Not because you accepted the absence, but because you developed some rituals that allowed you to move forward. Your normal responsibilities covered up the uncertainty. And even though the silence was still there like a shadow, you were able to convince your mind that silence did not mean the end.

But at night, when everything fell silent, the old, frustrating uncertainty returned. Dreams mingled with reality. You dreamed that Jay was knocking on the door, standing in the doorway with flowers in his hand. You woke up gasping for breath, clutching a handkerchief and staring for a long time at the tear stains on your pillow, as if it were its fault that the dream was not reality. The nights were difficult because there was nothing to distract you from your thoughts. You lay there feeling that until you received a letter, your heart would never stop waiting.

Finally, the uncertainty was broken. However, not in the way you expected.

It came not in words, but in a heavy cardboard box with a stamp and two strands of simple jute ribbon. Something so lacking in personality that it was even more offensive. The courier stood at your door, his face washed out of a smile, and handed you the package as if he were returning a found item. 

‘Personal belongings. For the family.’ The words echoed inside you like an echo that cannot find a wall. 

You accepted it mechanically, signed the paper, hid it in your flat, and only then, with the door closed, did you feel your hands trembling. You cut the string slowly to extend the moment you could control, and then you smelled earth, dust, something metallic, but also a fleeting hint of his soap, which returned like a stolen fragment of home. You took the items out one by one. A cap, dirty around the edges, a pocket knife, worn socks, a toothbrush. 

You also found a leather notebook with a few pages written in it. Unfinished words, unfinished sentences, torn pages, raw descriptions of incidents from the war. There were notes, scribbled words, fragments of thoughts that were clearly not meant to be seen by other eyes. 

You don't remember exactly which emotion struck you first. Disbelief or a desire for explanation. You tried to push away the thought, it must be a mistake, they must have mixed up the packages. But the more things you held in your hands, the less these explanations made sense. In the pocket of the uniform jacket, you found a photograph. Thick paper with edges bent by time shows the two of you holding hands. He is smiling widely, his eyes shining, you are wearing that strange, oversized hat. You remember it all before the memory fills the space ahead.

It was summer or early autumn, the air was light and smelled of road dust and the heated projector brass. The cinema arrived on a vehicle, they set up a large screen between the trees at the edge of the field, someone cranked the machine, the rhythm of the spinning tape was a whisper, and the projector displayed a stuttering image. People came with blankets and baskets. Everyone leaned towards the white screen, which showed a rather less than interesting story.

You had a new hat that day. Not because you needed it, but because you wanted to look pretty. It was too big, supposedly elegant, with a wide, stiff ribbon that kept slipping off, and you sat there looking like you were from another era, ridiculously out of place in your ordinary clothes.  He looked at you and laughed quietly, not maliciously, but with a warm laugh that made your cheeks turn light pink.

‘You don't have to dress up to look beautiful.’ he said, stroking the brim of your hat with his thumb, so that the ribbon crinkled. 

His words were simple, nothing special, and yet everything. 

The screening itself was a little boring for you, the image on the sheet flickered, black and white figures moved like shadows of your thoughts. People sneezed from the dust, someone broke a biscuit, children whispered. He held your hand in his and hugged you from time to time so you wouldn't get cold, even though it was quite warm, especially on your face. After the film, when the lights dimmed, the projector fell silent and the crank stopped turning, Jay pulled you over to a photographer standing nearby. He threw him a coin and you posed against the same sheet on which the film had been shown a moment ago. You laughed, he whispered something silly, and at that moment you still thought you had your whole lives ahead of you, in which such moments would be your everyday life.

And now you look at this photo in your hands, and tears form in the corners of your eyes. The thought that he carried it with him, hidden in his pocket, close to his heart, hits you like a wave. A warm memory and the certainty that this scrap of paper gave him hope. This tiny piece of evidence, this photograph, is soaked in the smells of the front line and now it's back in your fingers, foreign and familiar at the same time.

The room smells of dust from the package and your own breath, and the photograph seems heavier than it should be. You press it to your chest. The image of that hat, his laughter, the light from the projector and the whispers after the movie float before your eyes and tear you apart from the inside. You want to scream to drive away this scene, which now has a different meaning. It is no longer an innocent memory, but a painful example of what you could have had.

You try to be reasonable. You tell yourself that it's just a picture, that it's paper, that it's a memory you can keep and cherish. But every touch of the piece of paper reminds you that he once slipped it into his pocket, that it could have been his companion at night, that it could have been the only piece of home he took with him. It hurts. The pain is so vivid that you feel it like the pain of a punch, hot and burning.

As you put the picture in the book, you pause for a moment and feel anger. Not towards Jay, but towards this world that takes people away without warning. Anger at fate, at the order that replaces your plans with emptiness. Then another wave comes. Gratitude that you were able to experience it. With him. That there was that night, that hat, that laughter, and that you now have something that can bring it back. It is not complete peace, but it is comfort. 

You don't remember when you start crying. First, the tears come, and you think you can stop them with the handkerchief, the cloth he gave you on the platform, but then they keep flowing, as if they've finally found a way out. You cry with such helplessness that your body trembles. The crying has no dramatic melody, it is more like a shadow moving across your chest. Images stir in every tearful stream. His hand squeezing yours on the train station, his voice whispering jokes to make you laugh, your laughter under the cinema sheet. Everything comes back, everything hurts, and you let it hurt because you know it's the only way to remember.

In the days after his death, you learn to breathe again. In the morning, you open your eyes and for a split second you think that everything is normal, that he's about to make tea, that you'll hear footsteps in the hallway. Then the reminder hits you like a cold wave and takes your breath away. You get up, make coffee, brew it the way he liked it. Strong, with a splash of milk, because these rituals have become your fire. Every gesture is now two-faced. You do it for yourself and for him, as if every dish you prepare could be a way to have a conversation you can no longer have.

Sometimes anger comes suddenly, sharp and deadly concrete. You scream into your pillow, you throw photos around, you push boxes. The rage burns like the smell of burnt paper, short, bitter, cleansing. Then comes shame and emptiness, so you take a tissue and wipe your face, trying to put back together what has been broken into pieces. It is a cycle: screaming, silence, tidying up. And in this cycle, you learn little things that help you get through.

The greatest rescue is a return to old, unchanged things. You open a book of poems and read the poem he once read aloud to you. It's like a touch. The words put you back together again and again. You put the photograph between the pages, close the book and place it next to your plate after your meal. Every movement has a meaning offered to memory, to remind you that love has not died, it has only changed form.

There are moments when you try to cheat reality. You put on his jacket to feel his arms around you, you talk to the picture and pretend you can hear his answer, you write letters as if you were going to send them to him someday. These things don't bring him back, but they help keep the conversation going. When you put one of his shirts in the wardrobe, you smell his scent and for a moment everything comes back. The laughter, the smell of flowers, the letters you received. It's an illusion, but without that illusion you wouldn't be able to move on.

The hardest things are dates, anniversaries, his birthday, the day he left. Then you visit the meadow where you so often escaped from everyday life, you read a poem aloud to the trees that once saw you both. Little things, trivial descriptions of your laughter, his habits. Speaking aloud is now an act of resistance against forgetting.

Sometimes you find things that throw you back into the past. Unsent letters, stamps, withered flowers. You read these pages and cry, but then you put them back in the book and squeeze your handkerchief tighter. Other times, you sit on a sunny day and feel that the world can still be beautiful, and then you laugh through your tears, because memory is both a loophole and a doorway.

There comes a moment of silence when you finally begin to understand that your love for him does not have to be constant suffering. You can wear it like a warm scarf, taking it off from time to time to catch your breath. You can choose a few things you wanted to do together when times change, and do them on your own. This is not forgetting. It's change. He is imbued in a book, in a hankie, in a photograph, but also in you. In your ways of looking at the world, in your habits, in how you laugh at a silly joke.

And when you sit quietly by the window at night and read his letter again, you feel his words, though absent, still touching you. And you squeeze the handkerchief so hard that your knuckles turn white.

And  now you were squeezing it, sitting on the train platform bench.

The handkerchief was warm from your hands, so warm as if it still echoed his touch. You sat very still, slightly hunched under the weight of memories that refused to go away. The platform is almost empty. Only the echo of footsteps reverberates off the cool tiles, and somewhere in the distance, the metallic clatter of a train cuts through the silence. Autumn has crept between the rails, the air smells of rust and wet leaves, and the sun, low and tired, shines through the streaks of steam as if it too were searching for something that is long gone. The wood beneath you creaked softly, as if reminding you of its age, but you didn't pay any attention to it. The creaking didn't bother you as much as it used to. When you were with Jay, you could laugh it off, whining playfully just to hear him laugh.

The memory came slowly, unhurriedly, like a film whose cliché sometimes jams so you can watch one scene longer. It was summer, the grass was too green, and the air was hot.

‘You always choose the crookedest bench in the whole park. ’ he would say with amusement, and you would sigh exaggeratedly, raising your eyebrow as if it were the most important thing in the world.

‘It’s not me, they choose me.'

He laughed then, with that warm, low laugh of his that vibrated in your heart longer than the sound of his voice. Then he brought something sweet, always something that was sticky to the fingers.

You were busying yourselves with the overly sweet food, you were laughing at Jay's silly behaviour, and you didn't notice that one corner of your mouth was shining with the red of jam. He stopped mid-sentence, leaned over you with a smile, so close that you could feel his breath on your cheek.

‘You ate like a little beast.’ he murmured amusedly, but there was such natural tenderness in his voice.

It wasn’t sarcasm, it was the way he spoke when he wanted to see you amused. His thumb moved gently across the corner of your mouth and gathered the remnants of sweetness in one stroke. A trivial gesture, yet intimate, for someone who knows you inside out and doesn't pay attention to your minor flaws, because his image of you in his head will never change. 

You always nodded after that, made a pouty face and pushed his hand away, saying you could have done it yourself if you had had time to get your pocket mirror out. 

‘You don't need a mirror,’ he muttered. ‘You have me.’

Then you rolled your eyes, but your heart was beating as if it wanted to burst out of your chest.

The bench creaked and suddenly you were back. Memories slid away like a curtain, and the night struck with its coldness. The kind of cold that is not just temperature, but a silent judgement of the world. The station lights cast yellowish patches of glow, between them the track stretched like a darker ribbon, glistening with wetness, with the distant twinkle of distant signals. The air smelled of machine oil, damp earth and something a bit metallic, a smell that always reminded you of movement and travel, as if the station itself remembered that everything here once arrived, left, brought and taken away.

You now experience this return to the body as a series of small strokes. The flash of lights, the coolness on your temple, the rustle of the pages of the book as you gently turn the page. The cloth rests in your hand, crumpled from touch and memory, the embroidery already worn in places, the threads slightly loosened, but when you put it to your face, the smell of soap seems to bring back moments when he leaned down to kiss you, or when he bent over to remove a small grass spike from your hair. But his arm is not here, there is no one's hand that would instinctively take off their jacket and give it to you so you wouldn't get cold. The memory of that gesture, once so natural, is now painful and ridiculously overwhelming. You remember how he would instinctively take off his coat, how a look of consternation would appear in his eyes, how he would pretend it was just an innocent thing, when in fact, for you, it was the whole world handed over in one movement. Now that jacket is lying somewhere in a box in your house, dusty and forgotten.

The platform is now almost empty. The passengers have left, only a few figures remain, scattered like lost signs. Someone is hurrying with a bag, someone stops to check the timetable, a couple walks away, their conversation melting into the sound of a metallic clang. In the distance, a train passes the station, its sound low and hollow, like the breath of a great creature passing by. Your thoughts revolve around this sound, and in this revolving, you immediately relate it to that day, to that whistle, the couple, the crowded carriage, his sticking-out head and the kiss. The same rhythm, only now without him.

You return to the details habitually, as if the tiny pieces could make up the whole. You clench your fingers on the seams of the handkerchief, move your thumb to read the structure of the thread, hear the book rustle slightly with your every movement. The book is heavier today than you remember. The weight is not from the paper, but from the history it carries within it, the letters tucked between the pages, the dried petals, the drawings, the smudge of his ink. 

Each turn of the page is a ritual in which you hold the memory close to your body so that it does not slip away.

The night deepens your thoughts. The lamps cast long, alluring shadows, the dust in the air reflects the light and creates tiny stars. In the distance, you can see buildings where the lights are going out one by one, signalling bedtime. Here, on the train station, the world is simple. Steel, planks, concrete, advertisements with faded colours in the night light, and you, standing in the middle of this simple scene with a hankie and a poem.

You walk slowly along the edge of the platform. Each step is heavier because your shoes echo off the tiles and each sound comes like a little accuser. You stop for a moment and take a deep breath. Your lungs fill with cold air and something rises in your throat. It's not crying, but rather a kind of tremor that only someone who has lost an important part of their everyday life knows. You stand longer by the timetable pillar, observing your surroundings. A single lamp, apparently broken, flickers in the distance, a dog walks by with its owner, a cyclist rushes to make it before curfew. Everything goes on as normal, and despite the mourning, it is a paradox that is difficult to bear. Life has the ability to function despite this. It is not a decentring of pain, but rather a kind of resilience of the world. You are constantly trying to adapt to it.

And then you saw him. 

You recognised his outline like a melody. He was standing on the other side of the train tracks, and for a moment you thought it was another memory, a film playing in your head, an image composed of your deepest desires. But before your doubts could help, your heart leapt forward and every cell confirmed that he was there. A figure as familiar as the lines on your hand, the way the uniform hung on his shoulders, the way he tilted his head to see you better. These were signs that could not be faked. His face showed signs of fatigue: thin creases around his eyes, shadows from sleepless nights spent where there was no time for comfort and real rest, and yet his smile shone so brightly that his whole presence was at once one of exhaustion and joy.

In his hands, you saw a bouquet. Not cornflowers, not wild poppies, but white chrysanthemums, thick and cool as moonlight. The flower buds were fresh and beautiful. A whiteness that does not demand attention, yet catches the eye and takes your breath away. He stood there with that bouquet, and the reality around you suddenly shrank, everything turned into a thin line of rails and this one image. Jay, flowers, his gaze fixed only on you.

Your mind immediately came up with a thousand explanations. Imagination, someone similar, the play of light. But your body recognised him before your mind did. You knew that sharp jaw, that reflex of holding something close to his chest with a strange, almost shameful tenderness. His lips moved, you didn't hear the words, but you could have sworn he was quoting your favourite piece of poetry.

First you felt disbelief, then a desire to run, an eager, impulsive movement to close the distance with a single touch. The first step was careful, as if checking whether you could do it. The second was faster. Then your legs stopped asking for reason, your memory taught them to run as they had done so many other days. A run that would lead to him. You ran the last few metres of familiar ground, the clatter of your footsteps on the edge of the platform, the metal rails reflecting the light like a broken mirror.

He stood motionless, and something moved in his eyes. Relief spread slowly across his face, as if he had rediscovered that piece of sky that had always belonged to you. He held the bouquet close, protecting it like the most precious thing in the world, the light from the lamps creating tiny halos around the white petals, making the chrysanthemums look like they were from another world.

The surroundings narrowed even further. The details faded away, the hum of the lamps, the distant rattle of wheels, conversations scattered by the wind. Everything became a background for one purpose. The sounds separated into near and far. Near, like his breath, his name, the beating of your own heart. Far, like the hiss of an approaching train, distant at first, then growing, metallic and threatening. Lights flickered somewhere on the horizon, quickly stretching into long strips. You noticed them so late that their glow became not an alarm, but part of the background, which now only emphasised how focused you were on one thing: him.

You did not see the warnings, your eyes would not let you. There was only running and desire. His smile grew even wider, as if the very fact that you were looking at him was a reward. He reached out his hand, his fingers touching the air like a promise. Your step grew lighter, becoming flight. In this hustle and bustle, time stretched out, you saw every rock, every reflection of light on the rail, the smell of chrysanthemums mingled with the smell of oil and steam, and there was a whistle in your ears, which was not yet a threat, but a signal of the proximity of something that was coming with force.

His hand reached out further. Your fingers touched for a split second. A thin thread of contact, the coldness of his skin, the smell of wet earth, his breath, which had not yet calmed down. The whole world came down to that one touch and the bouquet  fluttering in his hands.

And then the train made itself known, first as a signal, then as a rhythm, and finally as a rush. Its whistle broke through the night with such strength that it seemed as if the air itself had split in two. There was a flash of light. Not blinding, but clear, as if someone had opened the curtains of a dark room and let in a sharp light in. In that light, you could see his face, close, calm, untouched, the chrysanthemums swaying in his hands as if carrying silence with them.

You saw one more thing before your eyes, a reflection. Your eyes in his gaze, like a mirror, locked in a final smile, as if all your days only made sense when they were embraced by the gaze of that moment. And then, in an instant, everything broke into a steady, thick silence. 

When the echo of the impact faded, the image remained simple and terribly beautiful. His figure stood on the other side of the tracks, a bouquet at his chest, his smile not yet faded. He looked as if he knew this moment would come and had prepared for it quietly, with due care. No one screamed, no one ran, the world seemed to stand still for a moment and watch as two stories came together in the image.

Your last memories were soft. Fragments of words, touch, the scent of flowers, a streak of light on his cheek. On the other side of the railway he stood as he had when he left, smiling, waiting. This time, however, you decided to join him.

but you couldn't deny that it hurt quite a lot. this was your first relationship and you were so focused on trying to be a good girlfriend that you could barely see how awful your boyfriend was.

as you shivered and tears welled up in your eyes, you contemplated calling sunghoon—your best friend since forever. you weren't exactly in the mood to hear a "told you so!" and a "what were you even thinking?" from him, but you called anyway.

"hoon?" your voice echoes into the phone, small and broken.

"y/n? darling what's up?" he picks up, the familiar petname bringing a sense of comfort to you.

"i....he..." was all you could stutter out, unable to have the courage to tell sunghoon what happened.

"that fucker. stay there sweetheart, i'm on my way. i'll be there in 5," he curses, a rustling sound is heard on the other side of the line.

"wait hoonie? can you...can you stay on the call?" you ask weakly, feeling slightly vulnerable.

"of course sweetheart," you can hear his smile through his tone, the image already making you feel better.

when sunghoon picks you up, he doesn't pry for details, noticing your silence and the way you bounced you leg up and down—a nervous habit.

he figured that you were definitely not in the right mindset to be alone tonight, so he brought you back to his place.

"let's get you to bed, hm? you've gone through so much today," he comforts you, leading you out of the car and into his apartment.

while you shower and wash up, sunghoon pulls a fresh pair of sweats and a baggy shirt for you, setting them outside of the bathroom for when you were done.

once you emerged into his bedroom, hair slightly damp and his clothes swallowing your frame, his eyes softened and he made room for you on the bed.

it was quiet except for the occasional bird call or hum of sunghoon's appliances, but it was home.

"i know you better," sunghoon breaks the silence, those four words going straight to your heart and making you weak.

"w-what?"

"i said, i know you better. that loser didn't know shit about how to treat you. but i know how you react when you're sad, how you push yourself so hard to please others, and how all you want, is to be loved—truly loved."

and you knew it was true. sunghoon knew you like the back of his hand and your ex boyfriend couldn't even name your favorite food.

"if you let me, i'll treat you like you deserve, love you like you deserve," sunghoon promises, his eyes never leaving yours.

"i do," you whisper, so quiet that sunghoon almost misses it.

and with your words, he kisses you. he kisses you like he's cherished you for eternity—cause he has. and for that, he's already way better than your ex.

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