There was a place where even the stars seemed quieter — a small Norwegian town lost in snow and silence, forgotten by maps, remembered only by the ones trying to disappear. The kind of place where winter wasn’t a season, but a sentence. Where the roads forgot where they led. And where sorrow didn’t knock — it lived in the walls.

In the heart of this town stood an old library, whitewashed by snow and time. It smelled of ink, forgotten stories, and dust that felt like it remembered laughter. Inside worked a girl named Anaya Roy — or as most called her, the ghost in the grey sweater.

She didn’t speak much.

Didn’t smile.

Didn’t lift her head when you said her name.

Her life moved in quiet patterns.

She arrived when the sky was still grey.

She shelved books like they were fragile memories.

She left before the sun remembered to set.

But what made her different wasn’t her silence.

It was what she never did.

She never returned letters.

Every Monday, the postman came through the snow-covered lane. He’d drop envelopes on the library counter. Sometimes cream-colored, sometimes covered in watercolor sketches, sometimes with pressed flowers inside. But always addressed to one name: Anaya.

She’d collect them without a word, her eyes never meeting his.

Then she’d place them gently inside the bottom drawer of her desk.

And lock it.

Always.

The townspeople noticed, of course.

“She must be waiting for someone,” said the baker.

“No, she’s given up,” whispered the woman who ran the floral shop.

But no one asked her.

No one dared to.

Because everyone remembered Aarav Mehra.

He came to this town with her four years ago — a boy with tired eyes, poetry in his hands, and chaos in his mind. He used to sit in the library with her, sketching stars on napkins and writing stories he never finished. He smiled like he was holding back tears. He loved like the world was ending.

And then… one winter, it did.

That morning, the sky was grey and cruel. Anaya had shouted — or maybe she had cried. The neighbours heard her voice but not the words. And when they looked outside, they saw Aarav walking away, his back hunched, scarf dragging behind him like a farewell he wasn’t ready to give.

Hours later, they found that same scarf at the edge of the frozen lake.

No footprints. No note. No body.

Just silence.

They said he drowned.

That the lake swallowed him.

That grief was heavier than water.

But Anaya… she didn’t believe it.

Because she was the reason he left.

The last words she ever said to him were:

> “You’re not the boy I loved anymore.”

She meant: You’ve changed and I’m scared. I don’t know how to reach you anymore.

But he didn’t stay to understand.

He left with those words echoing in his chest.

And she stayed, with guilt as her only companion.

Now, three years later, the letters still come.

No stamps. No senders.

Just a familiar handwriting that makes her breath catch every time.

Inside, though she’s never opened one, she knows what they hold:

Regret.

Love.

Answers.

And maybe even forgiveness.

But Anaya isn’t ready.

Because if she reads them, it means accepting he’s really gone.

And if he’s really gone…

What’s the point of waking up tomorrow?

---

It was a Monday.

The kind of morning where snow looked like forgotten pages floating from heaven. The whole town stood still under white silence — except for the postman’s boots crunching softly toward the library door.

Anaya heard them, as always.

She stood behind the front desk, already knowing what would arrive. She didn’t check the clock. She didn’t move. Her heart was a minute ahead of time.

A gentle knock on the glass door.

She opened it slowly.

The postman gave her a polite nod, holding a single envelope — pale brown, edges worn, name written in a familiar black ink.

Her name.

Not Ms. Roy. Not To the Librarian.

Just… Anaya.

No return address.

No stamp.

Just the same trembling script she could never forget.

Aarav’s.

Her fingers didn’t shake anymore. They had learned stillness — the kind that only grief can teach. She took the letter with a quiet nod and placed it in the drawer. No hesitation. No curiosity. Only ritual.

But that day… she didn’t lock the drawer.

She sat down, alone in the library. Outside, the snow danced like it remembered something. Inside, her breathing slowed.

Something inside her chest moved — not like hope, not like fear.

Something in-between.

She opened the letter.

The paper was old. Folded thrice. Smelled faintly of winter, ink, and a touch of eucalyptus — the way Aarav’s jacket always used to.

The handwriting was slightly messy. She recognized the pressure points where he always pressed too hard on the pen.

And then she read it.

> “You don’t know me anymore. But I remember the girl who used to draw stars behind every book she read. I remember the way your fingers touched spines like they were memories. I remember you loved without looking back… until you looked back, and I wasn’t there.”

She paused.

There was no greeting. No date. No location. Just the voice of a boy who was supposed to be dead — speaking from somewhere too far to be touched.

> “They said I drowned. Maybe I did. But not in water. I drowned long before that — in silence, in your goodbye, in the space where your love once lived.”

A tear slipped down her cheek — quiet, unnoticed, like him.

> “You told me I wasn’t the boy you loved anymore. But love doesn’t disappear, does it? It just changes shape. Mine became shadows. Yours became silence. And both of us learned how to carry ghosts without dropping them.”

Her eyes blurred. But she kept reading.

> “I don’t want to be remembered as a tragedy. I want to be remembered as the boy who tried. The boy who left because he thought that was the only way to be forgiven. If you’re reading this… then maybe I was wrong. Maybe you weren’t done with me yet.”

She closed the letter gently.

Didn’t cry. Didn’t scream.

Instead, she walked toward the window. Outside, the frozen lake waited quietly — like a wound that never healed.

She placed the letter on the windowsill, letting the snow touch its edge.

For the first time in three years, she whispered his name.

“Aarav…”

And in the distance, a crow called once, like an answer from the sky.

---

Anaya did not sleep that night.

She lay in bed, eyes open, as the ceiling fan creaked like an old memory. The letter rested on her chest like a weightless ghost. She had read it twelve times. Each time slower. Each time feeling like she had opened a wound, not paper.

> “Maybe you weren’t done with me yet.”

But how could she not be?

He was her breath once — messy, unsure, alive. Aarav hadn’t just been a lover; he was her world before she ever found the courage to build one of her own.

And when he left, it wasn’t just silence she inherited — it was guilt.

There were things she never told anyone.

Not even herself.

---

Three winters ago, things weren’t just falling apart outside them. They were burning inside them too.

Aarav had started changing.

He laughed less. He smoked more. He stopped reading her poetry and started writing things in journals she was never allowed to touch.

She found him once in the attic, whispering to himself, drawing spirals on the walls in ink.

Another night, he screamed in his sleep. Called her by the wrong name.

And one evening… he looked at her and said:

> “Do you think I’m a monster?”

She had stared at him, frozen.

The man she loved — his eyes full of storms — was fading before her.

She didn’t know how to answer.

So the next morning, she said the words she still bleeds for:

> “You’re not the boy I loved anymore.”

And he left.

She didn’t follow.

---

Back then, the town said Aarav had drowned in the frozen lake.

But there were pieces that never fit.

No footprints in the snow.

No body under the ice.

No witness.

Just a scarf on a rusted nail… and a rumor turned into truth.

Anaya tried to believe it. She tried to mourn him the way death demands — with candles and flowers and stitched-up memories.

But the letters made that impossible now.

They weren’t just paper.

They were confessions.

And in them, she saw something terrifying:

He was still alive.

Or worse… someone wanted her to believe he was.

---

The next morning, she went into the attic.

She hadn’t been there since he disappeared.

It smelled of dust, ink, and something heavier — like secrets that had gone sour.

She pulled open a locked trunk where she had kept everything of his — clothes, sketches, and the black notebook she once wasn’t allowed to read.

Hands trembling, she opened it.

First page:

> “If something happens to me, it’s because I couldn’t carry it anymore. But don’t blame yourself, Anaya. I left to protect you.”

Second page:

A list of names. Cities. Symbols she didn’t understand. And beneath them, a sentence circled in red:

> “They’re watching me. If I vanish, it won’t be because I wanted to.”

Her breath stopped.

It wasn’t just heartbreak.

It wasn’t just grief.

It was danger.

Aarav hadn’t left her because he stopped loving her.

He left because someone was after him.

And now… someone wanted her to find him.

---