I met him on a Tuesday.
It had just started raining.
He stood at the end of the street, completely still, as if the downpour couldn’t touch him. A stranger in a world blurred by water and city smoke. Black coat, no umbrella, a face so still it almost hurt to look at.
I’d never seen beauty like that before.
Not on a person. Not in real life.
He was looking at me. Through me.
“Do I know you?” I asked, voice shaking for reasons I didn’t understand.
He blinked once. His lips moved like a forgotten melody.
“You used to,” he said. “But you don’t anymore.”
......
The second time I saw him, I was in the underground train. Alone in a row of empty blue seats, when the lights flickered—and suddenly, he was there beside me. Same coat. Same scent. Ink and winter.
“You’re not real,” I whispered, heart clenching.
He turned his head slowly. “Then why do I keep showing up in your dreams?”
I stared at him. The train tunnel roared by like time itself unraveling.
“My dreams?”
“You keep forgetting,” he said softly, brushing a strand of hair from my forehead. “But I promised to wait. And I always do.”
......
The dreams began after that.
Every night, I was somewhere else.
A forest of black leaves and white sky.
A room full of clocks, all ticking backwards.
A ballroom with no ceiling, where I danced with him while the stars watched.
I never knew his name.
But every time I touched him, something inside me trembled—like glass too close to shattering.
He would whisper things like:
“You once died for me.”
“I waited eighty-two years.”
“You loved me before you had a name.”
I would wake up breathless, fingertips cold. My room smelled faintly of smoke and rain.
.....
I don’t remember learning how to draw, but my hands moved on their own.
I filled notebooks with his face, his hands, his half-smile.
His eyes—god, his eyes. Like something ancient in a boy’s body.
My friends stopped texting.
My work started piling up.
But I didn’t care.
I was falling in love with a ghost I’d never touched in the daylight.
.....
One night, I asked him directly, “What are you?”
He sat beside me in a field of white flowers that bloomed in the dark.
“I’m what’s left,” he said, “when love refuses to die.”
.....
I woke up one morning to find a single black feather on my pillow. My room, despite locked windows, was freezing cold. My breath came out in mist.
And when I looked into the mirror…
There was a bruise across my collarbone.
Fingers. His fingers.
I didn’t scream.
Instead, I whispered, “You were here.”
.....
That day, I walked back to the street where I’d first seen him.
And there he was again, standing under a gray sky, just watching me.
“I remembered something,” I told him.
He tilted his head.
“You were mine,” I said. “A long time ago.”
His lips parted—eyes wide, glowing. “You remember?”
“A little.”
He stepped closer. “Do you remember why you forgot?”
I paused. The air felt wrong. My chest ached.
“No…”
His smile faded. “Then I shouldn’t be here.”
“Wait—!”
But he was already turning, the world bending around him.
.....
That night, I opened a hidden drawer in my childhood room.
Inside: a faded letter, addressed to myself.
“If you are reading this, it means you’ve started remembering. It means he’s found you again.”
“But you must not trust everything he shows you. Love can be beautiful. But obsession… obsession can live longer than souls.”
“He wasn’t always human. Neither were you.”
My hands shook.
Something inside me cracked open.
And then I heard the voice again—his voice—right behind me:
“You promised. You said never again.”
.....
I ran.
Down empty streets. Into the woods. Past places I didn’t recognize but somehow remembered.
He followed me, silent. Not touching, just watching.
I turned and shouted, “Who were we?! What did I do?!”
He whispered: “You chose the world. I chose you.”
And then the ground split.
....
I woke up in a hospital.
They told me I’d been unconscious for three days. Hypothermia. Found in the woods with sketches of a man no one recognized.
They didn’t believe my story.
About the dreams. The bruises. The feather.
But I know what I saw.
I moved away from the city after that. Cut my hair. Burned the notebooks.
But some nights, when the air grows cold and the mirror fogs on its own…
I feel him.
Still waiting.
Still watching.
Still in love with a version of me I no longer remember being.
.....
Maybe I’m the one who’s not real anymore.
Maybe he never was.
But sometimes…
When I close my eyes—
I miss him.
Even if he was never meant to be loved...
