Chapter 4: Seasons Of Solitude.

The world moved around him, faster each year. Awards, gallery showings, interviews, songs climbing charts. Haruto’s name, once whispered quietly in college halls, now filled magazine covers and digital streams.

But fame had never been the dream.

It was a byproduct of love.

And love — that had stayed in a quiet corner of his heart, untouched.

Haruto lived in a modest apartment in Tokyo, surrounded by canvases leaning against walls, notebooks filled with lyrics and half-formed thoughts, and a single scarf — burgundy, soft, untouched since his college days — folded neatly on a high shelf.

He never spoke of Aoi.

He couldn’t.

Not to friends, not to fans, not even in the lyrics people adored him for. But her presence lingered in his art — subtle strokes of color only he understood. The exact hue of her scarf in his autumn paintings. The melancholic chords that always returned in his melodies. And most of all, in his eyes — warm but distant, as if always waiting for a voice that never answered.

One rainy evening, he received an invitation to give a speech at a university — his university.

He hesitated.

But something in him said: go.

Back on campus, everything looked smaller. The buildings. The trees. Even the sky. But the memories? They were huge.

He walked the old paths, pausing under the cherry tree where he first saw her — Aoi, sketchbook in hand, her scarf dancing in the breeze. He stood there longer than he meant to, hands buried in his coat pockets.

During the talk, students filled the hall, eager for advice. But Haruto didn’t speak of fame or fortune.

He spoke of vulnerability.

“Real art,” he said, “comes from something you never stop missing. Or something you once touched, and lost.”

The hall was silent when he left. No clapping. No noise. Just thought.

He walked alone to the music room afterward, now restored with new instruments. Sitting there was a girl humming softly, her voice too familiar — not in sound, but in soul. She looked up, startled to see him, then smiled shyly.

“Sorry… I didn’t know anyone else came here.”

He smiled back. “I used to.”

They didn’t speak much more. But before he left, she asked, “Do you ever write music… for someone specific?”

He paused.

Then nodded.

“Always.”

Back in his apartment that night, Haruto wrote a new song. It had no name, no chorus, no plan. Just fragments of longing. And when he finished, he folded the paper and placed it beneath the scarf on the shelf.

Every year, on the same date, he visited the hill behind the city where the wind was strongest. There, he whispered words only the wind would hear.

“I still see you… in the light between the trees.”

And he would close his eyes — letting the quiet fill him, not with pain anymore, but something softer. Like peace.

He never married. He had friends. Mentored young artists. Gave quiet advice in crowded rooms. But love — the kind that moved mountains — he had already met her.

And she had already changed everything.

Haruto’s life moved like seasons. Quiet springs. Busy summers. Reflective autumns. And winters spent painting, as snow fell against the window, like white petals from another world.

And through it all, he carried her name without ever saying it.

Because some love stories aren’t meant to be loud.

Some are whispered — forever — in color.

---To be Continued...

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***