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.
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