Chapter 2: Marked Pages

They cross paths again the next week. And the week after that.

Always near the same shelf — the one isolated in the far corner of the library’s second floor, where the lighting flickers on rainy afternoons and the titles leaned a bit outwards like they’re tired from being forgotten.

Always in silence first — until a comment about a book, or a quiet laugh at how one of them is always holding too many novels for someone with only two hands.

Names never come up. They didn't ever need to.

They become something almost habitual in each other’s routines — a rhythm built around pages, book spines, and quiet recognition. She starts to anticipate the sound of soft footsteps around the corner, the faint scent of worn pages and that old cologne that clings to his jacket. He always goes through the first editions like he's hunting for something. She rereads back covers like they're clues.

One Thursday, he holds out a book. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. His fingers tap the cover lightly, like he's hesitant to recommend it — like he's offering more than a title.

“Sneaks up on you,” he says. “In a quiet way. Haunts you, but... in a good way.”

Clara checked it out that afternoon. She starts reading it on the bus ride home and doesn't stop until the streetlights blink outside her window. She finishes it the next night, sitting by the edge of her bed, her dinner long cold on the nightstand.

She underlines lines in pencil, even though it’s a borrowed library copy — an old habit she thought she’d grown out of by now , but never did. Some passages she circles twice. She rereads one line three times:

[“Sometimes I get these moments when I just want to go back to how it was before.”]

The words echo. Not just in her head — but in her chest, in the stillness of rooms that have grown too quiet lately. She doesn’t know what “before” she’s longing for. Only that she understands the wanting.

The next time she sees him, he’s crouched near the bottom shelf, flipping through a paperback with bent corners and a loosened spine.

“I read it,” she says, holding up the book.

He looks up. Smiling like he already knew she would.

“And?”

“You were right,” she says. “It stays.”

He nods once, like that’s all he needed to hear.

They don’t really greet each other. Don’t exchange numbers. There’s no dramatic crescendo, no sweeping music or sudden confessions. Just a moment of pause, acknowledged. Two people who met between pages and lingered in their own little comfort space.

She leaves before he does. As she walks down the stairs and out into the soft afternoon light, she realizes she’s smiling in a way that feels unfamiliar. Unpracticed.

A smile that felt so natural, she didn't force the corner of her lips to go up…

Like a forgotten language trying to return. A sense she thought she had lost… turns out she hadn't. It just needed a little push perhaps.

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