It had been sixteen days since the first note.
Sixteen notes exchanged. Sixteen moments where silence became language, where a window became a bridge.
Lila lived for those notes now. Each morning she waited by the glass, blanket around her shoulders, lips pressed to her knuckles, breath fogging the windowpane.
Each day, like clockwork, Aidan arrived.
He didn't always bring words. Sometimes he brought sketches—a tree with her face in its bark, a moon wearing a scarf, a window with wings. Other times, he offered quotes from books, scribbled across candy wrappers or old receipts. One day he folded a note into a crane and left it perched under the tree like a message from a forgotten god.
They never spoke. Not with mouths.
But they were screaming with silence.
And it was beautiful.
Until it wasn't.
That morning, the wind had teeth. It scraped against the window like fingers made of glass. Lila's body ached before she even opened her eyes. The cold crept into her bones, the kind of cold that couldn't be solved with blankets.
She tried to stretch, but pain rippled through her chest.
Still, she moved to the window.
Aidan was already there.
But he wasn't standing.
He was sitting on the ground, knees tucked to his chest, forehead resting on his arms.
His entire body was folded in on itself, like a leaf about to break.
Lila's breath caught.
This wasn't like him.
Where was his chair? Where was his signboard? Where was the spark in his stillness?
She knocked gently on the glass. Once. Twice.
He didn't look up.
She wanted to scream.
Finally, he raised his head—and Lila gasped.
His eyes were red.
Red like someone who hadn't slept in days.
Red like someone who had been crying for hours.
He held up a crumpled page.
It said: "He's gone."
Nothing else.
No signature.
No explanation.
But she knew.
His brother.
Gone.
Aidan's world had cracked open, and he had come here, to the tree, to fall apart where she could see.
She didn't care that the oxygen tank hissed beside her or that her legs trembled beneath her weight. She pressed her hand hard to the glass, wishing she could touch him.
She grabbed a pen. Her fingers fumbled. Her handwriting wobbled across the paper.
"I'm here. You don't have to say anything. Just be here."
She held it up.
He looked at it.
Then nodded.
Just once.
Then he stayed.
For hours.
The two of them, separated by concrete and glass and air and the brutal weight of grief, just sat.
Together.
The next few days were quiet.
The notes changed.
They were shorter.
He wrote:
"I found a recording of his laugh today."
"He always wore mismatched socks."
"I don't know who I am without him."
She replied:
"You don't have to know yet."
"Grief is the price of deep love."
"You're still someone. Even in pieces."
But the most important thing she sent wasn't a note.
It was a story.
She spent a whole night writing it—feverish, shivering, alive in a way that hurt and healed at the same time.
It was about a bird who couldn't fly. Its wings were made of paper, and the wind was too cruel. But every day, someone left a message on its feathers. Words that gave it strength. Until one day, it finally leapt from the windowsill and soared—not because its wings were fixed, but because it believed.
She signed it:"For Aidan. With my paper wings."
When he read it, he didn't write back.
He just placed his hand on the tree trunk, looked up at her, and mouthed: "Thank you."
And that was enough.
A week passed.
The world began to feel warm again. Small joys bloomed in the cold.
Lila began brushing her hair again.
She wore color—soft blue sweaters, yellow socks.
She even began a new story: this time, about a boy with storm clouds in his chest and a girl with sunlight in her scars.
Her doctors were cautiously optimistic. Her lungs were responding to treatment. Her appetite was improving. Hope made her brave.
One night, she wrote a question she had been afraid to ask:
"What did he say about you? Your brother, I mean. What did he love about you?"
She didn't expect an answer right away.
But the next day, Aidan came with a letter.
A full page. Folded neatly. Hand-delivered under the tree.
Lila unfolded it with trembling fingers.
It read:
"He said I was gentle. That I felt like safety. That I looked out for people who didn't ask to be seen. Like you. He knew about you, you know. I showed him the first crane you wrote me. He smiled. Said it was beautiful. I think he was jealous. He said, 'She sounds like the kind of girl who teaches you how to live again.'"
Lila pressed the paper to her chest.
Then cried.
For the boy who had died.
For the brother left behind.
And for herself—for daring to believe in something bigger than survival.
Later that evening, she left a reply.
She drew a picture.
It was of two windows facing each other. In one was a girl with sunlight in her hands. In the other, a boy with shadows in his eyes. But between them were birds—paper ones—carrying words back and forth.
She captioned it:
"This is us. I hope it always is."
Aidan came at dusk.
He looked at the drawing for a long time.
Then he pulled something from his coat pocket.
It was a small velvet box.
Lila's heart thudded.
He opened it.
Inside was a tiny pendant.
A glass charm shaped like a bird—wings spread wide.
He didn't try to throw it.
He just held it up.
Then pointed to the sky.
Then to his heart.
Then to her.
Lila understood.
Somehow, she understood.
That night, everything changed.
She woke to sirens.
Flashing lights.
Voices shouting from below.
She rushed to the window.
Ambulances.
Police cars.
Red and blue lights painting the park like a nightmare.
She squinted into the darkness.
They were gathered at the tree.
At their tree.
At his tree.
She screamed for her mother.
No one answered.
She pulled on her robe, stumbled through the hallway.
Nurses rushed past her.
The stairwell buzzed with static from police radios.
She pushed open the lobby doors and stepped outside for the first time in months.
The cold slapped her skin.
She ran barefoot across the grass.
People shouted behind her.
She didn't care.
She needed to see.
She needed to know.
She reached the tree.
The crowd parted.
And there, taped to the trunk, fluttering in the breeze, was a note.
Just like all the others.
But this one was soaked in something darker than rain.
She tore it free.
It read:
"Stop looking through the window. Some things were never meant to be seen."
No name.
No signature.
No Aidan.
Just the wind.
And a silence that was no longer safe.