The cold air still burned her lungs.
Lila stood in the empty garden, bare feet frozen to the soil, the wind biting through her robe like a thousand quiet knives. The note trembled in her hand.
"Stop looking through the window.Some things were never meant to be seen."
Her fingers clenched it.
The message wasn't from Aidan. She knew that now.It wasn't his handwriting.It wasn't his soul.
This note felt like ice—sharp, emotionless, cruel.Aidan's words had always carried warmth, even when dipped in sorrow.This… this was something else.
She turned in slow circles beneath the amber glare of the streetlights.There was no sign of him.No footsteps. No whisper of movement.
Just the memory of flashing sirens and strangers' eyes.
Just a growing silence that roared in her ears.
They forced her back into the hospital, of course.
A nurse—one she didn't recognize—wrapped her in a thick blanket and wheeled her upstairs. No one scolded her. No one spoke. They only exchanged glances—wide-eyed, nervous.
Something had happened at the tree.
But no one would say what.
Lila didn't sleep that night.She didn't even lie down.
She sat by her window, forehead pressed to the glass, waiting.The morning sun didn't bring comfort.
It brought emptiness.
And the window across from hers?
Still. Closed. Dark.
No sign of Aidan.
Not that day.
Not the next.
Not even after a week.
The nurses said nothing.The doctors dodged her questions.
Every time she mentioned his name—"Aidan"—someone looked confused, as if they'd never heard of him. Or worse... as if they were pretending he never existed at all.
Only Clara, the janitor who cleaned her room twice a week, seemed honest.
One morning, while wiping the windowsill, Clara paused.
"I saw you run outside that night," she said softly. "You shouldn't have. Could've been dangerous."
Lila met her eyes. "Do you know what happened? At the tree?"
Clara hesitated, then shook her head.
"All I know is, after that night, the apartment across the way… it's been empty."
"Empty?"
Clara nodded. "No one's come or gone. No lights. Curtains haven't moved."
"But Aidan—"
The woman's gaze sharpened.
"Aidan?" she repeated slowly. "Is that his name?"
Lila froze. "You don't know him?"
"I've been working here for five years. Never seen anyone at that window before you started looking out."
Lila's blood turned to stone.
No. That couldn't be right.
She'd seen him.
They'd exchanged notes.
She'd held his letters in her hands.
She'd drawn pictures. Written stories.
She had his words.
Didn't she?
She tore through her drawer, yanking it open so violently the paper crane fluttered to the floor.
She snatched it up, unwrapping it with shaking hands.
Blank.
She grabbed another—an old drawing of the moon wearing a scarf.
Also blank.
One by one, she opened each memory he'd given her.
Nothing.
Not even her name.
Not a single word.
It was as if someone had come in the night and washed him away.
Her breath hitched. Her eyes burned.
Was she hallucinating?
Was he never real?
Had her illness tricked her into believing someone was there?
But the pain in her chest said otherwise.
The ache of losing him was real.
Real like the wind.
Real like the silence.
For the first time in weeks, she didn't go to the window.
She didn't write.
Didn't dream.
The words dried up in her throat.
The world shrank.
Days passed in a fog.
Her treatments continued. Doctors came and went.
But inside, she was frozen.
Grief without a body.
Longing without proof.
Was she losing her mind?
Then, one night—two weeks after the sirens—she found something.
It was almost 2 a.m. She couldn't sleep. The moonlight crept across her room, brushing against the book she had used to write her stories.
She hadn't opened it since Aidan disappeared.
With trembling hands, she lifted the cover.
The first pages were what she remembered—her observations, her fiction.
Then, halfway through, she saw a crease. A folded paper.
She didn't remember putting it there.
She opened it.
It was a sketch.
Not hers.
It showed her—Lila—sitting by the window, wrapped in her favorite shawl.
Behind her, in the background of the room, was a reflection.
A boy.
Aidan.
He was smiling.
On the back of the sketch was a note, written in a hurried, slanted scrawl:
"If they find this before you do, forget me.But if you remember—if your heart still believes—I need you to keep watching.Please.They erased me.But I'm still here.—A"
Lila clutched the page to her chest and wept.
Not tears of pain.
Tears of confirmation.
She wasn't crazy.
He had been real.
Someone was hiding him.Hiding the truth.
But why?
And who?
And what did he mean by "they"?
The next day, Lila changed.
She began writing again.
But not stories.
Not fiction.
She wrote everything she remembered about Aidan.
The way his head tilted when he smiled.
The shape of his notes.
The way he pointed to his heart when he couldn't speak.
Every sketch. Every moment.
She wrote it like a map—hoping it would lead her back to him.
She no longer waited at the window for his face.
She watched for shadows.
Movements.
Strangers walking by his building.
Twice she saw someone near the apartment—tall, dressed in black, with no expression.
Not Aidan.
Someone else.
They didn't look at her.
But she knew… they knew she was watching.
One afternoon, Clara brought in a stack of old mail from Lila's previous room.
"There's a letter here for you," she said. "No return address."
Lila tore it open.
Inside was a single photograph.
Her and Aidan—side by side at the window.
Except… they'd never stood that close.
The photo was blurred, almost like it had been taken from behind glass.
On the back, scrawled in thick ink, was a chilling sentence:
"Keep watching, and you'll end up like him."
That night, Lila stared into the darkness of the opposite building.
The window was open.
Just a crack.
A curtain shifted.
And in the darkness…
A hand.
Pressed to the glass.
Shaking.
Alive.