Light, not blinding but total. The kind that made his edges feel negotiable.
No bench. No mirror. No letter. No sky.
A hush lived here—neither silence nor sound, but the thing that holds both. He felt the facts of him loosen: the precise weight of his bones, the architecture of his name, the pain he had used as a keepsake. Not gone—unclenched.
Somewhere far away a page turned, slow and careful. He knew, without wanting to, that the book with the torn spine was closing for the last time.
A sentence rose, not in the air, not in his ear—inside the place where the story had once kept its voice:
You will forget this story.
He almost laughed. "I know," he said. "That was always the ending."
A warmth passed behind his shoulder, like a hand guiding without touching. He stepped forward—or maybe he stopped stepping at last. The memory of earth on his tongue was not a threat anymore. The swing's sound was only a sound.
He was not forgiven.
He was not condemned.
He was finished.
For a breath long enough to hold a life, an inscription wrote itself on the blank where his last page would have been:
You were here.
Then the light folded, and with it the boy, and with him the story that had tried so hard to keep him, and the world turned its face toward something else.
If you remember him, he will last a little longer. If you don't, he will end as he was meant to.
Either way, the book is closed.