He came back without noise.
No one really knew what brought him home.
The town looked the same, but something in him had changed.
He moved slower. Spoke less. As if words had failed him somewhere along the way.
There was a weight in his hands. A small bag, worn from travel. Inside, were the things he had been collecting. Not gifts exactly, but memories disguised as objects. A blue thread bracelet. A book she once mentioned. A note tucked between the pages.
The streets carried familiar sounds, but the comfort he once felt had blurred around the edges. He passed the places they used to walk, the benches they had sat on, the shops where she would stop for no reason at all.
And somehow, it still felt like she was there. In the air. In the stillness.
He hadn't heard from her in months. His phone, long broken, had become an excuse time and time again. He borrowed moments through others when he could. Nothing certain. Just enough to believe she was still waiting.
He thought they were still something.
Not untouched, maybe, but unbroken.
Something that could be reached again.
But the town had a way of speaking without speaking.
He heard her name. Laughed once, softly, when someone said she had grown quieter these days. Then something else slipped through, not said directly, just suggested, as if truth had stopped at the edge of kindness.
He asked someone. Just one question. Not with anger. Not even with fear.
And when the answer came, it did not arrive loudly.
It was simple. Quiet.
She was with someone else.
The bag in his hand seemed heavier than before. He didn't open it again.
He didn't go to her house.
He didn't stand at her window.
That night, he sat at the edge of the hill where they once watched the town fall asleep.
He stayed until the stars appeared, silent and soft, as if they understood.
He said nothing. Did nothing.
Just sat there, with a heart that had come back home too late.