It had no door.
No walls.
No ending.
Just a hallway made of nothing but white—
soft and flickering, like paper caught in a slow-breathing wind.
The boy stood at the center of it.
Barefoot.
Bare-souled.
He didn't know why he was here.
He only knew he'd walked a long way.
And that the ache in his chest had no name,
but it was hers.
"You're still searching?" a voice asked.
It wasn't a question.
It was recognition.
A girl leaned against the light, half-shadowed by the flicker of threads drifting in the air.
Not quite real.
Not quite forgotten.
She held a small notebook, bound in thread—not ink.
And inside it, stories wrote themselves when she smiled.
"...I thought you'd given up," she said, softly.
"I did," he admitted.
And then, after a pause:
"But I came back anyway."
Her expression didn't change.
Not visibly.
But the hallway shifted.
The threads hummed.
And behind her, the walls that didn't exist began to rebuild themselves—
as scenes.
As pages.
As the world they had once built, and lost.
"Then let's not speak in riddles anymore," she said, turning the notebook around.
"Let's write it as it is."