Summer arrived without asking.
One day the air was still cool enough to forget, and the next it clung to skin and clothes, making even small movements feel deliberate. The exams ended quietly, without ceremony. Desks were cleared. Papers collected. The tension that had lived in everyone's shoulders for weeks dissolved almost immediately, as if it had never been there at all.
She stepped out of the school building that afternoon and stretched her arms above her head.
"It's finally over," she said, eyes closed, face tilted slightly toward the sun.
"You say that like you survived something," I said.
"I did," she replied. "Barely."
We laughed, standing there longer than necessary, neither of us in a hurry to leave. Summer break had officially begun, but it didn't feel real yet. It felt like the pause after a sentence, not the end of a paragraph.
The days that followed were loose and unstructured.
We met without planning it. Sometimes near the station. Sometimes at the convenience store. Sometimes just by running into each other on the street, both of us pretending to be surprised even though it felt inevitable. The town moved more slowly in summer. Cicadas filled the air with their relentless sound. Afternoon light spilled everywhere, uncontained.
She carried her sketchbook more often now.
Not just to clubroom tables or desks by the window, but everywhere. Under her arm. In her bag. Occasionally held against her chest when she was walking and didn't feel like putting it away. She drew outside more too—on benches, near the river, once even standing near the crossing while trains passed behind her.
I watched from a distance most of the time.
Not because she asked me to.
Because it felt natural to do so.
"What are you drawing today?" I asked once, peering over her shoulder before she could stop me.
She turned the sketchbook away instinctively. "You're not allowed to see yet."
"When will I be allowed?"
"When it's done."
"You said that last time."
"And it wasn't done last time either."
I accepted that. I always did.
We walked a lot that summer.
Longer routes than usual, paths that didn't lead anywhere important. Roads that curved gently instead of getting to the point. Sometimes we ended up near the station without meaning to, standing near the vending machines, buying drinks we didn't really want just to justify staying a little longer.
The evenings stretched endlessly.
Streetlights flickered on later. The sky stayed bright longer than it should have. Trains passed with their windows glowing softly, carrying people who looked relaxed, unburdened, temporarily free from schedules.
"Do you think summer always feels longer when you're younger?" she asked one evening, watching the lights blink at the crossing.
"I don't know," I said. "I don't remember any other kind."
She smiled at that. "That sounds like something you'd say."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
She shrugged. "Nothing bad."
We didn't see each other every day.
That was new.
Not intentional. Just… incidental. Some days she was busy. Some days I was. Sometimes a message went unanswered until the next morning, and when it was finally replied to, it didn't feel urgent enough to explain the delay.
It didn't bother me.
At least, I told myself it didn't.
When we did meet, everything felt the same. Her energy. Her laughter. The way silence still fit easily between us. It reassured me, made me believe nothing had changed at all.
Once, during a particularly hot afternoon, we sat near the river, shoes kicked off, feet hovering just above the water.
She fanned herself with her sketchbook. "I hate this heat."
"You say that every year."
"And every year I'm correct."
She leaned back on her hands, staring up at the sky. "I wish summer would just stop for a while."
"So you don't have to go back?"
"So I don't have to think about what comes after."
I looked at her then. She didn't sound worried. Just thoughtful. Like she'd noticed something quietly and decided to acknowledge it.
"After is a problem for later," I said.
She nodded. "That's what I keep telling myself."
The cicadas were loud. The water moved lazily. Somewhere nearby, a train horn sounded, distant and unhurried.
She opened her sketchbook again.
I watched the pencil move, the familiar pauses, the confidence in her hand. I wondered, briefly, if she was drawing moments like this. Or if she was already looking elsewhere, capturing things I couldn't see.
I didn't ask.
Summer passed the way it always does—too slowly while you're inside it, too quickly once you look back.
By the time the evenings began to cool and the sky started darkening earlier, I realized I had begun to wait more.
Wait for messages.
Wait for replies.
Wait to see if she would be where I expected her to be.
Nothing was wrong.
Nothing had happened.
And yet, something about the days felt slightly less certain, like footsteps echoing just a fraction longer than before.
I didn't recognize it then.
I only knew that summer was ending, and with it, the sense that time had been standing still just for us.