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PROLOGUE - THE BALCONY

It was a rainy evening. Thick clouds stretched across the sky while a gentle drizzle fell with unhurried patience. Rain has a peculiar way of mellowing time; conversations become softer, thoughts become slower, and the world feels less interested in rushing anywhere. Then comes its scent, the smell of wet earth, which quietly awakens the senses, especially the ones reserved for nostalgia. Memories rarely ask for permission; they simply arrive with the rain.

He slid open the balcony door and stepped outside carrying a book and a pen. He placed them on the small wooden table beside two green metal chairs that had weathered many seasons. The balcony was lined with plants, each one placed with intention. They weren't there merely for decoration. They reminded him that this little corner of the world continued to exist even when he was away from home, waiting patiently for his return.

He walked back inside, picked up his phone, and put on some music loud enough to spill gently into the balcony. Before stepping out again, he grabbed his cup of green tea. Everything was now in its place—the rain, the music, the tea, and the evening. All that remained was time.

Beyond the balcony stood a mango tree. Over the years, they had become companions, although he had unimaginatively named it The Mango Tree. Originality, he often thought, was overrated when affection had already done the naming.

On most days, the tree was alive with visitors. Birds of every size, colour, and song would arrive throughout the day, filling its branches with conversations he could never understand. He didn't know the names of most of them, so he simply called them birds.

Perhaps that was enough.

Why must everything be named? A name often feels like the beginning of a boundary, while a bird spends its entire life escaping them. It seemed unfair to trap something so free inside a human label when its truest nature was to leave the moment the wind invited it elsewhere.

Two squirrels had claimed the tree as their home. Butterflies drifted through its branches, and countless insects lived quiet lives among its leaves. But this evening the rain had hidden them all. The tree stood alone, receiving every raindrop without complaint, swaying only when the wind insisted.

He had decided to write that evening. It was one of the few ways he knew of getting lost without ever leaving home. Writing had become his doorway into time; every page opened into a memory waiting patiently to be visited.

Before he began, he glanced at his phone. There was a message.

"Have you had lunch yet?"

He smiled.

"Yeah. I'm having some green tea now."

After a brief pause, he added,

"What about you? Have you had lunch?"

He placed his phone on the table and looked up at his old friend, the mango tree. The rain did not seem to bother it. The wind, however, was another story. Every now and then a strong gust would make its branches bow and its leaves shiver, but it never resisted. It simply swayed, as though it had learnt long ago that some forces in life were not meant to be fought, only endured.

He smiled at the thought, opened his notebook, and began to write.

ACT I - STAMPS

"I was in the sixth grade when Prithvi and I became friends.

I was always the shy one. The kind of child who believed that studying hard and making my parents proud was all that mattered. Secretly though, I wanted what everyone else seemed to have so effortlessly—a group of friends, somewhere to belong. I just never had the confidence to walk up to people and become part of their world.

Prithvi, on the other hand, had no such problem. He had this remarkable ability to enter a room full of strangers and leave with friends. He didn't wait to be accepted into a group; he simply became part of it, and before anyone realised it, everyone had accepted him.”

He smiled, though not a single muscle on his face moved.

“Out of all the clubs I could have joined, I somehow ended up in the stamp collection club. There wasn't a single familiar face there. Most of the students were just like me—quiet enough that an entire room could exist without a conversation. Except for Prithvi.

To this day, I still don't know why he joined the stamp club. He wasn't particularly interested in collecting stamps when we first walked in. Perhaps he simply wandered into the wrong room and decided to stay. Whatever the reason, we were in the same class, sat beside each other every week, and somewhere between stamps and silence, we became friends.

Prithvi loved the ISRO stamps. He spoke about satellites, launch vehicles, moon missions, and Mars missions with a curiosity that made even the smallest stamp feel like a window into the universe. I was fascinated by the Hampi stamps. I'd spend hours in the school library searching for the temples and monuments printed on them, and then return to tell him everything I had discovered. The library happened to be where the stamp club met, which felt wonderfully convenient.

I remember telling him once, "People think stamps carry letters. They also carry places."

He looked at me as though I had said something profoundly wise.

I never had the heart to tell him our teacher had said it in class the previous week. I had simply borrowed her wisdom. Then again, I was sure Prithvi was not paying attention in class.”

He paused and looked up at the mango tree.

When was the last time he had even thought about stamps?

Or held one?

He couldn't remember.

He lowered his eyes and continued writing.

“I also remember the bird stamps. The Indian peafowl, the sarus crane, the great hornbill. Prithvi loved them for their colours. I loved imagining what it would be like to see those birds in the wild.

We were both oddly fond of the Mysore stamps as well. Mostly because every time we saw one, we'd somehow end up talking about Mysore masala dosa instead.”

He smiled to himself and reached for his phone.

A reply had finally arrived.

"No. Haven't had lunch yet. Work has been nonstop."

He frowned.

"What? It's already evening. You'll fall sick. Should I order something and send it to your office?"

The rain had grown heavier now. Faint flashes of lightning flickered behind the clouds.

Another message appeared.

"It's okay. I still have a few meetings. I'll finish them and head home."

He sighed before typing back.

"No. Go eat something first. Something quick, idiot."

“Prithvi eventually pulled me into his gang. There were seven of us in all, and from that day on we were almost inseparable.

I wasn't the class topper anymore. Oddly enough, it never bothered me. I still studied well; I just wasn't obsessed with standing first. My parents, however, took my fall from the top much harder than I did. There were scoldings, punishments, extra tuition classes, and countless lectures about choosing the wrong company.

They blamed my friends for my grades slipping.

I never did.

It was my choice, and if I were asked to choose again, I would still choose my friends.

Looking back, the happiest part of my childhood wasn't the report cards or the certificates. I barely remember what I learnt in history, science, or mathematics. Time has quietly erased most of those facts.

But I remember every afternoon we were thrown out of class. I remember standing together under the harsh afternoon sun as punishment, trying our hardest not to laugh. I remember the pointless arguments, the ridiculous pranks, the secrets we promised never to tell, and the certainty that tomorrow we would all meet again as though nothing had happened.

Perhaps that was my real education.

Schools hand out certificates to acknowledge what we remember. Childhood, on the other hand, quietly rewards us for what we never forget.

Eventually, like all school friendships, our gang scattered. Each of us left for different colleges, different cities, different versions of ourselves.

Prithvi and I, somehow, ended up in the same college.

Within a matter of weeks we had another circle of friends. That was Prithvi's gift. No place ever stayed unfamiliar for long when he was around. Wherever he went, belonging seemed to arrive before introductions did.”

He paused and looked up at the mango tree.

The rain had become steadier now. Water streamed down its branches, but the tree stood exactly where it always had.

He took another sip of his tea.

No new messages.

He returned to the page.

“It was during our second semester that a new student joined our class. He kept to himself and hardly spoke to anyone. What stood out, however, was the way he walked. No matter where he was going, he moved as though he were already running late. Every journey looked urgent.

Prithvi watched him for a few days before finally walking up to him.

"From today," he declared, "your name is Flash."

The poor guy barely had time to process what had happened.

"And," Prithvi continued, pointing at me, "you're our friend now."

Flash stood there completely bewildered, trying to decide whether he had just been introduced to two strangers or recruited into something.

Before he could figure it out, he was already one of us.

That was Prithvi.

He never really made friends.

He simply removed the distance between strangers.”

ACT II - FREEDOM

“Flash, Prithvi, and I became inseparable. We liked calling ourselves the Three Musketeers, even though none of us had actually read the book.

College, however, has a peculiar way of rearranging people.

For the first time, freedom arrives without instructions. Everyone is handed the same freedom, yet no one really knows what to do with it. Some people chase ambition. Some chase love. Some chase pleasure. Others spend years simply trying to discover who they are. Freedom doesn't change people; it quietly reveals the direction they were always leaning towards.

Life had begun pulling each of us toward a different horizon.

My parents were going through difficult financial times, and for the first time I understood that my future wasn't something I could casually leave to chance. I buried myself in my studies and began searching for opportunities beyond the city, perhaps even beyond the state.

Prithvi remained exactly who he had always been, a person surrounded by people. There was always another gathering, another celebration, another party waiting for him.

Flash, on the other hand, had quietly fallen in love. Or perhaps in love with the idea of love. There was a girl he admired from a distance. He hardly spoke to her, yet somehow his imagination had already built an entire future around her. Marriage, a home together, growing old side by side, his dreams always seemed to walk faster than he did.

We still met whenever we could, but somewhere along the way we had begun drifting apart.

No one caused it.

No one was to blame.

We were simply becoming ourselves.”

He paused for a moment and picked up his phone.

He took a photograph of the mango tree.

Every evening he posted a picture of it before going to bed. Sometimes he edited the colours, deepened the shadows, or made the sky look a little more dramatic than it had been. He smiled to himself.

It was funny how often people tried to improve a beautiful moment after it had already happened.

He placed the phone back on the table and continued writing.

“By the final years of college, I had immersed myself completely in my studies. Every decision I made seemed to point toward a future somewhere else.

Prithvi and Flash, meanwhile, had grown closer. Flash had begun spending more time with Prithvi's circle, partly because the girl he liked happened to be part of it.

There were days I felt they had left me behind.

Years later I realised something that was much harder to admit.

They hadn't left me behind.

I was the one leaving.

Neither of us was wrong.

We were simply choosing different lives.

Then came the fight.

Prithvi had started dating the very girl Flash had quietly loved for years.

I understood Flash's heartbreak.

I also understood Prithvi.

As cruel as it sounded, Prithvi once said, "It's not like he was ever going to tell her."

Neither of them was entirely right.

Neither of them was entirely wrong.

Friendships rarely break because of villains. Most often they break because two people arrive at different versions of the same story.

Watching them drift apart unsettled me. It wasn't just that they had stopped talking.

It was the realisation that we were no longer the three musketeers.

By the time college came to an end, everyone had graduated except Prithvi.

He had failed most of his subjects.

By then alcohol and drugs had become a larger part of his life than lectures ever were. He seemed strangely comfortable standing still while the rest of us kept moving.

I wasn't standing still.

For the first time in my life, I felt proud of the choices I had made.

An opportunity came to pursue my studies in another state, and I accepted it without much hesitation.

My farewell wasn't anything extraordinary.

Just a late-night drive with a few close friends.

Flash was there.

Prithvi wasn't.

By then he had become unpredictable. He argued with everyone, his girlfriend, strangers, even people trying to help him. Flash and I decided not to invite him. We didn't want to spend the evening wondering when the next fight would begin.

So we said our goodbyes.

And I left.

I called Flash a few times after moving away. We exchanged messages every now and then.

But life has a quiet habit of replacing routines before we realise they've disappeared.

New cities became familiar.

New friends became old friends.

New dreams slowly replaced old conversations.

Without intending to, I had built an entirely new world.”

ACT III - ABSENCE

He watched the rain gather on the leaves of the mango tree. Tiny streams traced the veins of each leaf before collecting at their tips, where they hesitated for a moment and then surrendered to gravity. Every droplet caught the fading light differently. Some shimmered with colour, while others remained almost invisible, as though water itself couldn't decide whether it wished to be seen.

He lifted his cup, took a slow sip of his tea, and returned to his notebook.

"A few years later, I returned to my hometown after receiving news that my grandmother had passed away.

We were never particularly close, so grief never arrived in the way I thought it was supposed to. But death has a way of calling people home, whether for the person who has left or for the people who remain. So I went.

After the rituals were over and life quietly resumed its familiar rhythm, my thoughts wandered to Flash and Prithvi.

For years they had visited me only as memories. It wasn't that I had forgotten them. Quite the opposite. I thought about them often. Certain songs, places, even the smell of old books would remind me of them. I simply never reached out. Somewhere along the way I had convinced myself that too much time had passed, that I no longer knew how to return to a friendship I had quietly walked away from.

Eventually, I gathered the courage to send Flash a message. I figured he would be easier to approach.

I was right.

He replied almost immediately.

He was exactly as I remembered him, warm, cheerful, somehow still speaking as though every sentence was running late.

We spoke about work, life, and the years that had quietly slipped past us. The awkwardness I had feared never arrived. It felt strangely comforting, as though we had merely paused a conversation instead of abandoning it.

The whole time, however, I found myself wondering about Prithvi.

Was he doing well?

Had life been kind to him?

Had he finally found his way?

So I asked Flash if they were still in touch.

There was silence.

Not the kind caused by a poor network.

The kind that changes a conversation forever.

"I didn't tell you back then," Flash finally said. "You were leaving to begin a new chapter, and I didn't want to burden you."

"Tell me what?"

He paused again.

"Prithvi passed away."

Everything inside him went still.

The words reached my ears, but nothing else seemed to move.

My heart sank, I felt the ground below me fall.

chest tightened.

The world lost its sound.

Flash told me it happened shortly after my farewell.

Prithvi had arrived for his final examinations visibly disturbed, perhaps intoxicated. He argued with one of the professors, walked out midway through the exam, and eventually failed.

When he got home, he fought with his girlfriend. She ended the relationship and left. His parents took him back to their family home and helped him sober up.

He apologised to the university.

Tried reaching out to her again.

But she had already blocked him.

Flash believed the loneliness became too much.

A few days after I left town, Prithvi hung himself.”

He stopped writing.

He closed his eyes.

There was a familiar burning in his chest.

His eyelids felt unbearably heavy.

Some grief never really leaves.

It simply learns to wait quietly until memory calls it back.

He reached for his tea.

It had gone lukewarm.

He glanced at his phone before returning to the page.

"All I could think about after that conversation was this...

What if we had invited him to my farewell?

What if I had simply said goodbye?

Would that one evening have been enough to change the course of a life?

I knew those questions had no answers.

I asked them anyway.

I cried for days.

Then for nights.

Sleep became unfamiliar.

Every memory hurt.

Every silence hurt.

Everything seemed capable of reminding me of him."

ACT IV - ECHOES

"After that, Flash and I stayed in touch.

This time, we didn't allow life to quietly carry us away from one another.

Every week, without fail, we'd get on a call and talk for hours. About work. About family. About politics, philosophy, music, and the strange uncertainty of becoming adults. We spoke like men often do, about our feelings, and for hours.

He visited me once while he was in town for a friend's wedding. We met over hookah and spent the evening talking about the future. We laughed about how all we really wanted was to find the right woman, build a quiet life, and grow old without becoming boring.

As the evening came to an end, he asked if I could drop him at the airport.

I told him I couldn't.

I said I was working on a project.

I wasn't.

I was meeting a couple of friends for drinks.

Even today, I don't know why I lied.

He simply smiled, shrugged, and said, "No worries."

Then he walked away with that impossibly fast walk of his, as though he were late for a life only he could see.

A couple of days later, a mutual friend sent me a message.

"Is it true?"

I stared at it, confused.

"What are you talking about? I just met him two days ago."

I called Flash immediately.

His phone was switched off.

I called again.

Nothing.

Then I opened our chat and sent him a message.

"Where you at?"

Minutes passed.

Another message.

"Bro... where are you?"”

He lowered his pen.

Almost without thinking, he reached for his phone.

He opened the messaging app.

Typed Flash.

Their conversation appeared.

The last message still waited there.

"Bro... where are you?"

There were no blue ticks.

There never would be.

He locked his phone immediately and placed it face down on the table.

Then he pulled his knees up onto the chair and wrapped his arms tightly around them.

He stared at the mango tree.

But not looking at it.

The rain had become little more than a drizzle now.

"Flash had felt unwell during his journey home.

By the time he reached home, he suffered a heart attack.

He passed away before they could get him to the hospital.

Looking back now, I think something inside me died that day as well.

Not my ability to breathe.

Not my ability to speak.

Just my ability to experience the world the way I once had.

Life afterwards became unfamiliar.

I withdrew from almost everyone.

I stopped working.

I distanced myself from my family and friends.

Whenever someone tried getting close, I'd deliberately start an argument, hoping they'd stop trying to reach out to me.

I didn't want anyone carrying what I was carrying.

I didn't want to leave my room.

Yet I couldn't bear staying inside it either.

So I kept choosing between two places where I no longer belonged.

The past hurt because it was gone.

The future hurt because I couldn't imagine one.

The present hurt because it felt unbearably heavy.

It was as though I had been asked to carry the weight of an entire planet, and every morning I woke up wondering whether the ground beneath me might finally give way and allow me to disappear into nothingness.

Perhaps the cruelest part was this.

It also made me realize I was too weak to even take my own life..

So I remained.

Not because I wanted to.

Simply because I could do nothing else.

Eventually, life did what it always does.

It kept moving.

Bills had to be paid.

Taxes had to be filed.

Work had to be done.

The world had no idea that mine had ended.

So I learnt to wear masks.

Every morning I put one on before leaving home.

With that mask I smiled at people.

With that mask I attended meetings, laughed at jokes, met friends who increasingly felt like strangers, and answered the familiar question, "How have you been?" with an equally familiar, "I'm good."

I wore that mask so often that, after a while, I forgot I was wearing it.

Eventually, I found myself in relationships.

Or perhaps relationships found me.

At first they felt hopeful. I convinced myself that love would somehow erase grief, that enough affection could fill the empty rooms memory had left behind.

It never did.

Looking back now, I wonder if I kept meeting people wearing masks of their own.

Or perhaps I simply projected onto them the person I desperately wanted them to be.

I stayed far longer than I should have.

Not because I was afraid of losing them.

I had already lost people.

I knew what loss felt like.

What frightened me was the thought of someone else feeling abandoned.

So I endured.

There were lies.

There was betrayal.

There was manipulation.

There were apologies that changed nothing.

I accepted more than I should have because somewhere inside me I had convinced myself that love meant staying, no matter how much it hurt.

It took me years to realise that I wasn't loving them.

I was trying to save them.

And quietly hoping they would eventually decide I wasn't worth saving.”

He looked up from the page.

A  bolt of lightning crashing into the mango tree.

The trunk splitting apart.

Branches bursting into flames.

Smoke rising into the darkening sky while people gathered below in panic.

Atleast that is what he hoped had happened but no nothing dramatic happened,

Some irrational part of him wanted the world outside to resemble the storm that had lived inside him for years.

He blinked.

The rain had softened into a gentle drizzle.

Sunlight slipped through the retreating clouds, scattering itself across the wet leaves. Every droplet became a tiny mirror, holding the evening sky inside it.

He smiled at his own imagination.

Perhaps not everything needed to become dramatic to be beautiful.

He picked up his phone and took a photograph of the tree.

He would probably post it later that night.

ACT V - THE MIRROR

"Eventually, those relationships came to an end.

Some ended quietly.

Some painfully.

In time, I made peace with all of them.

Then I met someone different.

For the first time in years, I wasn't simply attached to someone.

I had fallen in love.

Or at least I thought I had.

The relationship lasted for years, yet something inside me remained restless. We cared for one another, but we both seemed to live behind invisible walls. I rarely shared what truly lived inside me. Neither did she. We spent years together, yet somehow remained strangers to parts of each other.

Perhaps we were both still wearing masks.

One evening, after an argument, she quietly suggested that I consider therapy.

It wasn't therapy that offended me.

It was what her suggestion reflected back at me.

Had I become so weak that the person I loved could see it before I could?

Was I really that broken?

I looked toward the future.

I still couldn't see one.

I looked toward the past.

It still hurt.

I tried remaining in the present.

Even the air around me felt too heavy to breathe.

Then, one ordinary morning, I woke up, searched for therapists near me, and booked an appointment with the first clinic that appeared.

There was nothing particularly dramatic about that morning.

Looking back, I think the smallest decisions often become the ones that quietly change our lives.

Therapy didn't heal me.

It gave me language.

It gave me questions.

It gave me mirrors I had spent years avoiding.

Slowly, I began noticing my wounds instead of running from them.

The guilt I carried for Prithvi.

The grief I carried for Flash.

The pride I disguised as certainty.

The fear I had mistaken for love.

For the first time, I stopped asking who had hurt me.

I began asking how I had continued hurting myself.

That question changed everything.

Little by little, I learnt to love the person I had spent years abandoning.

One day, I imagined every mask I had ever worn.

I took them off.

Burnt them.

Buried them somewhere beyond memory.

Then I went to the woman I believed I loved.

And I let her go.

Not because she was a bad person.

Not because I had stopped caring.

But because neither of us deserved to spend another day loving a version of the other that didn't truly exist.

For the first time in years, I wasn't afraid of my own room.

I wasn't afraid of the silence either.

I began painting again.

Listening to music.

Making tea.

Watching the rain.”

He smiled and lifted his cup.

The tea had grown colder.

He didn't mind.

He took another sip.

“I didn't make many new friends after that.

Instead, I learnt to cherish a few.

I allowed my family to love me instead of pushing them away.

I started taking care of myself.

Not because I wanted to become someone else.

Because I had finally become willing to be myself.

I longed for love.

But I no longer needed it to rescue me.

I had learnt the difference between being alone and being lonely.

I was often alone.

I was never lonely again.”

ACT VI- THE RAIN STOPS

"People often ask whether grief ever leaves.

I don't think it does.

I think grief simply changes the room it lives in.

In the beginning it occupies the entire house. Every thought, every meal, every song, every morning belongs to it. Then, slowly, almost without noticing, life begins building new rooms around it. One day you laugh without feeling guilty. Another day you spend an entire afternoon without thinking about the people you've lost. At first that frightens you. It feels like forgetting.

But forgetting isn't what happened.

Life simply became a little bigger.

Prithvi still visits me.

Not in dreams.

But in every room full of strangers where I find myself speaking to someone I would once have been too shy to approach.

Flash still visits me.

Every time I find myself walking a little too fast because I'm excited about something waiting ahead.

They never really left.

They simply stopped making new memories with me.

The old ones are still here.

Some have faded around the edges.

Some remain painfully sharp.

Memory is strange like that.

It preserves what the heart refuses to let go.

There are still apologies I never got to make.

Conversations that ended too early.

Goodbyes that never happened.

For years I believed healing meant finding answers to those unfinished moments.

Now I think healing is learning to live despite never receiving them.

Perhaps closure is a story we invent because uncertainty makes us uncomfortable.

Life, however, owes us very little closure.

It simply asks whether we are willing to continue anyway.

And Im glad I chose to Live, Live, Love.”

He looked up from the notebook.

The rain had almost stopped.

Tiny droplets still clung to the mango leaves like thoughts that had not yet decided whether to stay or fall.

He smiled.

The tree had witnessed almost every version of him.

The ambitious one.

The grieving one.

The angry one.

The lonely one.

The man hiding behind masks.

The man learning to remove them.

He wondered how many evenings he had spent staring at this tree.

Listening to music.

Photographing the same branches.

Painting the same leaves.

Making the same cup of tea.

Waiting for answers that were never hidden in the tree to begin with.

Perhaps the tree had never been trying to answer him.

Perhaps it had simply been teaching him how to remain.

He laughed softly.

It wasn't the rain that made the tree strong.

It was every season that came after it.

He closed his eyes for a moment.

The music drifted into the balcony behind him.

The smell of rain still lingered in the air.

Somewhere in the distance a bird announced that evening was finally giving way to night.

He realised something.

His life had never really been divided into chapters.

It had been divided into people.

There was the life before Prithvi.

The life with Prithvi.

The life after Prithvi.

The life before Flash.

The life with Flash.

The life after Flash.

Then there were people who arrived quietly and never realised they were beginning an entirely new chapter simply by saying hello.

Maybe that's all any of us ever become.

Entire chapters in someone else's story.

His phone vibrated.

"I'm finally done with work. I'll be home soon. Glad the rain stopped too. But I'm sooo hungry. Craving sushi. Let's go out?"

He smiled before replying.

"Come home first.

Sushi night."

He placed the phone back on the table.

For years he had searched for extraordinary moments, believing they were the ones that gave life meaning.

Now he knew better.

Meaning had always been hiding inside ordinary evenings.

Inside someone asking whether he had eaten.

Inside making tea for two instead of one.

Inside photographs nobody else would understand.

Inside music playing in another room.

Inside a tree that had quietly stood outside his balcony for years without asking for anything in return.

Then he thought of her.

"Then, one ordinary day, I saw someone walk past me.

She wasn't surrounded by light.

The world didn't suddenly become magical.

It was much quieter than that.

She simply felt like a gentle breeze of colours entering a room that had been closed for far too long.

We crossed paths a few more times.

Then one day she smiled and asked,

"Have we met somewhere before?"

I suppose that's how some beautiful things begin.

Together we travelled, got lost in unfamiliar cities, argued over directions, laughed through water fights, wandered museums, attended concerts, failed spectacularly at cooking classes, and spent countless evenings talking about philosophy until the tea had gone cold.

We shared our childhoods.

Our fears.

Our grief.

The people we had lost.

The people we were afraid of losing.

Most importantly, we shared our silences.

She never asked me to become someone else.

She simply made it feel safe to become myself.

And, more importantly, we've been gentle with one another's scars.

She became the love I never knew I deserved.

Or perhaps the love I finally knew how to receive.

I'm glad I chose to live, live, love.

The reason I'm writing all of this today is because tomorrow we're about to begin another chapter.

She doesn't know it yet.

Tomorrow we're bringing home a German Shepherd.

Perhaps that's what hope looks like.

Not grand declarations.

Not perfect endings.

Just choosing, once again, to make room for another heartbeat inside your home.”

He closed the notebook.

Outside, the mango tree stood quietly beneath the clearing sky.

The rain had shaken it.

The wind had bent it.

Entire seasons had stripped it bare.

Yet every year it had trusted the earth enough to bloom again.

He smiled.

Maybe healing wasn't becoming untouched by the storm.

Maybe healing was learning that broken branches could still grow leaves.

His phone buzzed once more.

"Too tired to go out. Can we order in instead?"

He laughed.

"Deal.

Sushi date.

Pyjamas mandatory.

Get home already."

He picked up his empty cup, switched off the balcony light, and stepped inside.

Before closing the balcony door, he looked back at the tree one last time.

It wasn't waving goodbye.

It was simply standing there.

Like it always had.

Like some friendships do.

The music grew louder as he walked toward the kitchen.

The song was Atlantis by Seafret.

Tomorrow there would be a puppy.

Tonight there would be sushi.

He wasn't waiting for life to begin.

He was already living it.