A Reply Left Behind

Oryn knew he should leave it alone.

He told himself this over and over as he sat at his table, staring at the open book in front of him, at the note pressed between its pages. The café buzzed around him with soft conversation, the clink of ceramic cups, the low hum of the rain outside. But he heard none of it.

His world had narrowed down to five simple words.

"Do we ever know?"

The way she had written them was careful, deliberate, as if she had taken the time to weigh them before letting them spill onto the page. Yet there was something else too something uncertain, something searching.

He traced the words with his thumb.

A response. Someone had responded.

He should have left the note in that book forever, locked away in a place where no one would ever reach for it. But now, it had been found. Not just found understood.

Lana.

He hadn't expected it to be her. There was something about the way she had held the note earlier, turning it over in her hands, as if she could feel its weight.

Had she been looking for an answer? Or had she simply written on impulse, leaving behind a thought she wouldn't think twice about after?

He told himself it didn't matter.

But he reached for his pen anyway.

He hesitated before pressing the ink to the page, the tip lingering just beneath her words.

Then, in small, steady strokes, he wrote:

"Only if we ask."

He let the ink settle before leaning back in his seat. He wasn't sure why he had done it. Maybe because there was something strangely easy about writing to someone who didn't even know she was speaking to him.

Maybe because, deep down, he wanted to see if she would write again.

Closing the book, he pressed the note gently between the pages and stood. He hesitated only a second before returning it to the shelf, sliding it into place like a secret waiting to be uncovered.

And then, without looking back, he walked out into the rain.

—

Three days passed before Lana returned to the café.

She hadn't meant to come back so soon. Or at least, that was what she told herself.

But something had been pulling at the edges of her thoughts—an unfinished moment, an unread sentence.

And so, despite the rain, despite her own uncertainty, she found herself walking through the doors of Café Amour once again.

She ordered her usual without thinking, her hands cold from the lingering chill outside. But even as the scent of coffee filled the air, she wasn't truly paying attention.

Her gaze drifted to the bookshelf near the window.

The book was still there.

The moment she saw it, her heart gave the smallest, quietest lurch. She told herself she was being foolish, that nothing had changed, that she was only here out of curiosity.

And yet, when she pulled the book from the shelf and flipped through the pages, she felt her breath catch.

There, just beneath her own handwriting, was something new.

"Only if we ask."

She stared at the words, as if expecting them to vanish. As if they were something fragile, something not quite real.

Someone had answered her.

Her fingers hovered over the ink, her pulse a quiet, steady beat beneath her skin. It was different from before. The first note had been a whisper into the void, a thought left behind with no expectation of return.

But this?

This was a conversation.

Her lips parted slightly, as if she could taste the words in the air. She hadn't realized how much she had wanted an answer until she was staring at it.

A slow, almost reluctant smile ghosted across her lips.

She pulled out a pen.

And beneath his words, in careful, deliberate strokes, she wrote:

"Then let me ask."

Her fingers hesitated just slightly before closing the book and sliding it back into place.

A secret left waiting.

A door, quietly opening.

And somewhere, in the rainy streets of Aurivelle, a story was beginning to unfold.