The city was quieter after three a.m.
The rain had finally stopped, leaving the streets slick and shining like dark mirrors.
The air smelled of wet asphalt and something colder, something that hinted at the first signs of winter creeping in.
Lily should have gone straight home after her shift.
She was exhausted, beyond exhausted but sleep was a battle she rarely won anymore. The idea of going back to the empty, too-quiet room made her skin itch.
So, when she saw the old bookstore, tucked between a closed café and a boarded-up antique shop, she turned without thinking.
The bell over the door jingled softly as she pushed it open.
It smelled like old paper and something warm and rich, filled with memory.
The bookstore was small and cluttered, the kind of place that felt suspended in time.
No fluorescent lights here. Only soft, golden lamps tucked between towering shelves that reached almost to the cracked ceiling.
Lily slipped inside like a ghost, letting the door close behind her.
The few people who still roamed the night passed by outside without noticing the little shop, without noticing her.
It was a forgotten place.
A hiding place.
She wandered between the shelves, trailing her fingers along the spines of books she couldn't afford but loved all the same.
There was something comforting about it, about the silence, the smell, the weight of a thousand stories pressing in around her.
She let herself get lost in it. Let herself breathe for the first time all day.
Somewhere deep in the store, around a corner lined with battered poetry collections, she heard the faintest sound.
Pages turning, footsteps so soft and sure.
She froze, heart kicking up sharply. She wasn't alone.
For a second, panic flared. Old instincts screamed at her to turn around, to leave, to disappear back into the night.
But then she heard the sound of a book closing gently. And footsteps retreating toward the front door.
When she peered down the narrow aisle, she caught only a glimpse, a shadow moving past the counter, the flash of a dark coat, a tall frame.
The bell jingled softly. Whoever it was had gone.
The air felt charged, like the seconds after a lightning strike.
Like something had just shifted, but she wasn't quick enough to catch it.
Lily hesitated, her hand hovering near the shelf.
Something pulled her forward. Drawn by a current she couldn't fight, she stepped into the narrow space.
Her eyes scanned the shelves without thinking, tracing the spot where the figure had just been.
There, a book pulled halfway out. She reached for it.
The leather binding was worn soft by years of handling.
She pulled it free, and the strangest thing happened. The book was warm. Not just faintly, not like the residual heat of a room, but properly warm, like it had been cradled, held close against someone's chest only moments ago.
Her stomach twisted sharply, she stared down at the cover.
It was a collection of poems.
Love, longing and loss.
Without fully understanding why, she pressed her palm against the worn leather, feeling the warmth seep into her skin.
Her heart drummed a frantic, confused rhythm.
She looked toward the door, but whoever had been there was long gone.
And yet she knew.
She knew the same way you know when someone's watching you in a crowded room.
The same way you know the sky's about to break open with rain.
It was him.
Adrian.
There was no logical reason for it.
No proof. Only the way the air still felt heavier where he had been.
Only the memory of their silent encounter in the hospital days before, still burning under her skin.
He had been here.
Reading poetry in the dead of night.
Why?
Why here?
Why now?
Why poetry?
She flipped open the book with trembling fingers.
An old, cracked spine. Soft, thin pages.
A line caught her eye, one circled faintly in pencil, so light she might have missed it if she hadn't been looking for something, anything:
"I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."
Lily's breath hitched in her throat. A soft, brutal ache bloomed low in her chest.
She snapped the book shut, hugging it to herself as if it could shield her from whatever was happening. From whatever was coming.
Somewhere behind the counter, the old man who owned the shop watched her silently, his eyes kind but knowing, as if he recognized the look of someone standing on the edge of something they couldn't name yet.
Without thinking, Lily took the book to the counter.
She didn't have the money for it, she barely had enough for dinner tomorrow but she knew she couldn't leave it behind.
It wasn't just a book anymore.
It was a thread.
A trail.
A beginning.
The man smiled as she fished out crumpled bills and coins from her coat pocket.
He said nothing. He just bagged the book carefully in brown paper and handed it to her with a small nod.
As if to say, I understand.
As if to say, Good luck.
Lily stepped back into the night, the brown paper package clutched tight against her chest.
The street was empty. The city buzzed around her, vast and uncaring.
But somewhere in the darkness, she felt it again, the weight of a gaze she couldn't see but could feel.
Watching and waiting.
Not hunting her.
Not threatening.
Something else.
Something infinitely more dangerous.
An invisible thread pulling tighter.
She thought of the poem, the line circled like a secret:
"I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."
She shivered, not from the cold, but from the certainty crawling up her spine.
She hadn't seen the last of him.