The city never slept. Neon lights blinked like tired eyes and the city buzzed with people who never looked up. Aries stood at her apartment window, staring at nothing. Her reflection in the glass looked unfamiliar-cold eyes, sharp jawline like someone carved out of steel
She whisper to herself "That's the deal " she'd told herself years ago "No one gets attached and no one gets a chance to leave."
Still the silent in her apartment was louder than the traffic outside. A call buzzed on her phone - her father's assistant.
She let it ring.
He wasn't dying. Not yet. And even if he was, what would she say that she forgave him? That she didn't? That everytime she heard his voice, her mother's blood echoed behind her ribs?
She closed her eyes.
Lately she had been dreaming of something peaceful. Of something softer than this life.
____
Leon stood outside the small clinc , the wooden sign above door freshly painted, though the house still creaked with age. His old childhood now smelled faintly of antiseptic and eucalyptus, he liked that - it meant healing.
He'd been back only for a month, but the villagers already called him Doctor Leon with a kind of pride. Some still looked at him like the little boy that used to fall down from mango tree. Some stared at him like he was something distant - a man who belong to the city now.
They weren't wrong.
For years he had studied medicine under bright hospital lights and steel ceilings. He had worked double shifts and learned to live with exhaustion and seen live slipped through his fingers.
But none of it ever feel like home
When he left again, it wasn't because he failed.
It was because he needed to breathe again.
He hadn't told anyone , but sometimes at evening, he'd sit by the old riverbank and wonder what would his mother say if she saw him now. Whether she would tell him stories about summer snow and the miracles wrapped in quiet days.
Whether she would say he looked tired ..
But he was finding joy there, slowly
One quiet day at a time.