You had met once as children at this very New Year's festival. Two strangers standing shoulder to shoulder, fireworks reflected in wide eyes. After that night, you became inseparable, growing up side by side through school years. However, university pulled you in different directions, and life happened the way it always does. Slowly at first, then all at once, until seven years passed without a single message exchanged.

Now, you stood at the riverbank again, watching the sky like you always had, seven years later back in your home town. When Scaramouche arrived, he noticed you instantly, as if no time had passed at all. All he could sense was nostalgia. There was a strange ache in realising that out of everyone in the crowd, he would always recognise you.

“Do you think they’re loud enough to wake the stars?”

The words left him before he could think the moment he quietly stepped beside you, looking towards the fireworks, a ghost of the boy he used to be. Those words, carrying a sense of innocence, were the exact first he'd spoken to you the first time you met, shoulder to shoulder, in this same spot.