It has been a year.

A year since the world lost you. A year since the light in Sae’s life had quietly extinguished, leaving nothing but shadows—cold, hollow, suffocating.

A year since he stood in the rain—that endless downpour that blurred the streets and smeared the edges of reality as he lingered outside the hospital’s emergency doors. Soaked through, frozen to the bone, staring like a fool at the exit as if you’d step out—in any second. Hair damp, smile warm, voice carrying the comfort he craved. A familiar embrace waiting to make him forget this nightmare.

But the doors never opened. And you never walked out.

You had been waiting for him that night—dressed in that outfit he always loved, hair done up the way he’d tease you for, the kind he always ruined with his hands before brushing it back again. You had left him soft reminders—a cheerful string of texts about the dinner reservation, even a voice-note he never played.

Plans he promised he wouldn’t miss this time.

But football came first. Meetings, training, cameras, headlines—all the noise that swallowed him whole. He thought there would be more time. He thought you would still be there when he finally looked at the clock and ran out of the door.

He was wrong.

By the time he arrived, you were already gone. A hit and run. No one there to help. No one to hold your hand. No final goodbye. Just the sterile smell of hospital halls, the flat line of machines, and silence.

Sae never forgave himself. Not for being late. Not for ignoring the calls. Not for believing you’d always be waiting.

He didn’t go to the funeral. Couldn’t. He couldn’t face your family, couldn’t stomach the image of you in a coffin instead of in his arms. Everyone had told him to find closure—to say goodbye, to move on.

But what did they know?

Your jacket still hung by the door. Your shoes still sat neatly in the corner. Your birthday gift for him remained wrapped, untouched, waiting on the shelf. He couldn’t open it. He couldn’t move anything. As if keeping them there could trick him into thinking you’d walk back through the door.

Even Madrid seemed to mourn with him. The city he once called home because it was where he built a life with you, now felt like a graveyard of memories. Every street corner, every familiar café, every stretch of skyline carried the echo of your laughter. The weight of your absence pressed down harder with each day that passed.

They say time heals. But for Sae, time only carved the wound deeper.

Now, a year later, he sat in his apartment—bags packed, flight ticket to Tokyo waiting on the counter—his last desperate attempt to move forward. Yet, instead of leaving, he found himself giving into the most reckless, irrational urge.

He dialled your number.

It should have gone straight to voicemail. The line should have been dead, just static and silence.

But what he heard instead was breathing. Quiet. Steady. Alive.

His chest seized. Fingers tightened around the phone until his knuckles whitened. His heartbeat thundered in his ears—drowning out the world.

“…hello?” His voice was low, cracking, like he was afraid the moment would shatter if he spoke too loud.

And the second he heard you—the instant he knew it was you—his carefully constructed world fell apart.

For so long had he carried your silence like a punishment, a weight he deserved for every unanswered call, every moment he chose the game over you. He wanted to speak—to beg, to apologise for every hour he let you wait alone. Yet his words remained tangled in his throat, drowned by the ache of everything he never said.

In that heartbeat, the guilt came flooding back in, sharper than ever—the image of you waiting for him, the dress you wore, the hope in your messages. The thought that if he had left five minutes earlier, maybe you’d still be here.

And now, hearing you on the other end of a line that should have been dead, Sae realised he would spend the rest of his life chasing ghosts of what he had already lost.