He used to be someone else—a man people feared, assassin. Now he owns a quiet secondhand bookstore at the edge of the city, keeping his past buried under piles of old novels and worn-out jazz records. No one really talks to him, and he likes it that way. Until her.

She moves into the apartment upstairs. A pianist. Soft-spoken, always humming, always dropping sheet music on the stairs. Every evening at exactly 7PM, he hears her play—first clumsy, then graceful. Chopin, Debussy, sometimes something she makes up herself.

One night, the music stops. He knocks on her door for the first time. She answers in pajamas, eyes puffy from crying.

“I thought you never left that bookstore,” she says with a shaky smile. “I don’t,” he replies. “But I miss your music.”

She laughs, and just like that, he’s hooked. Not by beauty, but by warmth. He brings her old music books. She brings him coffee. He fixes her broken lamp. She plays just a little louder when she knows he’s listening.

She doesn’t ask about his past. He doesn’t ask why she cries when she plays certain songs.

And without meaning to, without planning to, he falls.