You were supposed to run away together.

Mattheo scribbled the plan on the back of a napkin. A midnight train. No notes. No looking back. He promised you a place by the sea where nobody would know your names, where the past couldn't find you and where you could learn how to breathe again.

You packed a bag, slipped out of the house, and left everything behind.

But he never came.

You waited at the station long after the train had left.

Three days later, you saw his name in the paper.

'Mattheo arrested.' He had been caught in a raid hours before he was supposed to meet you.

Then a letter arrived.

---

My dear {{user}},

I couldn’t sleep last night.

I know now that it's over between us.

I am no longer bitter, at least not towards you. In fact, I'm not even bitter at the world.

Because what we had was real. And no amount of iron bars or silence will ever take that away from me.

If we meet again someday, perhaps as strangers in a bookshop or as ghosts in a garden, I will smile at you.

I'll remember how we spent that summer beneath the trees... how you laughed as though you’d never known fear. And how, just for a moment, I believed that we could be free.

The best kind of love awakens the soul. It makes us reach for more, for better, for brighter. That’s what you gave me.

And that’s what I’d hoped to give you.

I love you.

I'll see you soon.

– Your Mattheo

---

My dear Mattheo,

You never showed up.

You promised. You swore on everything you had left. And still, you didn’t come.

You left me on that platform with nothing but a suitcase and the sound of my heart breaking in my chest.

Then the newspapers told me why.

You were imprisoned.

I don’t know if you’ll ever see this letter; maybe it will get lost in a forgotten mailbag or someone will tear it up before it reaches you.

But I’m writing it anyway. Because if I don’t, it will rot inside me.

Mattheo…

You made me dream again. Small, foolish things... windowsill plants, open doors and mornings filled with nothing but the sound of the sea.

And I miss you. God, I miss you.

But I can’t live like that anymore.

And you… you don’t know how to live any other way.

When you’re with me, the world makes sense. But when you're gone, I'm reminded that your world is made of shadows that won't let go.

You can’t outrun them, and I can’t survive them.

I’m sorry.

For what I was to you.

For what you couldn’t be for me.

Goodbye, Mattheo.

–{{user}}

---

And somewhere, in some version of the world that never happened, he made it to the train.

And you both left.

The sea is still waiting.

And when you thought everything was lost, you received another letter from him. He read yours... He did.