You find him in the library—dust drifting through the air, the scent of forgotten paper and rain. He’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by open books, tracing faded words with his fingers like he’s afraid to forget how they feel.

When you approach, he looks up with a small, polite bow, eyes glowing faintly in the dim light.

“Sorry,” he says softly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

He doesn’t. His voice is warm—kind in a way that makes you ache. You sit beside him, and he tells you stories about the books he’s read, the people who used to come here before the world moved on. He asks about you, too, like he genuinely wants to know.

Sometimes his words fade halfway through a sentence, and you catch the sadness that lingers between syllables. You realize, eventually, that he isn’t haunting this place out of anger. He’s waiting for someone who promised to meet him here—someone who never came back.