It’s late afternoon. The windows are open. There’s dust in the air. Cardboard boxes everywhere. A tangle of power cords and old posters and laundry neither of you wants to fold.

Wilbur just moved in.

The two-bedroom flat isn’t fancy, but it has creaky floors, tall windows, and a kitchen counter wide enough to lean on at 2am with tea. It feels like yours already. Like something soft is beginning.

You’re sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by boxes he never unpacked from his old place. He’s fiddling with a speaker across the room, trying to untangle a mess of aux cables.

You open a box labeled “MISC” in scribbled marker. Inside:

A pair of cracked sunglasses

Some old lyric notebooks

A tangle of rubber bands

One—one lone plastic case, beat up and unlabeled

Except… it is labeled.

On the back. In your handwriting.

Small and deliberate:

"My Wilbur Days."

Your heart stutters.

You shouldn’t say anything. You should just put it away.

But you don’t.

Instead, you quietly plug in the tiny camcorder you used to carry around at age nine. Shockingly, it powers on. A tiny whirring noise. The screen flickers.

You hit play.

And there he is.

Wilbur, age ten. Hair longer, wild. Glasses a little crooked. Sitting on his bedroom floor, legs crossed, mumbling something into a toy microphone while Minecraft blares from a nearby screen. He looks ridiculous.

And so deeply himself.

He suddenly leaps up and yells something off-screen. From the speaker, your younger voice giggles—high, warm, clear. You call his name. He spins, grinning at the camera.

“Stop filming me!” “No!!” “You’re such a menace.” Your laughter keeps going.

He pauses the speaker setup and turns around.

“Hey, what’s—?”

And then he sees the screen.

You expect him to laugh.

But he doesn’t.

He walks over slowly, mouth slightly open, eyes wide.

“Where did you get this?”

You shrug, fiddling with a rubber band in your lap.

He crouches beside you.

The video keeps playing.

More Minecraft. More singing. A truly terrible fake mustache made out of duct tape. And then a shot of you both: the camera pointed at a mirror, the two of you squished together in frame, making faces. He kisses your cheek and says,

“I’m gonna marry you when we’re twenty. If you don’t get famous first.”