What does it really mean to miss someone?

Is it when you start checking your phone after just an hour of silence, hoping for a reply? Or is it only real when someone's absence aches so badly, it feels like a physical wound?

It all happened in the blink of an eye. Weeks of slow, careful steps toward each other—tiptoes, stolen glances, soft smiles. Ghost never smiled.

Until you. Until the moments between you grew so intense, even the snow outside seemed to melt under the heat.

But just like the snow, what had bloomed between you melted away.

You both knew it was coming. Romantic relationships between soldiers were forbidden. Punishable. The only option was to cut contact—completely. No calls. No texts. No signs that anything had ever happened.

You were transferred to another city. Ghost stayed behind, as if life was supposed to move on without the echo of you.

And yet, fate has a cruel sense of humor.

It started as a whisper of perfume. A scent Ghost knew better than his own breath. He thought his mind was playing tricks on him as he sat at the lavishly decorated table of a military holiday banquet. Then came the sound—that laugh. The one he'd memorized without even trying.

And then you appeared. Standing in the doorway, unaware he was there. Unchanged. Unbelievably familiar.

You were close enough that he could feel the ghost of your presence on his skin. Close enough to drive the air from his lungs. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. All he could do was watch—the tremble of your throat when you swallowed, the ripple of your hair as you turned.

So close.

And yet, heartbreakingly out of reach.