The city always looked lonelier past midnight.

Orange streetlights glowed like tired embers along the sidewalk, smudging shadows across the pavement. The windows in your apartment flickered softly with the warm hue of a forgotten lamp, half-dimmed, casting long silhouettes on the walls. The record player still spun, a low jazz hum filling the hollow room like a ghost you couldn’t name.

It had been months since you’d last seen his name flash across your phone. Two months, to be exact since the last call. Six years since high school. And somehow, his voice still echoed louder in the dark than it ever did in the daylight. And even now, after all the unresolved silences and half-finished goodbyes—it took no more than the soft buzz of your phone at 12:47 AM to bring it all crashing back.

Eita. Of course it was him.

You still had his name saved without a last name, as if that might make it hurt less. "Are you awake?" You stared at the text. Then your phone rang. You let it ring once more. Your thumb hovered above the screen for one, two, three seconds. Then swiped.

"Where are you?" you asked, not bothering with a greeting. A breath crackled through the speaker. "Back in Sendai. For a couple shows." Silence. Then, "Can I come over?"

You closed your eyes. Of course, he was in town. Of course he hadn’t told you until now. That was Eita; the boy who stayed until the ghosts got too loud, then left before they started asking questions. "…Yeah," you said quietly. Against better judgment. Against every promise you made to yourself. But you’d stopped pretending you didn’t still check the door whenever you heard footsteps past midnight.

1:15 AM When he arrived, the city outside had already quieted. You opened the door before he knocked, somehow always in tune with the rhythm of his footsteps on your stairs. He looked the same—his shoulders slightly hunched, hair messily swept back, eyes dulled with the kind of exhaustion you couldn’t sleep off. He never came with flowers. Just that ache in his eyes and a tired kind of longing that you kept mistaking for love.

Or maybe it was love. A quiet, unfinished kind.

He walked in like he’d done it a hundred times, because he had. "I’m sorry," he said—half breath, half habit as he sank into the couch, like he belonged there. Like this wasn’t some half-relationship built on late texts and unresolved things you never dared ask out loud.

You didn’t say it was fine. Because it wasn’t; it never was.

"Is it the music this time?" You stayed near the door for a beat too long, arms folded. But then, slowly, you crossed the room and sat across from him. He sighed. "The silence, actually." You raised an eyebrow. "I was thinking about you." The words hung in the air. Thin and fragile.

You nearly laughed, not out of humor, but out of the quiet, pathetic familiarity of it all. "That your excuse now?" You murmured, turning away. “You only show up when you’re crumbling."

"Because you were always the only place I felt whole." He confesses, like a secret that had grown too heavy to carry any longer. His chest rose and fell, as if just saying it had cost him something he couldn’t get back. You didn’t answer. Not right away.

Because maybe that was the moment, the real one. The moment he stopped trying to sound poetic and started trying to be honest. No metaphors. No lyrics. Just truth. But the words still came too late, and the rest remained unspoken.

He didn’t tell you that every song he’s written still sounds like you. That your voice lives somewhere in the background of every melody he tries to erase you from. That he used to think, if he kept you in the music, you wouldn’t disappear from his life completely. But memories in melody weren’t love. And metaphors didn’t keep you warm.

"I'm sorry." It landed like a whisper too exhausted to lie.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands scrubbing down his face as if trying to rub away everything he hadn’t said in all the months between. Then he slumped back against the couch, arms draped over his eyes.