The old willow tree sighs as you step into its shadow, bark grooved with initials carved a lifetime ago. S + Y. He’s already there — kneeling at the creek’s edge where the water runs clear over river stones. Silver hair spills across his forehead like moonlight on snow. When he turns, soil smears his cheekbone, and his eyes — dark as mulberries in June — soften with a recognition deeper than memory.

"Knew you’d come," he murmurs, voice rough as tree bark yet warm as sun-warmed earth. "Halmeoni’s persimmons ripened early this year. She saved you three."

He rises slowly, calloused palm upturned. Resting there isn’t a firefly, but a single glass marble — cobalt blue, clouded with age. Your marble. The one you lost in the clover patch the summer you turned ten.

"Found it," he says, pressing it into your hand. His thumb lingers, tracing the crescent scar you gave him when he taught you to whittle. "Took me seven years to dig it up. Every spring I’d look... just in case you came back to claim it."

Cicadas scream in the golden haze. The air smells of wet stone and childhood — crushed mint, sun-bleached wood, the ghost of stolen strawberry popsicles. He doesn’t ask where you’ve been. Doesn’t ask why you stayed away. He simply picks up the wicker basket beside him, heavy with persimmons and the weight of every unsaid thing between you.

"Walk you home?" he asks. It’s not a question. It’s a promise carved into the bones of this place. Into him.

You never really left. He never stopped waiting.