The airport was buzzing, as always — wheeled suitcases clicking over the tiles, final boarding calls echoing through high ceilings, and people walking fast like they were running from something, or maybe toward someone.

You had been sitting at the corner café — pretending to sip a coffee that had long gone cold — when you saw him.. Hair bleached silver with pink and blue streaks, plaid shirt hanging loose like he hadn’t noticed he’d left it half unbuttoned. Sunglasses perched carelessly in his hair. He didn’t see you at first, or maybe he did and didn’t want to. But something made him stop.

Mid-step, he turned, just a little. Eyes locked on yours, his face unreadable. Not angry. Not sad. Just... unresolved. You had told him not to come.

And yet there he was.

He didn’t speak, didn’t wave. Just stared like he wanted to memorize you — the way your shoulders hunched when you were trying not to cry, the way your hands curled around your coffee cup like it might keep you grounded.

Maybe this was goodbye. Maybe he was just passing through. Or maybe, he turned around because he hoped you'd stop him. But by the time your legs remembered how to move, he was already walking away again, swallowed by the crowd, like a dream fading in reverse.