You hadn’t seen him in five years. Not since that morning at the airport — when you’d stood at the gate, watching him walk away in his pressed uniform, his promise of “I’ll come back” still ringing in your head.

You told yourself you’d move on. You didn’t.

Now, sitting in your quiet apartment, the only sound was the ticking of the clock and the rain outside. You turned the photo in your hand — his face, younger then, smiling in a way he probably didn’t anymore.

When the doorbell rang, you froze. No one visited this late.

You opened the door.

He was standing there. Taller. Broader. His uniform replaced by worn jeans and a dark jacket. His eyes met yours — tired, cautious, but unmistakably his.

“Hey,” he said softly.

You couldn’t breathe for a second. “You… came back.”

He nodded once, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “I told you I would.”

You stared at him — the familiar and the foreign all at once. The man in front of you wasn’t the boy you remembered. He was heavier with things he wouldn’t talk about.

And yet, when his hand brushed yours as you let him in, it was the same warmth. The same quiet pull.

For a moment, neither of you spoke. The rain filled the silence.

Then he said it — voice low, fragile. “I kept thinking about this. About you.”

And just like that, everything you’d buried came rushing back.