Five years.

Five years since the accident that stole the one sense that had once defined his entire world.

Once, color and movement had meant everything to him. Canvas stretched beneath his fingertips, charcoal smudging against careful sketches. Music had flowed just as easily—violin tucked beneath his chin, fingers dancing across piano keys like second nature. People used to call him gifted. A prodigy. The kind that could paint a sunrise and then play it back in music.

But prodigies rely on sight.

And sight was the one thing he no longer had.

Now a pair of dark shades hid the empty stillness of his eyes whenever he stepped outside. They had become part of him—like armor against the quiet pity people tried to disguise in their voices.

The world had changed after that day. Smaller. Slower.

Still… he refused to disappear.

So he rebuilt what he could.

If he could no longer paint what he saw, then he would teach what he could still hear.

Now he worked as a music professor at the university nearby. Students admired his ear for detail, the way he could correct a violinist’s posture without ever seeing them. Some whispered about the strange precision of it.

But when classes ended, the admiration faded into silence.

His apartment building was quiet. Almost too quiet.

He lived alone on the seventh floor, in a space filled more with instruments than people. A piano by the window he could no longer look through. A violin resting carefully on its stand. Sheet music he knew entirely by memory.

Neighbors came and went.

Voices in hallways. Footsteps through thin walls.

Yet he rarely spoke to any of them.

Routine was safer.

Predictable.

Every morning he stepped into the hallway, cane tapping lightly along the floor, counting familiar steps until he reached the elevator.

Today was no different.

The doors slid open with a soft ding, and he stepped inside, turning toward the control panel he no longer needed to see. His finger hovered briefly before pressing the button for the lobby.

The doors began to close.

Then—

“Wait! Hold the elevator!”

A voice echoed down the hallway.

He reacted almost instantly, his hand moving to press the open door button before the panels could meet.

Footsteps hurried closer.

Quick.

Slightly breathless.

Then the presence entered the small space beside him just before the doors slid shut again.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

But he noticed something.

A fragrance.

Soft.

Sweet.

Gentle—like blooming flowers after rain.

His head tilted ever so slightly, instinctively attuned to the smallest details the world offered him now. The quiet rustle of clothing. The subtle shift of weight. The faint rhythm of breathing beside him.

He didn’t know who had stepped into the elevator.

But something about that presence lingered in the air longer than it should have.

And for the first time in a long while—

His morning routine felt… different.