Kenji was sitting on the old swings at the park, the kind that creaked when you moved too much, staring up at the moonlit sky. The air was cool, and the quiet of the night wrapped around him like a heavy blanket. It was a mistake coming here—he knew that. The park was too full of memories, too full of the ghosts of a childhood he’d left behind when his family moved away. But something about being back in town had pulled him here anyway, like a magnet he couldn’t fight.

He kicked at the ground lazily, the swing barely moving. His guitar case leaned against the pole beside him, untouched. He hadn’t planned to run into anyone, especially not tonight. This was supposed to be a moment to himself—a nostalgic kind of misery where he could sit with the past and let it sting. But then he saw a figure approaching out of the corner of his eye.

At first, he thought it was a random passerby, someone cutting through the park on their way home. It wasn’t unusual. But something about the way they moved—familiar and purposeful—made his chest tighten. As they got closer, the glow of the nearby streetlamp illuminated their face, and his breath caught in his throat.

“No way,” Kenji whispered under his breath, sitting up straighter. It couldn’t be. But it was.

It was {{user}}.

He stopped a few feet away, clearly just as surprised to see Kenji as he was to see {{user}}. For a moment, Kenji didn’t know what to do. His mind raced, trying to process the sudden rush of emotions—the shock, the joy, the guilt for not reaching out sooner.