I didn't plan to come here. It just… happened. The city was unfamiliar, too clean, too wide, and yet the narrow alley that curved gently off the main road somehow pulled me in like a half-forgotten melody. The sky was still grey from the earlier rain, and my shoes clicked against the wet pavement as I wandered past shuttered bookstores, the occasional glowing cafe, and, eventually, the soft golden light spilling from the small art gallery nestled between two crumbling buildings.
I hesitated. The warm hue of the gallery, the hush of it, the vague scent of paint and polished wood—all of it felt too much like memory. I wasn't here to feel things, not today. But something tugged at me, something stubborn and quiet, like a thread I hadn't realized I'd never cut. So I stepped inside.
The silence wrapped around me immediately, thick and soft like a familiar blanket. Only a handful of people stood scattered across the space, some murmuring softly, others simply looking, eyes lost in canvases. I moved slowly, unsure of what I was doing, unsure of what I was looking for. Each painting on the wall, each subtle stroke of color and line, only reminded me of the places I had once wanted to visit, of dreams I had stopped tending. And that, somehow, felt worse than longing.
And then I saw him.
Khánh.
He was standing alone near the far wall, hands in his pockets, staring at a painting I couldn't even remember now. My breath caught, but I didn't move. I didn't run. It was as if time had folded inward, like the years between now and the last time I saw him had collapsed without warning. My heart, traitorous thing that it was, forgot how to beat.
He hadn't changed much—taller, perhaps, or maybe I'd just forgotten how he'd towered over me back then. His hair was shorter, neater, but there was still that gentle dishevelment he never quite lost. His shoulders were broader. He looked... older, sharper. And yet still undeniably him.
He turned, slowly. As if he felt me before he saw me.
Our eyes met, and I was back in that small apartment, barefoot in the kitchen, the late afternoon sun slanting through the blinds, and the two of us fighting over something stupid just so we didn't have to talk about what really mattered. I remembered how he'd looked at me back then—tired, but trying. And how I'd walked away anyway.
Now, in this quiet gallery in a city neither of us belonged to, he said my name.
"An."
It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. Just the way he said it—soft, steady, a little unsure—felt like a key turning in a lock I'd nailed shut years ago.
I nodded. "Hi."
There was silence. Not the awkward kind, but the kind filled with words neither of us wanted to be the first to say. He stepped closer, and I didn't step back. My heart ached at the sight of him, familiar and unfamiliar all at once.
"You're here," he said after a moment, like he still couldn't quite believe it.
I forced a smile. "I could say the same about you."
He looked down at his shoes, then back at me. "I thought you were in Seoul."
"I thought you were in Paris."
"I was. Didn't stay."
"Same."
The exchange felt strange, mechanical, like we were checking boxes of polite curiosity, when in truth every part of me wanted to scream why are you here now, after all this time?
Instead, I glanced at the painting beside us. A misty mountain scene, washed in grey and blue. "That looks like Đà Lạt."
His lips curled into a half-smile. "We said we'd go back."
"But we never did."
He didn't answer. The silence between us stretched again. I tried not to look at his hands, at the faint scar near his knuckle that I'd once traced with my thumb. I tried not to remember the way he kissed—desperate, but careful. Always careful.
"Are you still painting?" I asked, if only to fill the air.
"Not much. You still write?"
"Sometimes."
He nodded. That was always enough for him. It used to drive me crazy. Now, I found it oddly comforting.
We talked. About surface things. Films, food, cities. Places we'd been. He mentioned a photography job in Hội An. I mentioned a poetry workshop I'd dropped out of. None of it mattered, not really. But neither of us had the courage to say what we really wanted to ask.
And then, too soon, the conversation dried up.
I said, "I should go."
He didn't argue. Just nodded. "Okay."
I stepped toward the door. My fingers trembled slightly on the handle, and I hated myself for that.
I turned back once, against my better judgment. He was still standing there, staring at me, as if memorizing my face.
"You look well," he said.
I smiled, tight. "You don't have to lie."
"I'm not," he said, and for a second, his voice cracked—just enough for me to hear what he didn't say.
I nodded and walked out into the night.
The rain had started again, soft and steady. It clung to my hair, my coat, the edges of my memory. I didn't look back.
But I knew he did.
I didn't walk far. The night air was thick, not with cold but with memory. The soft drizzle tapped gently against my umbrella, a rhythmic, persistent sound like a knock I didn't want to answer. I wandered without thinking, letting my steps lead me through quiet corners of the city I had yet to learn, past storefronts still lit and others shuttered, past people laughing over dinner behind glass and others lost in their own thoughts, hunched against the wind.
My mind, however, wasn't here.
It had wandered back to that apartment in District 3, with its cracked balcony tiles and the way the sunlight hit the curtains every morning just before seven. The scent of instant coffee, his cologne, the faint clatter of his keyboard in the next room — it all returned in flashes so vivid it made my chest ache.
I remembered how we used to argue. Not always about important things. Sometimes it was about where to eat, or how he left his sketchbooks scattered on the floor. I would scold him, only half-serious, while he stared at me with that quiet, amused look, as if memorizing the way my nose flared when I was irritated.
Back then, I thought we had time.
I sat down on a bench near the lake, one of the few spots in the city where you could almost hear yourself think. The water shimmered under streetlights, soft and silver, like a reflection of things not quite real. I took out my phone, stared at the blank screen, and then slipped it back into my coat. No messages. Of course not.
Seeing Khánh again had shaken something loose in me — something I'd worked hard to bury. I wasn't ready for the way his voice slipped so easily under my skin, how one glance undid years of effort to feel nothing. And it wasn't fair. Not to me, not to who I'd become.
I'd spent years rebuilding myself, slowly, painfully — learning how to live in silence, how to write without him reading over my shoulder, how to fall asleep without the warmth of his hand resting against mine. I had mastered the art of pretending I'd forgotten. And in one brief moment, one glance across an art gallery, it all unraveled.
I closed my eyes. The wind picked up, dancing softly across the lake's surface, and with it came the ghost of his laugh. Not a real sound, just a memory — airy, teasing, and unmistakably his.
We were never good at timing.
The first time we met, I was dating someone else. The second time, he was leaving for a year abroad. We tried, once, to make long distance work. We wrote emails, long and meandering, full of hopes and apologies. I printed them out back then, folded them into the covers of old notebooks. I still had them somewhere — faded ink and fragile promises.
I remembered the last night before he left for Paris. He had held me so tightly, arms wrapped around me like he could press the parting away, like he could glue time together with warmth. I remembered the way he whispered, "We'll find our way back," and how I had smiled, small and uncertain, because I wanted to believe him.
But life had a way of drifting. First slowly. Then all at once.
And now?
Now I was sitting here, five years later, wondering why the sight of him still made my heart stumble.
I stood up, brushing the damp off my coat. Maybe I should go home. Or maybe I should write. Words were the only place I ever truly understood myself, the only place where I didn't need to pretend.
I walked back to my apartment, slowly, letting the city breathe around me. The building was old but quiet, and when I reached my floor, I paused in the hallway, staring at the door like it might hold answers. It didn't.
Inside, I boiled water for tea. Jasmine, something soft. Something to calm the parts of me that still felt too loud.
Then I sat down at my desk, opened my laptop, and stared at the blinking cursor.
It had been weeks since I last wrote anything real. Everything I started felt hollow, forced. Like the words weren't mine anymore.
But tonight, something felt different.
I opened a new document. Took a deep breath. And wrote:
"She hadn't meant to see him again. And yet, there he was, standing in a city neither of them belonged to, as if time had paused just long enough for the past to catch up."
I paused. My fingers hovered. Then moved again.
The words came slowly at first. Hesitant. But then they flowed — line after line, a trickle that grew into something steady. A story began to take shape.
A woman who had learned how to forgive, but not forget. A man who had returned, not asking for anything, just hoping to be seen.
I didn't name the characters.
I didn't have to.
I knew exactly who they were.
And for the first time in a long while, it didn't hurt to write about us.