"Not all letters are meant to be sent. Some are just meant to remind us we can still feel."
That evening, Hana sat at her desk, window half-open, letting in the breeze.Her lamp cast a soft circle of light on the paper in front of her.
A single sheet.
Unmarked.
Waiting.
Her pencil hovered, hesitated, lowered.She had started three different versions of this letter already.None of them felt right.Too obvious.Too quiet.Too late?
She glanced to the drawer.The other letter — Ren's letter — still rested there, folded, untouched for days.
And yet she'd read it so many times, the words were burned into her.
"There are people who speak without sound.And those who scream with their eyes."
She wondered which one she was.She wasn't sure anymore.
She began to write.
Not a name.
Just lines.
"I watched the wind catch your thoughts today.I wonder if it always does — or only when someone's watching."
She paused.Crossed it out.
Started again.
"I used to think I understood quiet people.Now I think I was just hoping they would understand me."
Still no.
She folded the paper, set it aside.
Not good enough.
Outside, cherry blossoms were beginning to fade.Still beautiful — but changing.
Like feelings she couldn't name.
Hana stood up, stepped to the window.
Across the street, a boy walked alone with a sketchbook under one arm.
Her heart moved — instinctively.
Was it him?
No.Too tall. Wrong bag.But just for a second… it might have been.
Back at school, the next morning, Ren sat in his usual place.He wasn't drawing again.He just stared at his hand, as if wondering what it had written lately.
Nothing.
Not since Sayaka caught the letter.
He didn't know what it meant — if she had read it, or just returned it politely.
But something about the way she handed it back made him hesitate to write again.
Maybe some thoughts weren't meant to leave the page.
Maybe some never should have been written at all.
Sayaka, that day, didn't stop by the garden.She walked past him with headphones in, not even glancing his way.
A shift.
Not cold — just distant.As if she was deciding something.
As if she now had something to say… but didn't trust the silence to hold it.
Hana walked slower that morning.
She passed Ren without speaking — just a glance.
And as she passed the mailbox, her hand brushed the opening.
She carried a folded note in her sleeve.
But she didn't drop it in.
Not yet.
That afternoon, the paper stayed in her bag.Tucked behind her notebook, pressed flat like a pressed flower.
Waiting.
Words unspoken.Not from fear.
But from the ache of what if.