"You can love someone so much... but you can never love people as much as you can miss them."

— John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

I saw him again three days later.

Same cherry tree.
Same hospital courtyard drowning in that hushed quiet—
the kind that only machines and breath know how to fill.

I'd thought he wouldn't come back.
Or rather—I thought he'd never been real in the first place.

Because no one else had ever seen him.

—

This time, he brought a paper bag.

"There's flan. The cafeteria makes it pretty well. You ever tried it?"

I shook my head.

Heart patients weren't supposed to have sweets,
but nurses were easy to charm if you smiled softly enough.
They'd always give you one spoonful—"just to taste."

He peeled the lid, held a spoon toward me.

"Want some?"

I looked up at him.

"You said you're visiting someone. Which room?"

"Third floor. Room 3-07.
But I think today... that patient doesn't need me anymore."

I blinked.

"Didn't you say they were still being treated?"

"They were.
But sometimes people get better.
Or... better in a different sense."

He said it calmly.
Too calmly.
It gave me chills.

But the spoon stayed there, waiting.

—

The flan tasted... ordinary.
But at that moment, it felt like the sweetest thing I'd had in weeks.

Maybe because it wasn't just sugar and egg.
Maybe because I was swallowing something else—
something I didn't dare name.

—

After that, we began seeing each other more often.

Sometimes just sitting quietly on the bench,
watching others walk around the garden.
Sometimes arguing about whether drinking from the public water fountain would cause a stomachache.
Sometimes he'd bring old newspapers or a thick book no one wanted from the hospital library.

"What're you reading?" I asked.

"A Walk to Remember. Heard of it?"

"Yeah. But never read it. We don't have that one in the library."

"There's a line I like:
Love is like the wind—you can't see it but you can feel it."

I laughed. Looked at him.
And for the first time, he wasn't looking at me.

He was looking at the sky.

—

Those days were the best I'd known in a life
where youth had been more IV than adventure.

I never left the hospital.
He never left the courtyard.
We lived in a world small enough to fit a bench and two people.

And I began... waiting for him.

I'm not sure when it started.
I only knew that if a day passed without him showing up,
something inside me skipped—
like a heartbeat missing its cue.

—

"Why are you always free?" I asked.

"Because I'm the kind of person...
only called upon when someone's about to leave."

I frowned.

"Leave where?"

He smiled.
Soft, like the wind at the end of autumn.

"Toward the place no one ever returns from."

I didn't understand then.
Thought he was being poetic.
The kind of lonely person who said vague things
just to be asked again,
so someone would keep talking to him.

I didn't know he meant it—every word.

—

One afternoon, I dozed off in the garden.
The first rain of the season fell—thin and cold as silk.

I tried to turn back,
but my back was already damp and my arms too tired to wheel myself.

And then—someone held an umbrella over me.

It was him.

I hadn't noticed him arrive.
Just the shadow of the umbrella,
and his hand resting lightly on the handle of my chair.

"Even when you're not looking,
I'm still here.
Just standing somewhere you can't see."

I turned my head away.
Not from embarrassment,
but because I didn't know what to say.

My heart was beating a little too fast—
not medically.
Emotionally.

For the first time,
I felt shy around someone who wasn't a doctor.

—

That night, I couldn't sleep.

I kept thinking about the umbrella.
His words.
The strange scent of his coat—
not perfumed, not sharp—
just cold, distant, and not... entirely human.

I sat up and stared out the window.

When my breath began to fog the glass,
I drew a cat.

The first one in years.
Not to check if I was still alive—
but to ask:

"Did you see it?"

—

The next morning, I went to the garden like usual.
He was already there—book in hand.

Before I could say anything,
he pointed to his sleeve.

"There's a cat on the window.
You still draw them the same way as when you were little."

I froze.

"How do you know that?"

He just smiled.

Didn't answer.