Morning arrives without permission.
Gray light seeps through Adrian's curtains like a reluctant whisper soft, muted, almost apologetic. It doesn't brighten the room, it only reveals the mess he's been living in. The pile of laundry in the corner. The empty water bottles. The stack of unopened mail leaning like a fragile monument against the wall.
He sits up slowly, rubbing his face, trying to piece together the ghost of yesterday.
Mary.
The hallway.
Their names spoken softly between shadows.
Her confession.
His honesty.
It felt unreal, like a dream stitched together from loneliness.
He wonders if she regrets it.
He wonders if he should.
He swings his legs off the bed and stares at the floor, breathing through the heaviness in his chest. His body feels like it's been carved out of exhaustion. His mind feels quieter, but only barely. The darkness that has been pacing inside him hasn't left it's just resting, watching, waiting.
He reaches for the soup container beside him.
It sounds ridiculous, but he doesn't want to return it. Not because he wants to keep it because returning it means approaching her again. Means repeating a vulnerability he isn't sure he can endure.
He places the container on the nightstand and lets out a shaky breath.
"Not today," he murmurs.
But he knows he's lying.
Across the hall, Mary wakes with jolt
Her dreams were cruel last night shards of memory and whispers of guilt woven into something heavy and suffocating. She sits up too quickly, hands clutching the blanket, heart racing.
For a moment she forgets what happened yesterday.
Then she remembers.
Her face burns with immediate embarrassment.
Did she really tell him she disappears?
Did she really admit she heard him crying into the storm?
Did she really say she was glad he didn't vanish?
Her throat tightens.
"Oh God…" she whispers.
Her instinct is to hide.
Stay inside.
Don't open the door, don't breathe too loud, don't risk being seen again.
But then she remembers the expression on his face when she said her name.
The way he repeated it like it was something precious.
And the way he asked, "Why?"
It wasn't contempt.
It wasn't pity.
It was something softer something she hasn't let herself feel in a long time.
Still, fear gnaws at her.
What if she said too much?
What if she scared him?
What if he thinks she's strange or intrusive?
She curls into herself, arms wrapped tightly around her knees.
"I shouldn't have—"
She stops.
Because another voice interrupts her panicked thoughts. A quieter one. A kinder one.
You helped him.
He didn't push you away.
You were two broken people who needed someone to listen.
Her breath trembles.
She lets her forehead rest on her knees, grounding herself in the truth she's trying to believe.
She doesn't have to be perfect for him.
He doesn't have to be perfect for her.
They just have to survive the day.
Adrian drifts through the apartment like a man trying to remember how to exist.
He runs water over his face.
He brushes his teeth for the first time in days.
He changes his shirt.
Small things.
Tiny things.
Things that feel like lifting weights he wasn't ready to lift.
Every movement is slow, deliberate.
Every action carries a silent echo.
Mary.
Her voice.
Her kindness.
He checks the mail just to step outside his door.
He stands in the hallway for a moment, listening for the faintest sign that she's awake.
He hears nothing.
It leaves him both relieved and disappointed.
He walks back to his apartment, closing the door quietly, leaning against it again.
But this time, he doesn't break down.
This time, he just breathes.
On the other side of the wall, Mary is doing the same.
She sits on the floor with her hand pressed gently against the plaster, wondering if he's awake. Wondering if he's okay. Wondering whether he regrets yesterday or if it meant even half as much to him as it did to her.
She doesn't knock.
She tells herself she won't knock today.
Her heart beats unevenly as she stands and walks to the kitchen, forcing herself to make tea. Her fingers tremble as she pours water into the kettle.
Then—
A soft sound.
A faint one.
Just a shift, a creak, a hint of movement through the wall.
Adrian.
Alive.
Present.
There.
Her eyes sting with emotion she doesn't understand.
**Hours pass.
Quietly.
Softly.
Carefully.**
Both of them move through their separate apartments as if navigating aftershocks of fear, of connection, of a conversation that reopened doors they'd kept shut for too long.
The sun rises higher, illuminating dust drifting in the air between the two doors that face each other. Neither opens. Neither knocks.
But something has changed.
The air is different.
Their thoughts are different.
Their world has widened by exactly one person.
Later, as night falls…
Adrian sits at his desk, staring at the soup container again. He runs his thumb along the lid, tracing the ridge, hesitating.
Then he speaks softly into the empty room.
"I'll give it back tomorrow."
Not because he needs to return it.
But because he wants to see her.
And because a thread formed yesterday, fragile and thin but real.
He doesn't want it to snap.
Meanwhile, Mary stands at her window, watching rain gather on the glass.
She presses a fingertip to the cold pane.
Tomorrow, she thinks.
Maybe.
If she's brave enough.
If he's still there.
If courage outweighs fear.
She whispers into the quiet room.
"Please still be here tomorrow."
She doesn't know she and Adrian whisper the same words at the same moment, separated by one thin wall and a hallway full of unspoken hope.