He is running out of time.

Diagnosed with a terminal illness he refuses to name out loud, a young man becomes fixated on a single belief: that before he dies, he must find the person he is meant to love. Not casually. Not briefly. Truly.

Then he starts seeing her.

On trains. In cafés. At pedestrian crossings. In waiting rooms. Always close enough to notice the way she tucks her hair behind her ear. The way she holds her jacket to her shoulder. But, never close enough to speak.

He begins counting their encounters. One becomes ten. Ten becomes fifty. He tells himself that if fate keeps placing her in his path, it must be asking something of him. He deliberately shapes his life around her orbit, believing that on the hundredth meeting, the universe will finally allow them to collide.

And it does.

They fall in love quietly. Genuinely. At the exact wrong time.

When his condition suddenly worsens, he vanishes without explanation, choosing disappearance over letting her witness his decline. She is left with unanswered questions, grief without closure, and a love that never had time to grow roots.

What neither of them knows is that she works as a nurse.

And fate, cruel and meticulous, brings her into the same hospital where he lies sedated, unrecognizable, and slipping away.

They pass each other in corridors. She tends to patients beside him. She hears fragments of his story spoken by others. When she finally stands before him, he cannot see her. Cannot know her. Cannot say her name.

Their love becomes a pattern of presence without recognition.

A story about timing that never forgives.
About love that arrives too late.
And about whether being seen, even once, can be enough.

Quiet. Observant. Soft-spoken in ways that make people lean in.


Elias is not heroic in the traditional sense. He is afraid of pain, of weakness, of becoming a memory defined by illness. His obsession with counting encounters is not romantic at first. It is survival. A way to impose order on a life that is shrinking.


He believes love should be found, not stumbled into.And that disappearing can sometimes be an act of mercy.


A nurse who believes in competence, steadiness, and emotional control.


Mara has learned how to hold other people together while quietly neglecting her own fractures. She is compassionate but not naïve. Loving but cautious. When Elias vanishes, it doesn't shatter her loudly. It hollows her.


She doesn't believe in fate.Until it starts circling her.


Main Characters