The music filled the room like a memory that remembered him first.

It rose in soft instrumentals from Reyhaan’s desk speaker—low enough not to slip past his closed door, lower still so it wouldn’t climb the hallway of his parents’ quiet house.

Untitled. Unfinished.

He let it play. The track had no lyrics, no vocals.

There couldn’t be. Not for a while.

But it had a shape.

Built over weeks, the track stitched itself together from quiet fragments—a piano loop from a year ago, the soft percussion of metal tapping glass, the hum of bicycle wheels, a distant child’s laugh, reverb caught in an empty stairwell.

It sounded like something that had existed long before he dared to shape it. Something made of pauses. Memory. Air.

And tonight, it felt almost whole.

Reyhaan leaned back in his chair, scarf loose at his neck, hoodie still on. He hadn’t changed since coming home—just moved slowly, quietly through the evening. His voice didn’t ache as much today. That was something. But silence had grown into a second skin. Familiar. Protective. Healing asked for patience. For stillness.

The track played again.

Today hadn’t been loud—just full. Brimming, in the quiet way good things often are.

The cookie stall under the fairy-lit tree had somehow become one of the busiest corners of the fest. Between paper crowns, glitter paint, and Maya’s dramatic proclamations of “Limited edition emotional calories!”, people had come for laughs and stayed for something harder to name.

And it had been theirs. All of it.

Kian had insisted they sell the Chili-Choco ‘Fire’ cookies, despite Maya’s threats of defamation. Maya, in turn, had designed the QR codes like magical spells. Aria had come up with the idea: flavor as memory. Taste as a story. Reyhaan had simply suggested they write nothing. Let the cookies speak for themselves—quietly, unexpectedly, like most of the best things that semester.

And the stories baked into those trays… they felt like parts of something only the four of them knew.

Like Maya’s 3 a.m. lavender-fueled script crisis. Kian’s infamous attempt at flirting in front of Professor Meijer. The quiet evenings in the media room, coffee steam rising as voices softened into trust. Aria’s first test batch—slightly overdone, but hers. Entirely hers.

And that one tin at the back. Unlabeled except for a brass edge worn smooth with time. Inside: coconut, raisin, and something that tasted like home, if you didn’t ask where it was. He had named it ours.

He could still hear the way Aria laughed when Kian accidentally scanned the wrong QR code and pulled up a clip of Maya sleep-arguing with her coffee mug.

Later, around the fire, things had slowed. Softened. People wandered off. Kian and Maya had slipped away with unspoken coordination—Maya nudging him with her scarf, Kian grinning like he had something planned. Something in their quiet vanishing act felt... earned. Reyhaan hadn’t asked. He’d just stayed. And Aria had stayed too.

They’d sat at the edge of the firelight, shoulder to shoulder, trading half-burnt marshmallows and unhurried conversation. He thought of her beside him in the flickering dark, her gaze steady, her voice even softer than usual. She didn’t fill the silence. She honored it.

“You don’t have to explain everything, you know. To everyone.”

He hadn’t realized how much he needed that. Not until it landed—quiet, steady, and entirely hers.

She was like that—the kind of presence that didn’t push, but made room. She didn’t stare at your scars. She sat near them.

He stared at his music journal that sat open on the table, half a line scrawled across the page: She didn’t ask, and that felt like trust.

He sat with that a little longer than he meant to.

Then he reached for his laptop and clicked open the chat app. Two missed pings from Lucian and Silas. He’d told them about the group—the classmates he worked with. The bookstore girl, the dramatic one, and the tall one who talked like a podcast host. He hadn’t gone into detail. Some things lose shape when named too soon.

He hit “Call.”

They answered like they were expecting him.

Lucian appeared first, wrapped in a thick hoodie, curled sideways on his couch like a cat who paid rent, holding a chipped mug. “Finally. The cookie celebrity emerges.”

“Long day,” Reyhaan said, adjusting his scarf.

Silas’s screen lit up next—desk tidy, lamp at a perfect angle, glasses perched on his nose like he was mid-analysis of something obscure. “So we’ve seen.”

Lucian smirked. “Jay nearly went live with a post called ‘Baking Through the Breakdown.’”

“I’m blocking all of you,” Reyhaan muttered.

“Too late. We’re famous,” Lucian said. “Again.”

Reyhaan rolled his eyes but smiled. “It was a student fest. Low key.”

“And yet,” Silas said, arching a brow. “you went viral. Not for the band. Not for your voice. But for a cookie stall with QR codes and cryptic poetry.”

“It wasn’t cryptic.”

“It was a little cryptic,” Lucian said. “The roasted green tea one? That one made me want to journal.”

“It made someone draw a cookie with legs,” Reyhaan replied, chuckling.

There was a pause. Then Lucian leaned in slightly, thumb rubbing the rim of his chipped mug. “They’re good people?”

“Yeah,” He hesitated. “Yeah, they are.”

Silas folded his arms, watching him. “The girl you mentioned... Aria?”

He didn’t answer right away.

“Quiet bookstore girl?” Lucian prompted.

Reyhaan nodded slowly. “That’s her.”

Silas tilted his head, curious but never pushy. “Still feel like you can talk to her?”

“More than that.” Reyhaan glanced away, let the truth find its own pace. “With her, I don’t feel like I’m explaining myself while I’m talking. You know that feeling? Where someone listens like they already understand the parts you haven’t figured out how to say?”

Lucian’s voice was dimmer now. “Yeah. I do.”

“She asked me nothing about the band. Not once. I think she knows. All three of them probably do. But they don’t treat me like I’m a story to tell.”

Silas adjusted his glasses. “That’s rare.”

“Yeah. She…” Reyhaan exhaled. “She doesn’t ask me to be anyone. Doesn’t treat me like I’m broken or interesting. She treats me like a person. Not a headline. She just lets me be.”

Silas’s voice softened. “That sounds like someone worth holding onto.”

Reyhaan gave a faint smile. “She has this way of saying things that stay with you. Not advice. Just... truth, laid down gently. No pressure to agree. Just… offered.”

“Like you’re not being watched?” Lucian said.

“Exactly.”

The silence between them wasn’t awkward. Just full of things they didn’t need to name.

Then Lucian leaned forward. “You trust her?”

Reyhaan watched the pulsing light of his screen—the track still looping. A quiet guitar thread, folding back into itself. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

Silas glanced away, then back. “Have you told her? About… the rest?”

“No.” Reyhaan’s voice softened. “Not yet. She doesn’t ask.”

“That’s not the same as not deserving to know,” Lucian stated, kindly.

“I know.”

Another pause. Then Silas asked, gently, “Does it feel good? This thing… starting?”

Reyhaan nodded. “It feels slow. But right.”

Lucian smiled, lifting his mug. “That’s the best kind.”

Reyhaan looked toward the window. The city outside was both background and foreground—just like the track still playing behind him.

Lucian’s voice, warm and tired, threaded through the screen. “Then start when you’re ready. But don’t miss it waiting for perfection.”

“I won’t.” He replied. “I’m not hiding.”

Silas nodded. “Good.”

Because tonight, Reyhaan didn’t feel like a version of himself. He just felt… present. In it.

With her, he didn’t need subtitles for his silence. And maybe, that was how healing began—not in answers, but in being allowed to stay quiet and still be seen.