Three weeks later, that night. The days after finals passed without shape.
No alarms, no deadlines, no hurried walks across campus. Only still mornings that stretched into quiet afternoons. Elara spent most of them surrounded by notebooks and half-erased notes, telling herself she was cleaning up after the semester, though she knew she was only avoiding thought.

The silence in the house felt different now — not heavy, just present. Sometimes, when she paused too long, the quiet hummed with a memory she didn’t name. The last lecture, the last shared glance across the room, the last time she’d seen him. She brushed the thought aside each time it appeared, as if the simple act of dismissal could keep it from meaning anything.

That afternoon, her mother’s footsteps sounded soft in the hallway — measured, hesitant, as if rehearsed. Two light knocks came against the door.

“Come in,” Elara said, still sorting through her books.

Selene stepped inside, her expression warm but careful. “You’ve been in here all morning,” she said gently.

“Just organising.”

Her mother smiled, sitting down on the edge of the bed. The air between them shifted, carrying the kind of stillness that meant news.

“Some guests are coming this evening,” Selene said at last.

Elara looked up. “Guests?”

Her mother nodded once. “They’re… coming to see you.”

The words landed softly, yet they rearranged the air in the room. Elara stared at the open book on her lap, the lines of text blurring together.

“Oh.”

“It’s nothing serious,” her mother added quickly, her voice threaded with reassurance. “Just a visit. You don’t have to decide anything. I just thought you should know.”

Elara nodded, her fingers tightening slightly against the book’s spine. She didn’t protest, didn’t argue — she simply folded the moment into the same quiet acceptance she’d learned long ago. But inside, something shifted. Not fear, not anger. Just the sudden weight of being seen in a way she hadn’t prepared for.

Evening light slipped through her curtains hours later, gold fading into the soft green of dusk. The house carried the faint scent of lavender and new fabric — her mother always lit candles when guests were expected.

Elara stood before her mirror, fastening the small hooks of her earrings. The dress her mother had chosen lay folded across the chair — forest green, understated, the kind of colour that belonged to calm places and still water. When she put it on, the fabric caught the light and made her look almost like herself, only softer.

She wasn’t trying to look pretty, and yet she did.
Her hair fell loosely today, a quiet defiance against the usual neatness.

For a fleeting second, her reflection looked unfamiliar — as though she were seeing someone she used to be, or might become. And before she could stop it, a thought of him surfaced — a brief, unwanted flicker of the way he used to look when listening, the quiet steadiness in his eyes.

She exhaled slowly and shook her head. Not today.
Whatever that thought was, it had no place here.

Downstairs, she heard the low hum of conversation as her mother arranged the living room. The faint clink of dishes. The air was warming with the scent of dinner.

Elara glanced once more at her reflection — composed face, calm shoulders, green fabric soft against her skin — and whispered under her breath,
“It’s just another evening.”

But even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t.

The doorbell rang.
Voices rose in greeting.

And the quiet she’d been holding onto all day finally broke — not loudly, but in the way silence does when it realises it’s run out of places to hide.