By March, they’d fallen into something that looked like peace.
Not the loud kind — no big gestures, no dramatic makeups. Just steady messages, short calls, and the ordinary rhythm of people trying again.

When she laughed now, it didn’t sound forced.
When he spoke, he didn’t rush to fill silences.
It felt almost normal.

They went for small walks around the neighborhood. The trees had started to bloom, purple petals. Sometimes she’d stop to take photos of stray cats or the sky through electric wires.

He didn’t know she’d be gone by April.

At her place, the table was always a little messy — open notebooks, half-eaten snacks, a cup of cold coffee she never finished.
He liked it that way. It felt lived in, real.
When he came over, she’d shove things aside to make space, never embarrassed.

Sometimes, when she forgot to eat or take meds or sleep early he always used to remind her with some dumb caption like, “You really can’t survive if you keep doing like this, huh?”
She’d reply hours later: “That’s how you know I exist.”

One evening, they sat outside her building watching the sky bleed into orange. She said, “If one day we stop talking again, will you still think about me?”
He looked at her, confused. “Why would we stop?”
She didn’t answer. Just smiled a little, like someone who already knew.

That night, she sent him a quote — no context, no caption.

“Every love story teaches you something, but not all of them are meant to last.”

He replied with a heart emoji.
She didn’t respond.

Still, March felt warm enough to believe in again.
If anyone had asked him then, he’d have said they were fine, maybe not perfect, but fine.

But somewhere under that calm, something small had already begun to shift the kind of change you only recognize once it’s too late.