The afternoon dragged on, and the café caught in that sleepy lull between the lunch rush and the evening crowd. I wiped down the espresso machine for the third time, my mind miles away. Maybe we are part of that echo.

I pressed the heel of my hand against my chest, trying to settle the nervous, fluttering feeling that had been there since Tomás left that morning.

The bell above the door chimed, and I looked up so fast I nearly dropped my towel. Tomás stood in the doorway. He didn’t look triumphant this time; he looked restless. He walked straight to the counter, pulling a slip of paper from his pocket.

“I didn’t find any other notes in the archives,” he said, skipping a greeting entirely. “But I found an address. The boarding house where my grandfather lived in 1953. The one your grandmother helped him find.”

I looked at the paper. It was an address in San Telmo, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. “Is the building still there?”

“I don’t know,” Tomás said. He looked at me, his dark eyes intense. “Come with me and find out.”

I hesitated, glancing around the empty café. “Tomás, I have a business to run.”

“Put up the Cerrado sign,” he urged softly. “Just for a couple of hours. Please, Lucía. I don’t want to go alone.”

There was a vulnerability in his voice that I couldn’t say no to. Within ten minutes, the café was locked, and we were walking side by side down the bustling, tree-lined streets of Buenos Aires. The autumn air was crisp, the sky a bruised, cloudy gray that threatened rain later. As we walked, the heavy weight of the past seemed to lift slightly, replaced by the comfortable rhythm of our footsteps.

“So,” I said, bumping my shoulder lightly against his. “We’ve spent all this time talking about 1953. What about now? What do you actually do in Seoul when you’re not chasing seventy-year-old ghosts?”

Tomás smiled, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets. “I’m an architect. Mostly restoration work. Taking old, forgotten buildings and trying to bring them back to life without losing their history.”

I looked at him in surprise. “That makes so much sense.”

“Why?”

“The way you look at the café,” I said. “You don’t just look at the food. You look at the shelves, the tiles, the window frames. You look at it like you’re trying to read its bones.”

He laughed softly, a warm sound that made my stomach flutter. “Guilty. What about you? Did you always want to take over the café?”

“Always,” I said honestly. “Nona was my whole world. When she passed, keeping this place alive felt like the only way to keep her with me. But sometimes...” I hesitated, realizing I hadn’t admitted this to anyone before. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m hiding here. Living in her memories because I’m too scared to make my own.”

Tomás stopped walking. We were standing on a narrow cobblestone street, surrounded by faded colonial buildings with wrought-iron balconies. He turned to face me, his expression incredibly soft.

“You aren’t hiding, Lucía,” he said quietly. “You took something beautiful and kept it breathing. That takes bravery.”

The sincerity in his eyes made my breath catch. The space between us felt suddenly very small. I wanted to step closer, to see what would happen if I closed that distance, but Tomás suddenly looked past my shoulder.

“We’re here,” he murmured.

I turned. We were standing in front of an old conventillo, a traditional boarding house. The paint was peeling, and vines crawled up the stone archway, but the heavy wooden doors were propped open, revealing a quiet, sun-faded courtyard inside. We stepped into the courtyard together. It was silent, insulated from the noise of the city.

“This is where he lived,” Tomás whispered, looking up at the narrow balconies. “This is where he had to say goodbye to her.”

I closed my eyes, imagining Nona standing in this exact spot, young and heartbroken, watching the man she cared about pack his bags for Korea. “It must have been so hard for them,” I said, my voice thick with emotion.

“It was,” Tomás said. He stepped closer to me. “But I don’t think the story ended here.”

A sudden drop of water hit my cheek. Then another. The gray clouds above had finally broken, releasing a sudden, light drizzle. “Come here,” Tomás said, grabbing my hand and pulling me under the deep stone archway of the entrance to stay dry.

The archway was narrow. To stay out of the rain, we had to stand flush against the wall, our bodies mere inches apart. My back was pressed against the cool stone, and Tomás was standing right in front of me, his hands resting on the wall on either side of my head to brace himself. The air shifted instantly. The history of the building faded away, leaving only the sound of the rain and the rapid beating of my own heart.

Tomás looked down at me, his chest rising and falling quickly. His gaze dropped to my lips, lingering there for a long, agonizing second. The tension was so thick I could barely breathe. I tilted my chin up, my eyes fluttering shut, waiting for him to close the gap. He leaned in, his breath warm against my cheek. “Lucía...” he whispered, his voice rough.

But then he stopped. He pulled back just an inch, his eyes wide, as a sudden realization had just hit him like a physical blow. “Tomás?” I asked, dizzy and confused.

“The archives didn’t have the answer,” he breathed, looking at me with a sudden, desperate clarity. “The answer isn’t in this building. It’s in what he took with him.”

I blinked, trying to catch up. “What do you mean?”

“The box,” he said, stepping back into the rain, running a hand through his hair. “The box of my dad’s things I brought from Korea. I only looked at the top layer to find the photograph. I need to go back to my hotel. I need to tear that box apart.”

He looked at me, torn between wanting to stay in this archway and needing to find the truth. “Go,” I told him, my voice shaking slightly from the adrenaline. “Go find it. I’ll go back and open the café.”

“I’ll come find you,” he promised, stepping backward into the street. “As soon as I know, I’ll come find you.”

I watched him jog down the cobblestone street, the rain beginning to fall harder. I touched my fingers to my lips, my heart racing, knowing that whatever he found in that box was going to change everything.