The city had changed.
Ren noticed it first through reflections—through how the sun refracted off skyscraper glass and how people blurred into silhouettes behind coffee shop windows. There was always motion, always noise, always life rushing somewhere—but he was still. Seated. Watching. Listening.
And in the silence that framed his life, there was always one constant: her voice.
Not the sound of it—he didn't have a recording, never captured it on any device. But the memory of it. That soft, steady command from years ago: "Even if you're scared." Or the way her voice had wrapped around his name like armour. She had only ever called him that once. Just once. But it had stayed with him all this time.
He had built his entire adulthood on echoes.
Now, years later, he lived in a high-rise small apartment fitted for accessibility—automatic doors, voice-command lights, and customized desk height. He worked freelance for companies too big to bother checking who was behind the code, and consulted under an alias for several accessibility tech firms.
No one saw him. Not really. Not in the way she had.
His condition, permanent. He would never walk again. After the surgery and the accident that followed in the same cruel year, doctors had delivered the verdict with that sterile tone he'd come to loathe. "You're lucky to be alive," they had said. As if that alone should've been enough.
But living was not the same as breathing.
Sometimes, he woke up expecting the hospital smell—the antiseptic bite of sterility and recovery. Other times, he reached for the glasses he no longer needed every day, only to stare into the space she had once filled.
Aika.
He didn't know where she was now. And even if he could look her up, he wouldn't. She'd left no trace. Back in school, she'd kept her home life wrapped in silence and privacy. No last name listed. No contact on the graduation pamphlets. No social media trail.
But her presence had never left him.
On particularly bad days, when anxiety crept up like a noose and shadows pressed into his lungs, he'd roll himself to the far window in his apartment—the one overlooking the wide glass buildings of downtown. He'd sit there, palms cold on metal wheels, and just breathe.
And sometimes, he would remember…
It had been six years ago, the first time he truly broke down after the accident.
He'd tried to reach a mug on the second shelf, miscalculated the wheel lock, and slid. Fell hard. The pain wasn't physical. Not then. It was humiliation. The kind that coiled in your ribs and screamed you were small. Lesser. Forgotten.
And then, without thinking, he whispered aloud: "Do you think I'm weak, Aika?"
And in that moment, as pathetic and strange as it seemed, he could almost hear her voice again. Not soft. Not sweet.
But strong.
"You're braver than you look…"
He had blinked. Shuddered. And something in him clenched like a fist around a thread of light.
That was the day he began building.
Now, Ren's name was known in select corners of the tech world. As "R3N," he had designed award-winning open-source accessibility APIs and interface overlays. He never took interviews. Never video-called. His avatar was a faceless storm cloud with circuitry running through it.
It was easier that way. Being seen always brought questions. And he didn't want questions.
He wanted function. Tools. Safety—for people like him. For women trying to report without fear. For the disabled fighting invisible bureaucracy. For kids too scared to speak.
Everything he built, he coded with Aika in mind. He didn't write her name anywhere, but it lived in the lines of his code.
Some days, he thought about writing her a letter. One she might never read. One she might never even find.
But he hadn't. Not yet.
Not when the past felt too delicate to press against.
Outside his window, a storm began to gather—soft at first. A grey wash creeping over the afternoon. The kind of sky that made him feel twelve again. The kind of air that made him expect footsteps and fists and rescue.
But he wasn't twelve anymore.
And this time, he didn't need saving.
He just missed her. Plain and sharp and simple.
He missed the sound of her walking through glass halls. The way she stood without flinching. The quiet calm in her anger. The mercy in her violence.
And above all, he missed what he'd never had the courage to say.
Far across the city, a woman stood in a courtroom, finishing her closing argument. She didn't know it yet—but the boy she once protected was still waiting beneath storm-coloured skies, just hoping she might walk through the doors again.