I never planned to interfere.
Watching, imagining, recording—I thought that was enough. The beauty of love, to me, was in its mystery. In the fragments. I never wanted the whole picture. But then one evening, something shifted. I didn't find a story this time—it found me.
It was a Thursday. Cold, and a little too late to be wandering the city. I was walking past a closed florist shop when I heard it—raised voices, not yelling, but urgent. The kind that pulls you in before you even realize you're eavesdropping.
Across the street, under the pale light of a flickering lamppost, stood a man and a woman. He looked desperate. She looked done.
"I waited," she said. "I waited longer than anyone would've."
"I know," he answered. "But I didn't ask you to."
There was silence after that—raw and suspended. She started to turn away. He didn't stop her.
She walked off. He stayed behind, hands in his coat pockets, staring at the ground like he'd lost something he couldn't name.
I don't know why I followed him. I told myself it was curiosity. That I'd write about it later, nothing more. But something about the way his shoulders sagged, the way he watched her disappear—there was weight in that.
He sat on the curb after a while. Pulled out his phone, typed something, then erased it. Did it again. And again.
Eventually, he just sat there. Motionless. Like a statue of regret.
I walked past him slowly. He didn't notice me.
Later that night, I wrote in my notebook:
"Some stories aren't over yet. They just don't know how to continue."
But I couldn't leave it there.
The next day, I went back. I don't know what I expected—maybe to see him again, maybe to see her. Instead, I saw the florist unlocking the shop. I asked her, casually, if she knew the couple who were arguing outside the night before.
She nodded. "Yeah. That's Rohan and Mira. They come by sometimes. Used to pick flowers for her sister. Haven't seen them together in a while, though."
I don't know what possessed me to ask more. Maybe it was the look in Mira's eyes when she said I waited. Or the way Rohan's silence felt heavier than anything spoken.
All I know is, for the first time, I didn't want to let this story go unfinished.
I wanted them to find their ending—even if I had no place in it.