The sky over Edinburgh curled gray like an old shroud embracing the city. Cold seeped through the cracks of Elmsworth Library's antique windows, the building rising proudly among rows of weathered stone structures. Crimson and golden maple leaves drifted on the wind, tracing paths over cobbled streets still slick from last night's rain. The air smelled of earth, old wood, and ink long sealed in the pages of untouched books.
On the second floor, in the reading room for classical literature, Aerish Elowen sat in silence. Her body curled on an old wooden chair leaning against a wall of red brick. Sunlight slipped shyly through the large window behind her, casting her blurred shadow across the floor. In her lap lay a tattered notebook, its pages covered in thick blue ink, some of it bleeding from the season's dampness. She was writing, as always, but slower today as if the words might echo too loudly and be heard by someone who shouldn't know.
"You walked in, unaware that eyes had been waiting for you since the first hour."
Her hand stopped. She slowly turned toward the reading room entrance. Her heart, once calm, now beat faster, syncing with the sound of leather shoes approaching down the corridor. She didn't need to see his face. She knew the steps.
Kael Renford.
He appeared between the bookshelves like sunlight breaking through fog. His dark brown hair was tousled in a natural, careless way. He wore a gray jacket, slightly frayed at the collar, and a black backpack slung over one shoulder. To the world, he was nothing extraordinary. But to Aerish, he was gravity, anchoring her entire universe to one point.
Kael didn't see her.
As always.
Aerish watched his back as he walked to the poetry shelf. He pulled out an old book titled Songs of Silence and turned to his favorite spot a round wooden table near the wall, darkened by time.
"...and when you read those lines of voiceless love, you'll nod as if you understand. But you'll never know I wrote them for you."
She gripped her pen tightly. Her handwriting trembled. Not from fear, but from longing without a home. A silent yearning, too timid to knock on any door.
Kael opened the book and touched its pages like one might touch a long-lost lover's skin. He smiled. Just a faint line at the corner of his lips. But for Aerish, that smile was a storm. She turned away, unable to watch any longer.
Because that smile wasn't for her. Never had been.
But it was okay.
Because Kael was there. Breathing the same air, sitting in the same room, reading poems she might have rewritten in her mind a thousand times. That was enough.
The pen in Aerish's hand was the same one Kael had given her years ago on a rainy day that changed everything.
Yet Kael didn't remember her. He didn't even know her name.
She wrote again:
"Note #1. To the one I always see, but who never sees me back."
Kael's footsteps returned after an hour that felt like an entire season. He closed his book, stood, and passed by Aerish without looking her way. His shadow fell across her desk full of ink and scribbles. Aerish didn't turn. She simply closed her eyes, listening as his steps faded a sound she knew better than any piano melody.
When the door closed, Aerish opened her eyes. The library was quiet again. But not an empty quiet. It was a silence full of unspoken things.
The rain began to fall soon after.
Aerish stood, tucked her notebook into her wool coat, and stepped outside. Through her eyes, the world blurred with mist and the silhouette of someone she always remembered but who had never remembered her.
---
Rain softly tapped her coat as Aerish waited at the stone bus stop near the campus gate. The drizzle blended with the rustling leaves carried by the wind, creating a gentle harmony heard only by the still-hearted.
She looked down, staring at her soaked shoes. Below her, a puddle reflected the yellow glow of a streetlamp. But what she saw wasn't her reflection it was a memory.
On that damp bench, she imagined two children. One shivering, drenched, hair clinging to her cheeks. The other, slightly older, sheltered her with his jacket. She remembered the short exchange more eternal than any book.
"If you're afraid to speak, maybe you can write. That's what I do."
Her small hand back then had received a blue pen from his. That warmth had lingered and from that moment on, Aerish's world took shape. Through writing. Through silence. Through nameless longing.
And that boy... now stood not far from her, every evening, never realizing the soaked girl he once saved had never left.
The bus arrived, scattering her thoughts. Aerish boarded and sat by the misted window. She wiped a small circle clear with her jacket sleeve, peeking out at the blurred world. But her mind returned to the library, the poetry shelf, and Kael... who never knew.
Back at her small, quiet apartment, Aerish hung up her coat neatly, turned on her dim desk lamp. The room bore her presence: disorganized books, sticky notes on the wall, and a glass holding a navy pen long out of ink.
She sat, opened her notebook, and wrote one final line that night:
"I found you by chance amidst my rain... Flowing cool to fingertips wrapped in warmth beneath a melody of falling drops."
Then she closed the notebook. Pressed it against her chest. Stared at the ceiling.
And fell asleep.
Note #1 was complete.
But her heart was not.
---
Outside, the rain hadn't stopped. Its rhythm seeped through the walls of her old apartment, like it too wanted to say something left unsaid.
Aerish wasn't fully asleep. Her eyes were closed, but her thoughts wandered revisiting every moment she had filed neatly in memory.
She remembered her first day at Elmsworth. Kael stood before the notice board, reading the schedule with the same unreadable look. She had stood behind him, almost said something... but her steps never reached that far.
Because what she had wasn't meant to be shared. Love wasn't always between two people sometimes, it belonged to one. One who writes. One who never knows.
"Loving you in silence is how I survive. Without you knowing. Without me fading."
She rose slowly from her chair, walked to the window. Rain still danced on the glass. She pressed her forehead against it, letting the cold kiss her skin.
In the distance, city lights flickered shyly, like hopes nearly extinguished but never quite gone.
Aerish opened the window slightly, letting the damp air drift in. From her coat pocket, she pulled out a small slip of paper-an unfinished note. She wrote, in barely legible handwriting:
"If I disappear, would you search for the girl who wrote the rain?"
She folded the paper neatly and slipped it between the pages of Songs of Silence her own worn copy, filled with markings.
She would return it to the library tomorrow. Place it on the same shelf. At the same time.
Maybe just maybe... Kael would pick it up someday.
And when he turned to page 47, there would be a small note from someone who had written it with all her soul.
Aerish went back to her desk, turned off the lamp. She curled up on her bed by the bookshelf, wrapped in a blanket, and whispered to herself:
"Goodnight, Kael. Even if you never knew I was here."
The rain answered with slower rhythm, as if easing the storm in her chest. In the warm darkness, Aerish finally drifted off carrying words no one had ever read, except herself.