The days blended together like brushstrokes on a steamed window. Morning, noon, and dusk passed unannounced, each drawing Haruka deeper into the silence Kaito had left behind.
He was still not there.
No note. No apology.
And the bakery—once warm with the soft chaos of morning chatter, flour-dusted aprons, and the sound of Kaito's voice—was cold.
At first, Haruka acted as if it didn't bother her. People come and go all the time, she told herself. It was nothing new. It wasn't like she hadn't ever been left before.
But Kaito had made the mistake of remaining long enough for her to get used to him.
To his soft hellos, his crooked smile when he caught her stealing a second bun. To the way he always seemed to see small things—when her hair was pulled back in a new style, when she wore the cardigan she claimed to despise but he claimed was ideal for her. To the way he never asked her to talk, but always left room in case she did.
And now, that space stretched out like an open wound.
Haruka swept the floor harder than needed that morning, attempting to drive away the stillness. But it clung to her as dust clings to sunlight—only discernible when she stood still long enough to see.
"Kaito-kun still hasn't called you?" Natsumi inquired softly, glancing over her shoulder as she placed baguettes into a display.
Haruka nodded once, negligibly. "No."
There was no need to fib. But neither was there anything further to say.
She hadn't dared to ask where he went. There was a strange fear in the question, like saying it out loud would confirm the worst: that he was gone for good.
Natsumi offered a small smile that didn't reach her eyes. "I'm sure he'll be back soon."
Haruka wished she could believe that.
Instead, she nodded silently and returned to kneading dough, pouring her thoughts into the rhythm of her hands.
But today, the silence was deafening.
She sat alone again by the small bench by the window that night. A light drizzle rapped on the glass. The streets were mostly empty, and the scent of rain on pavement drifted in through a crack in the door.
In front of her, on the table, was her diary. It had been a while since she wrote anything in it—since Kaito ceased to appear.
She opened it and gazed at the blank page.
Her pen quivered.
What was she supposed to write?
That she missed someone she wasn't meant to need?
That the silence left behind after him was starting to ring through her ears like all the rest of the silences she'd ever heard—except this time, she'd caught a taste of what it felt like to be seen?
The epiphany wrapped itself around her tightly.
She shut the book again and leaned back, releasing a shuddery breath.
It was crazy, wasn't it?
To feel this much for someone who'd only been in her life for such a short time?
But perhaps that was exactly what made it so bad.
He had crawled in too soon, too subtly, like water penetrating cracks she didn't know existed. And now she was dripping, insidiously, in all the areas she was sure she'd plugged up.
She blinked herself with the underside of her cuff and attempted to shake off the sensation.
But then she looked in the direction of the door—once, reflexively—and the emptiness hit her right in the chest.
And that was when it happened.
A tear escaped her cheek.
Then another.
Not the kind that fell in a deluge of theatrics. Just quiet tears, slow and unwelcome, like gentle rain after a long dry spell.
She didn't even realize she was crying at first.
But she didn't let it stop.
She sat there in the dim light, alone in a bakery that seemed too big without him, letting herself feel the weight of his absence for the first time.
Her hands trembled around the mug she hadn't even touched for minutes.
"I hate this," she whispered to nothing. "I hate this."
She didn't know if she meant the crying. Or the waiting. Or the not knowing.
Or maybe all of it.
She pressed her hand to her heart, as if to muzzle her own beat.
And at that instant, she allowed herself to be human—not the stoic girl who kept it all locked away, not the workaholic who always made it through her shifts, not the ghost of the person she was meant to be in her parents' eyes.
Just Haruka.
Just a girl losing a boy who didn't goodbye.
Rain grew harder outside, etching lines in the window like those on her cheeks.
And inside, silence piled up—not just in the room, but in the spaces she had held back in a way unaware for someone who might never come back.