The sky turned amber as Leo walked down the hill from the dormitories.
He carried nothing but a scarf in his hands—a soft navy blue one he'd bought last week, thinking of Rin but never finding the courage to hand it over. He didn't even know if she liked scarves. But tonight, he needed something to hold. Something small, simple, and warm.
His phone buzzed again.
Rin: Where are you?
Leo: On my way.
---
She waited under the ginkgo tree behind the library, the one that had just started shedding leaves like golden teardrops. Her coat was buttoned up neatly, her breath soft in the air.
When she saw him, her expression shifted—relief, hesitation, and something he couldn't name.
"You came," she said.
"Of course I did."
They stood quietly for a moment.
Then Rin took a breath. "How did it go?"
Leo sat down on the low stone ledge, tapping the scarf against his knee. "Better than I feared. Worse than I hoped."
She smiled faintly. "That's honest."
He looked up at her. "I was honest with them. About everything. About you."
Rin sat beside him, tucking her hands between her knees.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"For what?"
"For being afraid. For stepping back when I should've stepped forward."
He turned to face her. "We both did that."
The wind blew a few yellow leaves past their shoes. Rin leaned back slightly, looking up at the branches.
"I keep thinking about the first time we met," she said.
"You mean when I spilled your tea in the library?"
She laughed. "Yes. And you apologized five times in one sentence."
"It was very good tea."
"You offered to buy me a new one and walked all the way to the east vending machines just to find the same brand."
Leo shrugged. "You looked sad. I wanted to do something."
Rin's smile softened. "You always do that. You see things others don't."
"I just try to listen."
Silence settled again, but this time it was easier. It wasn't tension. It wasn't hesitation.
It was gravity.
The quiet pull between two people trying to understand each other not with grand gestures, but with closeness.
---
Rin shifted slightly.
"I talked to my mom."
Leo looked at her. "About us?"
She nodded. "I told her I'm not just a student. I'm not just a daughter. I'm also a person who chooses who to care for."
His eyes widened. "What did she say?"
"She said... that she hoped I wouldn't regret anything. Then she gave me a book on time management and left the room."
Leo blinked.
Rin laughed. "That's her version of approval, I think."
Leo smiled. "I'll take it."
Rin pulled something from her bag—a small notebook.
She handed it to him.
"What's this?"
"My writing practice. The one you encouraged me to keep."
He flipped it open.
Inside were page after page of neat handwriting, stories, character sketches, fragments of dialogue. At the end of one page, a poem:
> The boy with tired eyes, who never looked away—
He stood like silence and listened anyway.
Leo didn't speak.
Rin looked down at her knees. "I wanted you to have it."
He closed the notebook carefully.
Then offered the scarf.
"It's not much," he said. "But… I thought of you when I saw it."
Rin took it.
Unfolded it.
Held it against her face for a second before wrapping it around her neck.
"It's warm," she murmured.
He exhaled. "Good."
Then—because no one else was around, and because the moment was too full not to spill over—Rin leaned against him.
Just barely.
Her shoulder brushed his.
His hand found hers.
They sat like that until the sun dipped below the rooftops and the ginkgo leaves stopped falling.
---
Later that night, Leo stood by his window.
Below, the campus lights flickered like fairy dust.
His phone buzzed one last time.
Rin: Today was good.
Leo: Yeah. It was.
He didn't say more.
He didn't need to.
Some stories didn't require dramatic declarations.
Some were written in the quiet spaces, the lingering glances, the silence between breaths.
And Leo? He was finally learning to read those pages.