Chapter 2: The Forgotten Station
That night, he couldn’t sleep.
The pastry sat untouched on the hotel table, wrapped in thin paper that smelled of time itself.
Fifty years.
He repeated it like it was a foreign language.
By morning, he was at the old train station on the edge of town.
It had changed—new signs, new concrete—but the platform number was the same.
And then he saw her again.
Not the old woman from the stall.
But a memory, standing in the rain.
A younger version of him, holding a small bag of pastries, promising:
“I’ll come back when everything is over.”
He never did.
The truth settled heavily in his chest: the woman wasn’t just waiting.
She had been living inside a promise he abandoned.
Behind him, a voice broke through the air.
“I knew you’d come here first.”
He turned.
The old woman stood there, holding another pastry.
May you like
Still warm.
Still waiting.
