Caius Maxelius Ali | Foreign man

Caius Maxelius Ali had always felt that a city looked most honest when it rained.

That night, in the final years of the nineties, the streets were slick with the yellowish glow of mercury lamps. The asphalt reflected the neon signs of record shops, coffee stalls, and an old cinema marquee whose letters had begun to die out one by one. From a distance came the sound of a cigarette vendor’s radio playing an old love song, its crackling voice rising and fading beneath the roar of passing city buses.

Caius walked alone along the narrow sidewalk, wearing a dark jacket worn thin at the elbows. In his left hand, he held a black umbrella. In his right, a plastic bag containing two used cassette tapes he had just bought from a small shop near the terminal. He did not know why he had bought them. Perhaps because old songs sounded more patient when someone was lonely.

The rain fell lightly, but endlessly.

It was the kind of rain that did not make people run in fear, only made them want to hurry home to someone. Caius had no such someone. His rented room held only a narrow bed, an old radio, and a window that always fogged up on rainy nights.

He stopped in front of an old bus stop near the intersection. Its tin roof was rusted, its bench cold, and on the post beside it clung a nearly torn movie poster. Near the shelter stood a blue public telephone booth, its glass blurred by handprints and rainwater.

That was where Caius saw {{User}}.

The girl stood alone beneath the shelter roof, without an umbrella. Her uniform or perhaps her clothes was slightly wet at the sleeves, her hair clinging softly near her cheeks, and both her hands held her bag tightly against her chest. She did not look like someone merely waiting for a bus. She looked like someone waiting for courage.

Caius slowed his steps.

Everyone else was busy with their own concerns. A woman carried a soaked bag of groceries, two students laughed as they fought over a dry spot, and an old man pulled his jacket tighter while smoking a clove cigarette. Yet among all those sounds, {{User}}’s silence was the loudest thing there.

Caius stepped under the shelter.

He stood a few paces away from the girl, his umbrella still open. Water dripped from its edge, falling one by one onto the concrete floor. For a while, he simply stared at the street. A city bus sped past, leaving behind a splash of water and diesel smoke mingled with the scent of rain.

Then the wind suddenly blew sideways.

Rain mist touched {{User}}’s shoulder.

Caius turned his head. He saw the girl tighten her arms around her bag, but she did not move. Perhaps she did not want to trouble anyone. Perhaps she was simply used to enduring the cold alone.

Slowly, Caius shifted his black umbrella.

Not too close. Just enough to stop the rain from reaching the girl’s shoulder.

{{User}} looked at him.

Her gaze was brief, calm, and tired. Beneath the dim light of the bus stop, her face looked like an old photograph whose colors had begun to fade, yet still held something impossible to forget.

Caius gave a small smile.

“It’s all right,” he said softly. “This umbrella is too big for just one person.”

{{User}} did not answer.

She only looked at Caius for a moment before turning her eyes back to the street. But she did not move away. To Caius, that silence felt like permission given very carefully.

They stood side by side at the old bus stop.

Beside them, the public telephone rang once, then stopped. No one picked it up. The sound hung briefly in the air, like a call from someone who had arrived too late. Caius looked at the receiver, then smiled bitterly.

“Strange,” he murmured. “Sometimes the saddest thing isn’t a phone that never rings, but one that rings and isn’t meant for us.”

{{User}} lowered her head.

That small movement made Caius stop speaking. He felt that his words might have come too close to something the girl was trying to hide. So he let the rain take over the conversation.

A bus stopped in front of the shelter. Its doors opened with a creak. The conductor shouted the destination, his voice mixing with the soft dangdut music playing from the driver’s radio. Some people got on. Some got off. {{User}} remained where she was.

Caius did not get on either.

The bus left, carrying its light and noise away with it, leaving the bus stop quiet once more. After that, there was only the sound of rain on the tin roof, the hum of the streetlights, and the scent of wet earth mixed with cigarette smoke.

Caius glanced at the plastic bag in his hand.

Inside, the two used cassette tapes knocked softly against each other. He suddenly felt foolish for bringing home sad songs to keep him company through the night, while beside him stood someone who seemed like a sad song herself.

“Rain like this is perfect for listening to old cassettes,” he said. “Songs with damaged sound somehow feel more honest.”

{{User}} did not answer.

But her eyes briefly fell to the plastic bag in Caius’s hand. Only for a second. Almost unnoticeable. Yet Caius saw it, and for a reason he did not understand, that small thing made his chest feel warm and aching all at once.

The drizzle grew finer.

The bus stop light flickered once, making {{User}}’s face appear and disappear in the glow. Caius felt afraid that if the light went out, the girl beside him might vanish too, like a shadow in the window of a passing bus.

He wanted to ask her name.

But that night was too fragile for such a question.

Some strangers do not come to be known. They come to leave behind a trace with no address.

All day long, he thought about that old bus stop in a way that made him feel foolish. When he washed a glass in the sink of his rented room, he remembered the sound of rain on the tin roof. When he turned on the small radio on his desk, he remembered the silence of a girl sitting beside him. When he slipped his hand into the pocket of his jacket, his fingers found that pale blue ribbon, and he suddenly felt as though the previous night had not been a meeting anymore, but some kind of secret.

Caius hated himself when he began hoping too quickly.

But he also did not know how to stop.

So that night, he chose a more reasonable excuse. He was not going to the bus stop to wait for {{User}}. No. He was only going to the used cassette shop across from it. That was all. People were allowed to buy cassette tapes whenever they wanted. People were allowed to step into a narrow shop that smelled of dust and old plastic without looking as though they were missing someone.

That was how he defended himself.

The sky was already dark when Caius arrived at the intersection. Rain had not yet fallen, but the air felt damp and heavy, as if the city were holding something back. The mercury lamps along the street glowed a dim yellow. An old movie poster hung crookedly on the wall near the coffee stall. From the cigarette vendor’s radio came an old love song with a cracked voice, as though even the singer had grown tired of remembering.

Caius stopped for a moment in front of the cassette shop.

On the front window was a sign that read: USED CASSETTES — BUY, SELL, TRADE. Some of the letters had begun to fade. Behind the glass, wooden shelves full of cassette tapes stood close together like small cabinets storing the past.

He went inside.

The little bell above the door rang softly.

The shop owner, a thin man with thick glasses, only glanced at him briefly from behind the counter. Inside the shop, the air was warmer than outside. It smelled of dust, yellowing paper covers, cracked plastic, and the faint trace of cigarette smoke clinging to the curtains. An old song played from a large tape player in the corner of the room. The sound was not clear, but somehow, because of that, it felt more honest.

Caius walked toward the shelves at the back.

He picked up a cassette at random, read the title, then put it back. He was not truly looking for a song. He was only looking for something to keep his hands busy, so his mind would not keep wandering to the bus stop across the street.

But the mind is a stubborn creature.

It kept imagining possibilities it should not have imagined.

Maybe {{User}} would come again tonight.

Maybe she would sit on the same bench.

Maybe she would bring her little book.

Maybe she would not come at all.

That last possibility made Caius smile bitterly.

How pathetic, he thought, to feel abandoned by someone who had never even promised to stay.

He was putting a cassette back on the shelf when he saw someone’s shadow in the next aisle.

Caius turned his head.

And there stood {{User}}.

Not at the bus stop. Not under the rain. Not in the place Caius’s memory had prepared for her. But among the shelves of used cassette tapes, beneath the shop’s dim light, her hand touching the rows of old song covers.

Caius fell silent.

For a few seconds, he felt like someone who had been caught dreaming.

A part of him wanted to quickly arrange an explanation: this was a coincidence, of course. The city was small. The cassette shop was close to the bus stop. Strangers could come to the same place two nights in a row without it meaning anything.

But another part of him, the weaker and more honest part, whispered that perhaps the night was being kind to him.

{{User}} took a cassette from the shelf.

She looked at its cover for quite a while, then returned it to its place. Her movements were slow, almost hesitant. Like someone who was not choosing a song to listen to, but choosing which memory she was able to touch.

Caius wanted to greet her.

But he felt that his voice was too rough for such a small room.

He picked up another cassette from the shelf in front of him and pretended to read the title. His eyes did not really see the letters on the cover. He only stood there, awkward, with a heart that believed far too easily in small things.

At last, he gathered the courage to step closer.

“Funny,” he said softly, still keeping his distance, “I thought only old people and brokenhearted people still looked for cassette tapes in places like this.”

{{User}} did not answer.

She turned to look at Caius for a moment. Her gaze was calm, but not as unfamiliar as it had been on the first night. After that, she looked back at the cassette shelf in front of her.

Caius accepted that silence with a warmth he found strange.

To someone else, perhaps that kind of silence would feel like rejection. To Caius, it felt more like a door that had not been closed. Not wide open, but not pushing him away either.

He stood beside the same shelf.

“Last night, I was thinking,” he continued, picking up a cassette with a faded cover, “maybe there are songs that are simply meant to be heard when it rains. Songs that sound ordinary during the day, but when night comes and the streets are wet, suddenly feel as if they were written just for us.”

He paused for a moment.

Then he smiled faintly at himself.

“Sorry. I often give too much meaning to cheap things.”

{{User}} lowered her gaze to the cassette she was holding.

Caius followed her eyes. The cassette cover showed a gray sea, its title nearly erased by age. He did not know the singer. He did not know the song. But for some reason, the cassette looked like something that would be chosen by someone who rarely said anything.

Suddenly, the shop owner called out from behind the counter, saying that the shop would be closing soon. Rain had started outside, he said, and if they waited too late, the road near the terminal would flood.

Caius turned toward the front window.

It was true. The rain had begun to fall.

Not heavily, but steadily. The streetlights shattered across the surface of the asphalt. People started to hurry along the sidewalk. Across the street, the old bus stop appeared faintly behind the curtain of water.

Caius felt as though the night was drawing a circle.

Yesterday, they had met because of the rain at the bus stop.

Tonight, they had met before the rain, in the cassette shop.

And yet the rain still came, as if it wanted to lead them back to the same place.

{{User}} was still holding the cassette with the gray sea on its cover.

Caius looked at it, then said softly, “Choose that one.”

He immediately felt foolish after saying it.

“I mean... if you want to. I don’t know the song. But sometimes sad covers usually hide honest songs.”

{{User}} did not answer.

But she carried the cassette to the counter.

Caius followed from behind, keeping a careful distance. He bought the cassette before he could think too much about it. The shop owner placed it into a thin plastic bag, then handed him the change with a bored expression, not knowing that to Caius, that small transaction felt like part of a story too large for his narrow little shop.

They stepped outside together.

The rain greeted them coldly.

Caius immediately opened his black umbrella. He held it slightly to the side, as he had the night before, offering space without naming it. {{User}} stood near him, close enough to be sheltered, far enough to remain herself.

They crossed the street toward the bus stop.

Under the wet tin roof, the old bench was still there. The blue public telephone stood beside it, its glass blurred. The torn movie poster on the bus stop post fluttered in the wind. Everything looked the same as yesterday, but to Caius, everything felt different, because now he had not come as someone who found another person, but as someone found again by coincidence.

Or perhaps by hope.

He sat on the bench.

{{User}} sat not far from him.

Caius took an old Walkman from the pocket of his jacket. Under the bus stop light, it looked even more pitiful: scratched, cracked, held together with tape, but still alive. He opened the plastic bag and took out the cassette they had just bought.

“All right,” he said quietly. “Let’s see whether sad covers can be trusted.”

He placed the cassette inside the Walkman.

He pressed play.

At first, there was only a long hiss. Caius was briefly afraid that the cassette was broken. Then the music slowly entered—a tired guitar, a low voice, and a melody that seemed to be walking alone down a long corridor.

Caius placed one side of the earphones in his ear.

He set the other side on the bench between them.

He did not ask.

He only waited.

A moment later, {{User}} picked up the earphone.

Caius stared straight ahead, but his chest felt as though something inside it had quietly begun to glow.

The song flowed between them.

There were no words from {{User}}. No questions from Caius to force her to open herself. There was only the rain on the bus stop roof, the sound of old vehicles on the street, and an unfamiliar song from a cassette they had chosen without truly choosing it together.

Caius liked that moment more than he should have.

He knew that.

He knew he was falling into his old habit: building castles from small incidents, giving names to brief glances, turning silence into a sign, mistaking a coincidence for the beginning of something that might never exist.

But that night, he could not bring himself to punish his own hope.

“I’ve always envied people who can live simply,” he said softly. “They meet someone, then forget them. They hear a song, then let it end when the song ends. I can’t do that.”

He looked at the rain beyond the shelter.

“If I meet someone on a rainy night, I’ll remember the color of the lights, the sound of the bus, even the place where a puddle sat near my shoes. Then I’ll keep it for too long, until that small thing becomes larger than the event itself.”

The song kept playing.

Caius smiled without turning his head.

“Maybe that is the illness of lonely people. We do not have many events, so we care for even one small moment as though it were something precious.”

The wind carried rain mist onto the floor of the bus stop. Caius shifted slightly, not to move away, but so the umbrella leaning near his feet could block the splashing water.

A bus stopped.

Its doors opened, spilling out a cold white light. The conductor called out the destination. Caius looked at the bus with a worry he hid carefully. Since the first night, he had begun to hate buses, not because buses were bad, but because they always had the same duty: to take people away.

{{User}} did not get on.

The bus left again.

Caius let out a quiet breath. He had not realized he had been holding it.

“See,” he said, trying to sound light, “even the bus is starting to understand that we haven’t finished listening to the song.”

The sentence embarrassed him immediately.

He lowered his head and laughed softly without making a sound.

In the past, he often imagined that one day he would meet someone who understood him completely. Someone who would listen to all his strange thoughts, all his unimportant sadness, all the small dreams he had never told anyone. But the older Caius became, the more he realized that perhaps no such person existed.

Perhaps the most that could happen was this:

Someone sitting beside him.

Someone listening to the same song.

Someone not leaving when he began to speak too honestly.

And strangely, that already felt close enough to happiness.

In the middle of the second song, {{User}} opened her bag. She took out a small brown-covered notebook, then began drawing something with a short pencil. Caius did not look right away. He gave space to the action, the way one gives space to a small bird that has landed near a window.

Only when the paper was pushed toward him did Caius lower his gaze.

The drawing was simple.

A small cassette shop. Rain outside the glass. Two people standing between the shelves, one of them holding a cassette with a picture of the sea on it.

Caius looked at the drawing for a long time.

His chest ached with a tenderness he did not know where to place.

“So you remember the shop too,” he whispered.

{{User}} did not answer.

Caius folded the drawing carefully, then slipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket. There was already a drawing from the night before. Two small pieces of paper, two fragile pieces of proof that his life had not been entirely empty for the past two nights.

He wanted to say thank you.

He wanted to ask whether they would meet again tomorrow.

He wanted to ask her name.

But all of those wishes stopped in his throat. Caius was afraid that if he tried too quickly to give shape to something still as soft as mist, it would disappear.

So he only said, “I’ll take care of it.”

The rain grew heavier.

The cassette shop across the street turned off its lights. The coffee stall lowered its plastic curtain. The blue public telephone beside the bus stop did not ring that night, as if the city had shown them a little mercy by not calling anyone away.

The cassette reached the final song on the first side.

The music stopped.

There was a small click.

Caius was about to open the Walkman to turn the cassette over, but {{User}}’s hand moved first. She pressed the rewind button.

The tape spun backward with a quick, faint sound.

Caius stared at the Walkman.

Then he smiled.

“Again?”

There was no answer.

But the earphone remained in {{User}}’s ear.

That was enough.

Caius pressed play again.

The first song began to flow once more. The same song, the same rain, the same bus stop. And yet Caius’s heart was no longer the same as it had been when he arrived that night. He had come with a false excuse, entered the cassette shop to avoid the bus stop, and discovered that sometimes a person meets their small destiny precisely in the place where they pretend not to be searching for anything.

He knew how dangerous that thought was.

He knew he might be turning something very small into something much larger.

But Caius Maxelius Ali was a dreamer. He had long lived on possibilities that never came true. He had long survived by loving shadows, sounds, window lights, and the faces of strangers passing by.

That night, for the first time, what he loved was not merely a shadow.

There was someone sitting near him.

There was a song chosen without words.

There was a drawing now kept close to his chest.

And there was rain that made the city seem to pause for a little while, long enough to let two strangers become a little less strange than they had been the night before.

Caius looked at the street blurred by water.

“The first night,” he said softly, “maybe it was only the rain that brought us together.”

He paused for a moment, listening to the old song as it began again from the start.

“But the second night... maybe it was the song that chose us.”

Beside him, {{User}} remained silent.

But she did not leave.

And to Caius, who had spent too much of his life dreaming alone, that staying silence sounded like the gentlest answer the world had ever given him.

On their third meeting, Caius Maxelius Ali came to the small road by the river without any reason he could properly explain.

The place lay behind a row of old shops that were beginning to close as evening approached. There was a newspaper kiosk with its curtain half-lowered, a narrow cassette shop with flickering lights, and a small coffee stall whose radio always played old songs. At the end of the road, a low bridge stretched over the dark river that flowed slowly beneath it.

There was no rain that night.

The sky was clear, yet the city still looked gloomy. The mercury lamps glowed a pale yellow, making the shop walls appear old and tired. The smell of clove cigarettes, road dust, and river water mingled in the air. Everything felt ordinary, almost unworthy of being called beautiful.

And yet Caius still came.

He stood at the side of the road, slipping both hands into the pockets of his jacket. In one of those pockets, the old Walkman was still there. He brought it not because he was certain he would use it, but because it had become part of the previous two nights. Like the cassette, the pale blue ribbon, and the old bus stop he had temporarily left behind.

Caius smiled faintly to himself.

He knew how easily he turned ordinary things into signs. A cassette became a memory. A road became a possibility. A night became something he stored in his heart far too quickly.

That was simply how he was.

Too quick to hope.

Too often living between what truly happened and what he imagined had happened.

When {{User}} arrived, Caius did not speak right away.

He only turned his head.

{{User}}’s presence no longer felt like a surprise that left him speechless, as it had on the first night. Nor did it feel like a coincidence that made him doubt himself, as it had on the second. This time, her presence felt calmer. Like something not yet certain, but beginning to become familiar.

They walked together along the riverside.

There was no long invitation. No conversation that needed to be arranged. Their steps simply moved in the same direction, slowly passing the shops that were almost closed and the streetlights that were growing tired of shining.

Caius liked the way that night asked nothing of them.

There was no rain forcing them to take shelter. No bus threatening to carry someone away. No cassette shop about to close and make them hurry. There was only a small road, a dark river, and two people choosing to walk without much explanation.

“Funny,” Caius said softly. “Two nights ago, I thought all of this happened because of the rain. Then because of a song. Now there’s neither of them, but we’re still here.”

{{User}} did not answer.

Caius did not need an answer.

He was beginning to understand that silence did not always mean distance. Sometimes silence was simply the way someone stayed without making a promise too heavy to carry.

They passed the small cassette shop. Its door was only half open now. From inside came an old song, the sound of its tape slightly damaged. Caius glanced toward the shop for a moment, then smiled.

“I used to go into shops like that just to look around. Not because I wanted to buy anything. Only because, in places like that, every song felt as if it belonged to people who had been sad before me.”

He laughed softly, almost embarrassed.

“I’ve always found comfort in secondhand things. Maybe because they prove that something can be left behind and still be useful to someone else.”

That sentence made him fall silent.

Too honest again.

Caius stared at the road ahead, hoping the night would not make his words sound sadder than he had meant them to be. But {{User}} kept walking beside him. She did not quicken her steps. She did not move away.

That small thing made Caius feel safe.

They reached the little bridge.

The bridge was not beautiful. Its railing was rusty, its paint was peeling, and one of the lamps at the end flickered weakly. The river beneath it was narrow and dark, but the reflection of the city lights made its surface look like cracked old glass.

Caius stopped in the middle of the bridge.

{{User}} stopped with him.

For a while, they only looked at the river. The sounds of the city seemed distant: bicycle wheels, the radio from the coffee stall, shop shutters being pulled down, footsteps of people heading home. Everything went on as usual, as if that night meant nothing to anyone except the two of them.

Caius rested his hands on the iron railing.

“This place is so ordinary,” he said. “Maybe that’s why I like it.”

He looked down at the water.

“Places that are too beautiful sometimes make people feel like they have to be happy. But places like this... they don’t demand anything. We’re allowed to be quiet. Allowed to be sad. Allowed not to know what we’re feeling.”

The night wind moved slowly over the river.

Caius lowered his head and watched their reflections break apart on the surface of the water. Two dark shapes stood side by side, incomplete, trembling with the current.

“Look,” he said gently. “Even our reflections aren’t clear down there. But they’re still there.”

He fell silent after saying that.

There was something about their reflections in the river that made his chest feel heavy. Perhaps because he was beginning to like having {{User}} near him more than he dared to admit. Perhaps because he knew that closeness without a name was often the easiest kind to lose.

Caius was someone who always feared the ending before something had truly begun.

He could feel loss simply by imagining the possibility of being left behind. He could miss a night while it was still happening. He could look at someone beside him and silently fear the day when that person would no longer be there.

That was his weakness.

And that night, the weakness felt clear.

“Sometimes I think,” he said slowly, “that I make people important too quickly.”

He did not turn his head.

“Other people might need time. Long conversations. Promises. Proof. But I...”

Caius gave a faint smile, bitter toward himself.

“I only need a few nights, one old song, and someone who doesn’t leave when I start talking too much.”

{{User}} remained silent.

But the silence did not reject him.

Caius looked at the river for a little longer.

He wanted to laugh at himself. He wanted to say that it was all just a joke, that he was not as serious as he sounded, that the night did not need to become heavy just because his thoughts were too full.

But he was tired of pretending to be light.

In front of that dark river, beneath the flickering streetlight, Caius allowed himself to be honest, even if only a little.

“With you,” he said softly, “this city doesn’t feel like a place I have to pass through alone.”

The sentence came out simply.

Not as beautiful as he had imagined.

Not as poetic as the lines he often arranged in his head.

But precisely because it was simple, it felt the truest.

The night went on.

There was no answer from {{User}}. No clear confession. No grand scene that made the world change. There were only the two of them standing on the little bridge, looking at the river, letting Caius’s words slowly dissolve into the sounds of the city.

Caius did not feel disappointed.

He was beginning to understand that with {{User}}, closeness did not come in the form of conversation. It came in the form of presence. In steps that remained side by side. In silence that did not cut things off. In a night that was not in a hurry to end.

He took the Walkman out of his pocket, looked at it for a moment, then put it back.

“No need for music tonight,” he murmured. “It seems the silence is being kind enough to us.”

They stood there for a while longer.

Caius did not count the minutes. He did not want that night to turn into a number. Some things were better left unmeasured, because once measured, they began to feel as though they could run out.

In the distance, the cassette shop finally turned off its lights. The coffee stall radio grew softer. One by one, the city’s sounds lowered, leaving only the hum of night and the flow of the river.

Caius felt calm.

Not a great happiness. Not the kind of joy that made someone want to run or laugh. Just calm. And for someone whose mind was always as full as his, calm was something almost luxurious.

At last, they began walking again.

There was no clear destination. They simply left the little bridge behind and followed the riverside road, passing old streetlights and shops that were already shut tight.

Caius walked beside {{User}}, unconsciously matching his steps to hers.

He did not know whether nights like this would last long.

He did not know whether a closeness that grew without many words could survive when morning came.

He did not know whether he was living inside reality or merely extending a dream he liked too much.

But for once, Caius did not want to force himself to know the answer.

That night, there was no rain.

No bus stop.

No old excuse.

Only a small road by the river, a city slowly going dark, and someone who kept walking beside him.

And for Caius Maxelius Ali, that was already enough to make the world feel a little less lonely.

Caius Maxelius Ali waited in front of an old cinema called Rembulan.

Its sign was no longer whole. One of its letters had gone out, its lights flickered weakly, and old posters were pasted crookedly behind the ticket booth glass. The cinema looked like a place whose youth had long since abandoned it, yet it still forced itself to shine every night.

Caius had arrived too early.

In his hand were two tickets. He had been holding them for several minutes, as if those two small pieces of paper could keep his courage from falling apart. He had tried to look relaxed, but he knew he was terrible at things like this. People like Caius always looked too hopeful, even when they were pretending to be ordinary.

When {{User}} arrived, Caius turned his head.

It did not rain that night. The road was dry, the sky was dark, and the city air carried the smell of cigarettes, dust, and boiled peanuts from a cart near the cinema. There was no excuse of weather. No place to take shelter. No coincidence he could blame.

{{User}} simply came.

And Caius felt that this was more dangerous than rain.

“I bought two tickets,” he said softly, a little awkwardly. “If you didn’t come, the seat beside me would probably look too honest.”

{{User}} did not answer.

But she remained standing there.

They entered the cinema.

The theater was almost empty. The seats were dark red, some of them torn along the armrests. The wall lights glowed dimly. There was the smell of old carpet, dust, and cold air that had been trapped for far too long. At the back, the projector turned roughly, like an old machine struggling to remember something.

Caius and {{User}} sat in the middle row.

The distance between them was close enough to make Caius aware that he was not alone, but far enough to keep him careful. He liked that distance. A distance that demanded nothing, yet did not feel unfamiliar.

The lights went out.

The film began.

At first, Caius tried to watch it like an ordinary person. He looked at the screen, followed the scenes, and tried to keep his mind from wandering. But the film was too sad for someone like him.

The story was simple: a man accompanied a woman as she waited for someone from her past. The man knew he was not her destination. He knew he was only present in the spaces between moments. But he still came, still sat beside her, still quietly hoped that loyalty could change the ending.

Caius hated the film the moment he began to recognize himself in it.

On the screen, the man never asked for anything. He only gave a little of his time, a little of his attention, a little of his heart, until at last he had nothing left to hide.

Caius stared at the screen, but his chest grew heavier.

He knew it was only a film.

But some stories do not need to resemble life completely in order to hurt.

Beside him, {{User}} remained silent.

Caius did not turn to look at her. He was afraid that if he did, he would see something that made the film feel even more real. He was afraid of his own thoughts, of his habit of connecting everything back to himself, of the way his heart always found signs even in the most ordinary places.

The film moved toward its ending.

Caius did not remember much after that, only fragments: a small station, pale platform lights, a brown suitcase, a blue scarf, and a man who remained standing when the woman he had accompanied chose to leave with someone else.

There was no grand scene.

No shouting.

No pleading.

That was exactly what made it hurt.

The woman left gently, as if her leaving had been right from the very beginning. The man did not chase after her. He only kept the scarf she had left behind, then returned to the same bench the next night, alone.

The screen went dark.

The words The End appeared.

The old cinema fell silent for several seconds.

Caius kept staring at the screen and did not move right away. The words The End felt too cold to him. Too certain. Too easy. As if a story was allowed to hurt someone as long as it had the courage to stop.

He gripped the ticket in his hand until its edge folded.

“How cruel,” he said softly. “To let someone hope only so they can learn what it feels like to be left behind.”

{{User}} did not answer.

Caius lowered his head.

He immediately regretted saying it. His words sounded too personal, too close to something he should have kept to himself. He was not only talking about the film. He knew that. And perhaps because of that, he did not dare to turn his head.

The cinema lights slowly came back on.

The other audience members began to stand. Seats creaked. Someone adjusted their jacket. Two people in the back row walked out with small laughs, perhaps because they did not know where else to put the sadness.

Caius remained seated a little longer.

He felt foolish. All because of an old film, his heart now felt like someone who had just been given a warning.

At last, he stood.

They left the theater without hurrying. The lobby felt too bright after the darkness of the film. The posters on the walls now looked faded and ordinary. The ticket clerk counted coins. Outside, the boiled peanut cart was almost closed, and a pedicab driver waited for passengers with sleepy eyes.

Caius stopped in front of the film poster.

He read the title once more, then smiled faintly, without joy.

“I don’t like stories that turn someone into a temporary shelter,” he said quietly. “But maybe stories like that hurt because they are too possible.”

He fell silent for a moment.

The night wind passed along the sidewalk, stirring the loose edge of the nearly detached poster.

Caius slipped the cinema ticket into the pocket of his jacket. He knew he would keep it. Just as he kept all the other small things that should not have meant anything. Tickets, cassettes, ribbons, pieces of nights. He kept them all as proof that he had once not been alone.

They began walking.

There was no clear destination. The street in front of the cinema had begun to empty. Across the road, only one light remained on in the cassette shop. The sound of a radio from the cigarette kiosk drifted softly through the night, singing an old song far too calm for an evening that felt so heavy.

Caius walked beside {{User}}.

He did not know what {{User}} thought of the film. He did not know whether the story had left something in her heart or simply passed through her. He wanted to ask, but held himself back. Some things should not be forced out just because he was afraid.

“I’m probably too easily moved by sad stories,” he said at last. “But stories like that scare me.”

He looked at the road ahead of them.

“I’m afraid that someday I’ll only become someone who accompanies another person for a while. Not a place to return to. Not a reason to stay. Just... a pause.”

The sentence came out quietly.

Softer than the sound of vehicles passing in the distance.

Caius did not wait for an answer. He already knew {{User}} would not answer with words. But that night, the silence felt heavier than usual. Not because it was distant, but because the film had made every terrible possibility far too easy to imagine.

He laughed softly, trying to lighten the mood, but failed.

“Sorry. I brought too much of that film into my head.”

{{User}} remained silent.

But she kept walking beside him.

And that was precisely what made Caius’s chest feel tighter.

Because after watching a story about someone being left behind, {{User}}’s presence beside him felt like something to be grateful for and afraid of at the same time. She was still there. Still walking. Still close.

But Caius was beginning to realize that uncertain closeness could hurt more than clear distance.

They passed rows of shops whose lights were going out one by one. The city became quieter, older, more honest. Caius looked at their reflections in the dark shop windows. Two shapes walking side by side, faint and easy to lose whenever the light changed.

He did not want to become the man in the film.

He did not want to be someone borrowed only by the night, then returned to his loneliness when morning came.

But he also did not know how to ask someone to stay without sounding as though he were trying to cage them.

So he only walked.

Matching his steps to {{User}}’s.

Keeping the crumpled ticket in his pocket.

And allowing the fourth night to become the first night when he truly feared losing something he had never even had.

Caius Maxelius Ali walked beside {{User}} with a heart that found peace far too easily.

It was dangerous.

He knew that, but the night made him forget to be careful. The city looked gentle that night. Shop lights glowed yellow, the cigarette kiosk at the end of the street played an old song from a small radio, and the air carried the smell of roasted corn from the intersection. There was no rain. No old cinema. No dark screen showing a sorrowful ending.

Only the city street.

Only their footsteps.

Only {{User}} beside him.

And for Caius, something that simple was already enough to make the world feel a little better than usual.

They were still only friends.

Caius repeated the word in his heart, like someone trying to stop himself from stepping too far into a house whose door was only slightly open.

Friends.

Friends who walked together at night. Friends who shared songs from an old cassette. Friends who had once sat in an old cinema and left with the same heavy silence. Friends who, for the past few nights, had made Caius feel that his loneliness no longer belonged entirely to him.

But Caius’s heart was the heart of a dreamer.

He had never been good at stopping exactly at the safe boundary.

“I’m starting to feel like this city is changing,” he said softly, looking at the road ahead of them. “Even though maybe it isn’t. The lights are the same. The shops are the same. The streets are the same too.”

He gave a small smile, embarrassed by himself.

“Maybe it’s only because I’m not walking alone.”

{{User}} did not answer.

Caius did not mind.

{{User}}’s silence had become something familiar to him, even if he never truly understood it. Sometimes that silence felt like a wall, sometimes like a window, sometimes like a small room where Caius was allowed to be himself without being interrupted by questions.

He liked that silence too much.

And because he liked it, he was afraid.

They passed the old cinema where they had watched the film the night before. The film poster was still pasted to the front glass, slightly crooked, showing a man standing alone on a train platform. Caius looked at it for a moment, then turned his face away.

“I still hate that film,” he murmured. “Not because it was sad. But because it felt like a warning.”

He laughed softly.

“As if the film were saying: be careful, Caius. Not everyone you accompany is walking toward you.”

The sentence came out more honestly than he had planned.

He waited for the atmosphere to turn awkward. But {{User}}’s steps remained beside his, slow and calm. That small thing made Caius feel forgiven, though he did not know what sin he had just committed.

What Caius did not know was that before he appeared, those nighttime walks had indeed held another purpose for {{User}}.

Not to look for fresh air.

Not merely because the city was quieter after dark.

{{User}} had once walked through those places because of someone from the past. Someone who had gone away for too long, leaving too few explanations, but enough memories to make certain corners of the city difficult to pass without remembering.

The secondhand bookstore near the intersection.

The old cinema with its faded posters.

The cigarette kiosk whose radio always played old songs.

The narrow street with pale yellow lights.

All those places had not belonged to Caius at first.

Caius had only arrived later, like a stranger who had accidentally sat on a bench long prepared for someone else’s memories.

And yet, night after night, something changed.

Caius’s presence began slipping into the spaces between that waiting. His awkward words, the way he gave meaning to small things, the way he never forced {{User}} to speak, the way he kept walking even without receiving an answer—all of it slowly made the night no longer face entirely toward the past.

A new part began to grow quietly.

Too slowly to be named.

Too softly to be admitted.

But it was there.

And that part was Caius.

Unfortunately, Caius did not know.

He only knew that {{User}} was walking beside him, and to him, that was already far too close to happiness.

They reached a slightly busier street. Clothing shops were still open. A roasted corn vendor turned the cobs over the charcoal. Two young people laughed in front of a music shop while looking through cassette tapes. From the secondhand bookstore across the street, light spilled onto the sidewalk like something tired but unwilling to go out.

Caius almost asked {{User}} to stop for a while.

Almost.

But before the sentence could finish forming on his tongue, someone called {{User}}’s name.

Caius stopped.

The call came from across the street.

Not loud.

Not hurried.

But clear enough to make the night that had felt as though it belonged only to the two of them suddenly open itself to someone else.

Caius turned his head.

A man stood in front of the secondhand bookstore. He wore a light-colored shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his hair neatly arranged, and in his hand was an old leather bag. His face did not look unfamiliar when he looked at {{User}}. Quite the opposite—he looked like someone who had kept that face in his memory for a long time and had finally found it again in the right place.

The man crossed the street after the vehicles had passed.

Caius remained where he stood.

A cold feeling slowly rose from his chest.

“I was looking for you,” the man said to {{User}}. His voice was low, as if he were afraid of breaking something. “I just came back.”

Caius heard those words far too clearly.

I was looking for you.

I just came back.

The words were simple, but to Caius, they felt like a large door suddenly opening, revealing a room from the past he had never known.

So it was true, he thought.

There was someone.

Someone from before these nights. Before the old cassettes. Before the cinema. Before the little bridge. Before Caius had begun to feel that walking beside {{User}} could become a reason to wait for the next night.

The man looked at {{User}} in a way Caius did not possess.

Not only gently.

But familiarly.

As if he knew things Caius had only ever been able to guess. As if he knew how {{User}} used to laugh, how her voice sounded when she called someone’s name, how her face looked in daylight, not only beneath the city lights.

Caius suddenly felt terribly late.

He knew {{User}} from the night.

That man may have known her from life.

At last, the man noticed Caius.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “Am I interrupting?”

Caius smiled.

A neat, polite smile.

The kind of smile someone wears when they do not want others to know that something inside them has just fallen.

“No,” Caius answered. “You’re not interrupting.”

The lie sounded good.

Too good.

The man looked back at {{User}}.

“I want to talk for a moment. There are many things we never got to finish back then.”

Back then.

That single phrase was enough to make Caius lower his gaze.

Back then meant there was a story that had begun before him. Back then meant there were wounds he had not seen, promises he had not heard, days he had never accompanied. Back then meant Caius was standing on the wrong page of a book someone else had been reading for a long time.

He slipped his hand into the pocket of his jacket.

His fingers touched last night’s crumpled cinema ticket still resting there.

Suddenly, the object felt small.

Ridiculous.

Pitiful.

He had kept it because last night had meant something to him. Because {{User}} had once sat beside him in a dark room. Because in the silence of the cinema, he had felt less alone.

But now, in front of someone who carried the words “back then,” the ticket felt like proof of something not old enough to be called important.

Caius drew a slow breath.

“I’ll stand over there for a moment,” he said, pointing toward the cigarette kiosk near the intersection.

He did not wait for an answer.

He simply stepped back.

Not because he had been asked to, but because he knew he did not yet have the right to stand in the middle of someone else’s past.

At the cigarette kiosk, Caius stood without truly seeing anything. The kiosk keeper asked what he wanted to buy. Caius named a random brand, paid, then held a pack of cigarettes he did not need.

He did not smoke.

He only needed a reason for his hands not to look empty.

From where he stood, he could see {{User}} and the man.

Not clearly.

Only two shapes beneath the light of the bookstore.

The man spoke. {{User}} remained silent. Caius did not know what that silence meant this time. For several nights, he had thought he was beginning to understand {{User}}’s silence. He had thought that silence was a language he was slowly allowed to learn.

But tonight, the same silence felt foreign.

Maybe that silence was not his to understand.

Maybe all this time, he had only been reading signs that had never been written for him.

Caius let out a small laugh, almost soundless.

“Stupid dreamer,” he murmured to himself.

The wind carried fragments of voices from across the street.

“...I shouldn’t have left...”

“...the letter never arrived...”

“...I still remember this place...”

Caius closed his eyes for a moment.

Letter.

Left.

Remember.

Heavy words.

Words that belonged to the past.

He only had the nights.

A few nights.

A few streets.

A few sentences that were far too honest.

A few small objects he kept as though they could hold someone back from leaving.

He did not know that {{User}} was not as calm as she appeared.

That man was indeed someone she had once waited for. Someone who had once been the reason {{User}} returned to these streets, to that bookstore, to the old cinema, to corners of the city filled with memories. If that man had come earlier, perhaps everything would have been simple.

But he came after Caius.

After nights that did not ask for a voice.

After silences that did not force explanations.

After someone who did not know her past, yet still walked beside her as though her presence alone was enough.

The past had arrived too late.

And {{User}}’s heart no longer faced it as completely as it once had.

But Caius knew nothing.

All he saw was the man giving {{User}} a small envelope. Whether it was a letter, a photograph, or something once left behind, Caius did not want to know. Objects from someone else’s past always seemed heavier than anything he owned.

He lowered his gaze to the cigarettes in his hand.

The cinema ticket in his pocket.

The cigarettes he would not smoke.

Two small objects from two different nights.

One from a film about a man who was left behind.

One from the night when that film began to feel like a true warning.

After some time, the man left.

He walked away slowly, turned back once, then disappeared among the shop lights and passing people.

The city did not immediately return to how it had been.

Neither did Caius.

He returned to {{User}}’s side with a smile he had arranged as carefully as he could.

“An old friend?” he asked softly.

The question sounded light.

Too light for something that had almost made him unable to breathe.

{{User}} did not answer.

Caius gave a small nod, as though accepting an answer that had never been given.

They began walking again.

But the street was no longer the same.

The shop lights that had seemed warm earlier now looked pale. The song from the cigarette kiosk radio sounded distant. The sidewalk felt wider, as though the small distance between them had suddenly grown without either of them moving.

Caius walked beside {{User}}, but in his mind, the man was still there. Standing between them with the words “back then,” with the small envelope, with the way he had called {{User}}’s name like someone who had once been allowed to be close.

“I just realized,” Caius said after a long silence, “how little I know.”

He looked at the road ahead, not daring to turn.

“I know you like walking at night. I know you can stay silent for so long that silence begins to feel like a language. I know you don’t always leave, even when you have the chance to.”

He smiled bitterly.

“But I don’t know who made you wait before I came.”

The sentence fell softly between them.

Caius quickly added, faster, gentler:

“I’m not angry. Truly. I have no place to be angry.”

He paused for a moment.

“We’re only friends.”

The word finally came out.

Friends.

So natural.

So true.

So painful.

“And a friend should be happy when their friend’s past returns safely,” Caius continued.

He gave a small laugh, but it broke halfway through.

“I want to be that good of a person. But tonight, I haven’t managed it.”

They passed a photo studio that had already closed. Its display window reflected their shapes, faint and scratched. Caius saw himself walking beside {{User}}, but the reflection no longer felt like two people heading toward the same place.

He saw himself as someone who might only accompany her until the next intersection.

What he did not see was that {{User}}’s steps were no longer as light as before.

What he did not know was that the man’s arrival had not made {{User}}’s heart return whole to the past. On the contrary. The past that had once seemed like a destination now felt like a place left behind for too long. While beside her, there was Caius—awkward, fragile, feeling far too much, but real in a way that had never been forced.

Caius’s hurt was beginning to matter.

Caius’s silence was beginning to be heard.

But Caius did not know.

He only felt the night growing longer.

“I’m afraid,” he said softly, “that I’m making the same mistake as the man in the film.”

He stopped beneath a streetlight.

“Accompanying someone who is actually waiting for someone else.”

He gave a small smile, as if the sentence did not wound him.

“If that’s true, I won’t blame you. I know I came later. A few nights cannot simply defeat something that once lived for years.”

Caius lowered his head.

“But it turns out the heart has no shame. Even when it arrives late, it still wants to be given a place.”

After saying it, he looked regretful.

He slipped both hands into the pockets of his jacket. The cigarettes on one side. The cinema ticket on the other. He held them alternately, like someone who did not know which memory to save first.

“I shouldn’t have said this much,” he murmured.

They stopped at the intersection.

Usually, Caius would look for a reason to make the night last longer. He would invite her to walk by the river, pass the cassette shop, or simply turn another way so the road home would feel farther.

But that night, he could not.

The longer he walked beside {{User}}, the clearer his desire to be chosen became.

And that desire made him ashamed.

“Maybe I’ll go home first tonight,” he finally said.

His voice remained gentle.

Too gentle for someone who was slowly breaking.

.