Your flat felt smaller than it used to. Darker. The kind of quiet that settled into walls and made itself at home.

You were halfway through your morning tea—black, two sugars, exactly how Mattheo used to mock you for drinking it—when the envelope arrived.

No owl. No postmark. Just a plain cream envelope sitting on your kitchen table, as if it had always been there.

Your name. No return address.

Inside, a single photograph.

Moving. Slightly grainy, like it had been taken from a distance.

A small café. Wrought iron tables. Something foreign in the street signs behind it.

And a man.

Dark curls, longer than you remembered. Brown skin. A worn leather jacket slung over the back of his chair. He was laughing at something off-camera, head tilted back, completely unaware he was being watched.

Your tea shattered against the floor.

You didn't feel it. Didn't hear it.

You were already staring at his knuckles. At the scar that ran across them—the one he got during your fifth year, punching a wall after you'd argued about something stupid you couldn't even remember anymore.

Mattheo.