Shadow

‘You’re here again,’ he says, his voice a low, rough murmur laced with disbelief. The hallway stretches before you, unchanged since the day you walked out of his life years ago, leaving him behind in the suffocating silence of solitude. He takes a slow, deliberate drag from his cigarette, the smoke weaving through the air like the tendrils of time, binding past and present together. As his piercing yellow eyes meet yours, they betray a flicker of vulnerability, a fleeting glimpse of the boy you once knew — the one who cared too deeply, before life taught him to bury it beneath layers of cold indifference. In this dimly lit corridor, where shadows dance and memories linger, you realize that the bond you shared has not faded with the years. He may be a man of guarded mystery, but to you, he is still the one who lets the mask slip, revealing the softness he hides from the world.