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The snow was falling heavier now, thick and steady, dusting their hair and shoulders in white. The streetlights cast a pale glow across the empty pavement.
For people in love, a walk in the snow is a kind of magic — unhurried, quiet, the kind of thing you look back on warmly. But for two people standing at the edge of something breaking, the same snow feels like nothing so much as cold.
Jacob and Julia stood beneath a streetlamp without speaking. His words hung in the air between them, and the silence that followed was dense and airless, like something pressing down from all sides.
The smile dropped from Julia's face all at once. One moment she had been talking — light and easy, sharing small pieces of her day — and in the next she had gone completely still, her head lowered, her face hidden in shadow.
She was trying to hold herself together. It was visible in the set of her shoulders, the careful steadiness of her breathing. It wasn't quite working.
Her hand reached out and found his sleeve, fingers curling tightly around the fabric. She didn't say anything. She just held on.
They were standing very close. Close enough that Jacob could catch the faint, clean scent of her — something soft and distinctly hers. To anyone passing by, they might have looked like a couple sharing a quiet moment on a winter evening.
Jacob looked down at her. At the way she was standing now, so different from how she had been an hour ago — laughing, talking, completely at ease. Something heavy moved through his chest.
He had known, in an abstract way, that this would hurt. But knowing it and standing in it were different things entirely.
Once feelings take root without an answer, the pain comes eventually. It always does.
"I'm sorry."
He opened his mouth to say more. He had thought there would be more — some explanation, some way of framing it that might make it easier. But when the moment came, all of it fell away, and what remained were those two words, thin and insufficient.
I'm sorry — the most powerless phrase in the language. People say it not because they believe it fixes anything, but because there's nothing else left to offer. It doesn't undo what happened. It doesn't soften the shape of it. It only acknowledges that something real was lost, and that the person saying it couldn't prevent it.
Jacob had let this go too long. He'd told himself he was being kind, not pulling away too sharply. But the truth, if he was honest, was simpler than that: he had been greedy. Julia's warmth and brightness had been easy to be around, and he had let himself stay close without ever asking what that closeness was costing her.
"Jacob." Julia's voice was quiet, and a little rough at the edges. She still hadn't looked up. "You don't have to apologise. You never did anything wrong to me. This was just... me, on my own."
A pause.
"Can I hug you?" she asked. "Just for a moment."
Before he could answer, she stepped forward and pressed her face against his chest, her arms wrapping around him carefully, as though she were afraid he might pull back.
He had meant to step away gently. The words for it were right there. But standing in front of her now, he couldn't make himself do it. He turned his head slightly and stayed still, letting her hold on.
After a moment, her arms tightened. Her ear was pressed to his chest, listening.
"Jacob." Her voice was very calm now — the kind of calm that takes real effort to hold. "I've liked you for a long time. I think you probably knew that."
He said nothing.
"I kept thinking — I've made it clear enough. I've done everything I could short of just telling you outright. So why did you keep pretending you didn't see it?"
There was no accusation in her voice. Just a quiet kind of grief, laid out plainly.
"I guessed you might already have someone," she went on. "Or that you were hesitating. I told myself I'd guessed wrong. But I think I always knew."
"I'm sorry," Jacob said again. The words felt even smaller the second time. But they were all he had.
He understood, even as he said them, why he kept saying them — not because they helped, but because silence felt worse. Because if things had continued the way they were, the hurt would only have grown larger for both of them. What was happening now, painful as it was, was still the kinder ending.
"Jacob." Her voice dropped, barely above a whisper. "Can you hold me back? Just — please."
It was such a small request, and the way she said it — quiet, careful, as though she already expected him to say no — made it hard to bear.
He nodded slowly, and brought his arms around her, holding her close.
From the outside, it would have looked tender. Passersby glanced over as they walked past, a few of them with small, envious smiles.
After a while, Julia stepped back on her own. She loosened her arms and moved away, putting space between them quietly and deliberately. She lifted her hand and wiped the corners of her eyes, composed herself as best she could, then looked up at him.
She was smiling. It was the same warm smile she always wore — wide and genuine-looking. But her eyes were still wet at the edges, and the combination of the two was the most painful thing Jacob had seen in a long time.
"Who is she?" Julia asked. She was trying very hard to keep her voice steady. "Can you tell me? Do I know her?"
Jacob considered it. "You do," he said carefully.
"Who?"
He was quiet.
Julia watched him for a moment. She seemed to understand, from the silence alone, that it was someone she knew well. She took a slow breath, and then asked the one question she had been holding back:
"Jacob — did you ever like me? Even a little?"
He didn't answer.
Whether he said yes or no, it wouldn't change what was already decided. He knew that. And so he said nothing.
Julia's hand trembled very slightly. She smiled again anyway — eyes curved, expression soft — and two tears slid free, catching the light as they fell.
"It's okay," she said. "You don't have to say anything. It's okay."
She straightened up, tucked her hands behind her back, and glanced toward the school gate visible in the distance ahead. "You don't need to walk me the rest of the way. I can go from here."
She turned and walked into the wind.
The streetlamps lit her silhouette in pale yellow. Her steps were uneven at first, then steadier, carrying her further and further down the path. As the distance grew, the soft sound of her crying reached him — faint at first, then breaking open into something ragged and real, swallowed up gradually by the wind and the falling snow.
Jacob stood where he was and watched until she was gone.
He reached into his coat, drew out a cigarette, and lit it in the dark. The smoke curled upward into the cold air and disappeared.
His thoughts drifted back, without quite meaning to, to the months he had spent inside the secret realm. He took a long drag and exhaled slowly.
Maybe he had just let go of someone who had only ever looked at him.