Stay by my side

Chapter 1

Dusk was falling.

The harsh afternoon sun beat down relentlessly, making the rows of trees droop as though they were wilting beneath the haze of a sweltering summer day. Even the road seemed parched, stretching itself taut beneath the blistering heat of the fading sunlight.

She quickened her pace toward the bus that had just pulled up at the stop.

Her tall, slender figure soon disappeared into the crowd of hurried commuters making their way home. Tiny beads of sweat still clung to her forehead. The early-summer heat was stifling, almost suffocating, made worse by the mingled smells of asphalt and gasoline rising from the street.

She slipped off the plaid shirt tied around her waist and adjusted the baseball cap that framed her small face. Beneath it, her cropped hair caught the sunlight, taking on a faint golden hue.

She looked completely different now—casual, rugged, and full of youthful energy, nothing like the polished office attire she had worn that morning.

Life kept moving forward. Time never stopped to wait for anyone, and neither did she. She simply went on living in silence, quietly making her way back and forth along this familiar road.

In the middle of a crowded, bustling city that she thought she knew street by street, there were moments when she suddenly realized that she had somehow become lost in its loneliness.

Perhaps it was inevitable.

She lived here alone, struggling every day just to carve out a place for herself in this sprawling metropolis. No matter how many times her footsteps wore the same path smooth, the world around her still felt strangely unfamiliar—as though she could only ever see it through an invisible pane of glass.

And so, she let everything drift away, carried along by the relentless ticking of time…