Mornings were when the bench felt most alive.
There was something about the garden bathed in soft light, about dew clinging to leaves and air that hadn’t yet been burdened by the day. These early hours brought with them all kinds of people. Each corner buzzed with movement, each breath of wind carried a rhythm. But the bench? She simply watched. And felt.

She had always loved mornings.

People came—dozens of them. Some with purpose, some without. The brisk walkers with their arms swinging in rhythm. The elderly with faces folded into stories. The students who had conveniently “forgotten” their classes and escaped to breathe for a while. And then… the lovers.

Oh, how the bench adored watching lovers.

There was something sacred in how they sat—never too far, never too close. Like two songs slowly blending into one melody. They talked about everything: meaningless things that suddenly felt meaningful. Favourite foods, the name of a childhood dog, dreams they’d abandoned, wounds they hadn’t yet spoken aloud. The bench listened quietly as these two souls, briefly homeless in the world, found shelter in each other.

To the bench, it was the closest thing to magic.

She’d been here long enough to know the language of affection—the way fingers hovered before they touched, the way laughter softened when it was truly safe. She had witnessed love stories bloom quietly between rustling trees and slipping time. Some lasted a season, others much longer. A few had returned as older versions of their younger selves, bringing children or silence with them.

And through it all, the bench remained. Watching. Remembering.
But perhaps what made her heart ache in the softest way… was remembering that she too, once had a friend.

Or at least, she thought she did

But even in solitude, the bench never stopped feeling. She had no voice, no limbs. But she held stories in her grain and rust, in the way her back creaked slightly when someone leaned into her. She had learned that maybe that’s what love was—not being seen, not being heard, but simply being there. And she was. Always.


The day drifted forward in its quiet, indifferent way. The sun had begun burning with that mid-afternoon fire—relentless, sharp, almost impatient. The garden, which buzzed with life in the mornings and softened into gold in the evenings, now stood mostly still, paused in the heat .

It was past 3:30 PM.

And there was no sign of Mayan.

That was unusual.

No—more than unusual. It was almost next to impossible.
No matter what the sky decided—whether it poured with monsoon chaos, scorched the ground in summer heat, or turned bone-cold with winter’s bite—Mayan always came. Same time. Same bench. Same quiet steps, carrying a small leather bag and a distant look in his eyes.

But today, the neem tree cast its usual shade on an unusually empty bench.

The leaves rustled lightly, as if whispering among themselves. Even the old gardener, sweeping near the gate, paused now and then to glance at the path Mayan always took.

But the path stayed empty.

The sunlight slowly began to lose its sharpness, its anger melting into a softer amber as evening approached. A warm breeze nudged fallen petals across the walkway, and birds began to gather in the higher branches like they always did when day began to wind down.

Still, Mayan didn’t come.

The bench, waited longer than usual today. It had been sat on by hundreds, maybe thousands, but few ever made it feel like a part of something. Mayan had. And today, for the first time in so long, he didn’t showed up.