The apartment was quiet. Light came thin through the blinds. Faint smoke from a cigarette just put out, steam rising from the coffee cup on the table. He had long grown accustomed to the bitterness of the drink, now only drinking it to function.

The laptop glared. Commercial work. Words that paid the bills. Somewhere under the clutter of drawers, boxes and forgotten shelves, lay notebooks from his university days. Pages filled with a dream he once believed in. A dream she once believed in. She flew away. Now he wrote what he sold. Dreams then had weight, shape, urgency. Now they were little more than echoes.

The café was a short walk away. Familiar. He liked the sense of routine, letting the flow of the place help get through his deadlines.

Mr. Takeda, café owner and barista, nodded as he made an order across the counter. His movements were unhurried, precise. Decades of repetition made graceful.

“Morning,” Mr. Takeda said. “You want the usual?”

A faint nod, which the barista picked up instantly, moving to the espresso machine to get his order ready.

A new barista moved behind the counter. Young. Focused on a notebook during her downtime.

Mr. Takeda glanced at him. “That’s Hana, our new hire. She’s been writing too. You might find her interesting.”

He looked. She has raised her head, asking a question about a drink. Mr. Takeda answered distractedly. She smiled. Not much. Enough.

He returned to his work. Coffee steamed. Smoke curled. Something about her lingered. The way she looked when she hurriedly wrote down ideas between order, maybe.

Next morning, he came back. The older barista wiped a cup.

“Quiet night?” he asked.   

The barista nodded. “Except for her,” Mr. Takeda continued. “She writes whenever she can. Reminds me of you once.”

He smiled faintly. “Once.”

“Energy can be contagious, if only you let it in,” the barista said, quietly.

Hana wrote in her notebook; fine-tuning a sentence, revising again and again. Smiling faintly when a phrase finally clicked. Fingers smudged ink. She glanced up, asked about a new blend. The older barista explained, half distracted, then once again with more care.

Later, he noticed the tilt of her head, the way she reacted to the café’s chaos. Something stirred he hadn’t fell in years.

A few mornings later, he returned. Mr. Takeda caught his eye and nodded towards Hana.

“Let’s get some life in those eyes,” smiled the older barista.

He chuckled. “I’ll try.”

Hana spilled a little coffee, quickly wiping it up. They shared a small laugh. She asked his opinion on a line in her notebook. He leaned over, read briefly, nodded. She smiled quietly, sincerely.

He returned home. Coffee grew cold. He thought of her: her focus, the small laughter, her energy. He wondered why Mr. Takeda had nudged him.

One evening, after a late shift, he and Hana found themselves on the upper-floor balcony. Rain had fallen. Streets glistened. Neon fractured across the wet pavement, and the air blew fresh.

“All these… damp souls,” he said quietly.

She smiled faintly. “Eliot?” she asked, recognizing the line from Morning at the Window.

They watched the crowds below. Umbrellas, coats and blurred lights. Silence stretched.

Conversation shifted to writing, books, small frustrations. He offered subtle advice on a line she had asked about earlier.

Hana carried a book, worn and annotated, an old university publication. He glanced, and recognition stirred his eyes. He chuckled softly, eyes catching on the margin where she had highlighted a line.

His thought came out aloud, an involuntary action:
“Do we face the pain, admit our plight, or cling to dreams now proven wrong?”

Hana froze. The line she had marked, the one she had wished she had written herself, now rose in his voice. Recognition clicked into place. All the times his editing suggestions had seemed familiar, the phrasing, the rhythm, now made sense. Her eyes went wide, a smile of realization at her lips. “This is you, isn’t it?”

He let the words settle. The line carried memory: nights alone, some alongside a distant comfort, with notebooks stacked at his side, a manuscript nearly finished, small accolades at university, when his dreams were as tangible as the paper they lived on.

Her recognition was quiet validation, a mirror showing him the dreams that had always been part of him.

They watched the rain-streaked streets below. Reflections glimmered faintly. Life, even paused or hidden, still shimmered.

Hana finally smiled, turning back to her notes. “Can I send you a line from a story I’m working on? Maybe get your take?”

He nodded. He typed his number into her phone. For the first time in years, he felt seen; not for commercial pieces that carried his name, not for someone else’s dreams he had once chased, but for the voice and ambitions that were truly his.

The next morning, his phone buzzed. Work calls and emails usually dominated, but this time it was different:

“Good morninggg… the sun’s nice out today, isn’t it?”

He read it twice. He stepped out, drawn to the sunlight.

The sunlight fell warm across his shoulders. Dust drifted through the glow. The city murmured below, steady and alive.

It was the same balcony he had stood on for mornings of many seasons, but this time he felt all. Noticing. The warmth. The sound. The faint sweetness of the air.

He thought of Hana, her energy, her recognition. He thought of manuscripts and lines he had loved writing, long shelved beneath commercial deadlines, of the words he had once believed in, still waiting somewhere in him.

Dreams didn’t need to be grand to matter. They could live in coffee poured carefully, in sunlight on a balcony, in the act of writing for oneself.

He lingered, letting the light warm him. Life was ordinary, but it was enough.

He stayed longer than usual, taking in the sight just a bit more. The city moved in its locked but steady rhythm, crowds moving like clockwork, the usual traffic jam. Damp souls, each carrying some dream or another, however small.

Back at the café later, Mr. Takeda slid the cup across the counter as always, calm and exact. Hana smiled faintly as she passed by, slipping him a folded note.
He opened it; a single line, raw and searching. He read it, smiled, and took his pen to write down his reply.