She smiled. “I saved me once,” she said. “Not like you. I just hid in the stairwell while the world crashed. But when you…moved me to the café yesterday, it changed a chain of things.” She reached into her pocket and brought out a small folded note. “I’m Mara.”

The next week, a woman in a green coat—Mara—found him on a rain-slick bench. She did not carry the old lightness anymore. Her eyes had the gravity of someone who had watched how easily threads could fray.

He closed his hand and put it back in his pocket.

Stop. Tease. Start.

The next morning she sought him.

Stop. Tease. Start. Only now, the teasing was kinder, and the stops were stitches.