Im With You ⚡

"The noise is fine. It’s the pneumonia that’s the problem," she replied, stepping closer. She tilted her umbrella, shielding him. The sudden cessation of rain hitting his shoulders felt like a physical weight being lifted. "I’m Clara."

But Elias carried a darkness he couldn't quite name—a persistent hum of anxiety and the crushing belief that he was fundamentally broken. One night, while they sat on the floor of her tiny apartment surrounded by half-finished paintings, the hum became a roar.

"I like the noise," Elias said, his voice raspy from hours of silence. Im With You

Elias squeezed her hand, feeling the warmth through her glove. "Yeah," he whispered. "But it's okay. I'm with you."

Decades later, Elias stood in the same park where they had met. The bench was new now, made of polished wood instead of rusted iron. He was older, his hair a shock of white, but he still preferred the rain. "The noise is fine

The rain continued to fall, but for the first time in a long time, the world didn't feel blurred at all.

He felt a hand slide into his—smaller now, more fragile, but just as steady. Clara, in a yellow raincoat that had seen better days, smiled up at him. "Still a bit damp," she remarked. The sudden cessation of rain hitting his shoulders

Elias sat on the edge of a rusted park bench, his collar turned up against the chill. He wasn’t waiting for a bus or a person—he was waiting for the feeling of being untethered to finally pull him under. At twenty-four, he felt like a ghost in his own life, moving through a sequence of shifts at a quiet bookstore and long walks through a city that seemed to have forgotten him. "It’s a bit damp for a sit-down, isn’t it?"