Not Today, But This Time

Chapter 3: Not Today, But This Time

He came to remember what he wrote “Not today”

Maybe this time… it wasn’t just a delay.

He hadn’t walked this route in days.

Not that it mattered.

The streets were still the same.

The same bend at the crossing. The same leaning lamppost flickering like it was trying to speak in Morse code.

The city hadn’t changed.

But maybe he had.

He didn’t know what he expected that morning.

But when the phone didn’t ring, he didn’t feel relief.

He just sat there, staring at the plastic rectangle on his table like it was supposed to speak first.

It didn’t.

Not even a buzz. Just silence.

He thought about checking the notebook again. But he didn’t move.

Even silence can be a kind of reply.

That thought — or something like it — kept echoing in his head.

Not in the warm, reassuring way. But in a soft, scratchy murmur. Like a memory trying not to disappear.

He got up.

No phone in hand this time. Just the notebook, tucked under his arm.

He walked.

He crossed the same streets, passed the same tree where the balloon used to be.

The branch now bare with no thread, no sagging red — like it had never happened at all.

But he remembered it.

And that was enough.

He sat down.

Opened his notebook to a new page.

Wrote nothing.

Then flipped to the earlier pages.

‘A voice from a summer memory’

‘But it’s the listener who decides if it ends in winter.’

‘Listening won’t change anything.’

Three lines, three echoes. But none of them were answers.

He pulled his pen from the top flap of his bag.

It wasn’t there.

Right. Still hadn’t replaced it.

The other pens were buried at the bottom, tangled with old receipts and a crumpled wrapper.

He didn’t bother reaching for them this time.

He just let the notebook sit open on his lap, blank.

And then…

The phone buzzed.

05:50 AM.

Unknown Caller.

He answered.

This time, the voice didn’t hesitate.

It trembled, but not in fear. In something older. Like grief that had been quiet too long.

“I didn’t mean to stay quiet.

I just… didn’t want to make it worse.”

A breath.

“Every time they looked at me like they were waiting,

I kept thinking:

‘One more second. Just one right word.’”

Another breath.

“But seconds pass.

And people stop waiting.”

Silence.

“They still left.

And I never said anything.

In my mind, I blamed. And I blamed.

For not giving time.

But cursed myself for not giving space.”

Deep down, the voice cracked — not loudly, but like a whisper folding in on itself.

“And even now, I still don’t know what I was supposed to say.

Just that… silence never meant I didn’t care.”

Another breath.

“I’m sorry.

That I waited for perfect moments

Instead of just… being there.”

And then — click.

Line dead.

He stared at the phone.

No name. No number.

The screen dimmed. And didn’t re-lit.

Just his reflection again. A little blurrier than before.

He didn’t speak.

Just sat there, phone in hand, as if it still had a voice.

As if silence had weight.

Then slowly, quietly, he pulled the notebook open again.

And wrote:

“Maybe some stories don’t end.

Not because they continue,

But because the ending was never the point.

It was just the part where someone finally stopped running.”

He stared at that sentence for a long time.

Then crossed it out.

Not with anger. Not with regret.

Just… gently.

Because maybe it wasn’t wrong.

But it wasn’t right either.

And for once, he was okay with that.

He stood.

Walked back to the bench.

The paper was still there.

He crouched, fingers brushing the wood.

Then — paused.

Someone had added something.

Another piece of paper. Smaller. Folded into fourths.

He shook, and he hesitated. Unfolded it.

Just a single line:

“I saw your note.”

With scribbled mess beside it.

He held it in his hand.

Didn’t smile.

Just… sat down.

The bus passed by in the distance.

But he wasn’t on it.

He wasn’t supposed to be.

He was here.

And this time, he didn’t wait for a call, or a message.

He reached for his notebook again.

Turned to the page with the earliest line.

‘A voice from a summer memory.’

And below it, wrote:

‘But not all summers are warm.

Some are just quiet.

And that’s enough.’

He flipped to the next page.

‘But it’s the listener who decides if it ends in winter.’

He added:

‘Or if it becomes something else.

Not spring.

But something they can live with.’

Then finally, he flipped one last time.

‘Listening won’t change anything.’

And gently, he wrote beneath:

‘But maybe…

it keeps the memory from disappearing.’

He closed the notebook.

Tucked it into his bag.

The phone buzzed once more.

But he didn’t check it.

Instead, he whispered something soft under his breath. A line not meant for anyone else.

Not even himself.

A name.

Just the meaning of it.

And as he stood up, he looked toward the street and said:

“I came to write my will.

But I think I just wrote…

not today.”

And this time,

The bus was there.

He was too.

The notebook.

Same page.

Same lines.

Same silence.

His pen hovered.

Then moved instinctively.

He wrote.

“You waited too, didn’t you?”

A breeze pushed lightly at the edge of the notebook.

A shadow fell across the notebook, faint and unsteady — like a person standing just out of reach.

He looked up.

No one was there.

But something in him shifted.

There was always someone.

A voice he didn’t remember hearing — but always answered to.

A shape he never really saw — but always followed the timing of.

A second handwriting in his notebook — never his, never signed, but never questioned either.

“You’re not real,” he whispered, not with doubt… but apology.

And yet, he turned the page again.

More writing.

Familiar in rhythm. Unfamiliar in origin.

‘Maybe I was never meant to be.

Just a shape made from the things you didn’t say.

The things you needed to hear.

The voice you gave to someone you hoped would’ve stayed.’

He didn’t flinch.

Didn’t blink.

Only his grip around the notebook tightened, slightly, like it might drift away if he didn’t hold it close.

Only… stillness.

And understanding, like watching a reflection settle in rippling water.

He thought of all the times he flipped a page.

Paused before writing.

Hoped something would be there before the ink.

Maybe the pages hadn’t answered him.

Maybe they had just… waited.

Like he did.

Like the one he missed.

Like the part of him that always sat just beside the words.

He smiled. Barely. But it reached his eyes this time.

Maybe that line wasn’t just for him.

Maybe it just never was.

He thought about his name.

Not the real one — the given one.

But the one only he knew. The one no one ever asked for.

He thought of what names meant.

And what they didn’t.

Then, in the bottom corner of the page, he wrote just a single word. A name fragment. The part of it that meant “home.”

That was enough.

Because not everything needed to be signed.

And not every voice needed a source.

Some things were just meant to be felt.

Not finished.

The bus rolled by. The same one from the start of it all.

And for the first time, he didn’t think about whether he should’ve taken it.

He just watched.

It stopped. Opened its doors.

But he didn’t move.

He wasn’t running anymore.

And maybe, that was the answer.

Because sometimes, the reply isn’t in what you say, but in the fact that you stayed.

He gently tore out the page. Folded it carefully. Not like a will. Not like a confession.

Just… a note.

And slipped it into the bench’s old familiar gap.

The wind didn’t take it.

It stayed.

Like it was meant to..

Then he thought.

Then maybe… spring isn’t something that arrives. Maybe it’s chosen.

One glance. One word. Or no word at all.

Even silence can be a kind of reply.

I had time. I just didn’t know how little of it was mine

The bus was there.

But now… now it meant something else entirely.

But he wasn’t.

He hadn’t just missed a ride. He’d missed a self.

A version of him that kept waiting, until waiting became who he was.

And maybe that version had to be left behind.

He flipped one more page.

There, in the bottom corner—half-written, half-erased—a fragment of a name.

Not signed.

Not whole.

But enough.

“It doesn’t need to be remembered, stated, to have meaning,” he murmured.

Then, beneath it, one last line—something that had followed him since the beginning:

‘Do we regret more what we did… or what we didn’t?’

He tapped the notebook shut, stood up, and looked once more at the street.

Still loud.

Still messy.

Still full of things he’d never get answers for.

But maybe that was the point of it all.

Answers weren’t what he needed.

And for the first time—it didn’t feel like the end of something.

Just a point he chose to stop at.

He looked at the fragments again, just a part of a name,

Enough to feel like someone.

And maybe that’s all he ever wanted to be.

‘I came to write my will today. But it seems I’m writing ‘Not today’ ’

And maybe this time…

“Not today” meant something different.

Not fear. Not delay.

Just the choice to keep writing.

It wasn’t the ending he’d waited for. Or hoped for.

But maybe, it was the one he needed.

And that… was enough.