“I think I’m falling in love with you,” she said, her voice steady, even surprised at herself.

They met for coffee, then for walks through Ibirapuera Park, then for long dinners where conversation tumbled from concrete poetry to the texture of rice paper to the sadness of certain shades of blue. Jane found herself laughing more than she had in years. Gang had a way of finding the extraordinary in the mundane—a crack in the pavement became a meditation on impermanence; a stray cat sleeping in the sun was a lesson in dignity.

She kissed him then, tasting salt and hope.

One evening, rain trapped them in her apartment. He was looking at her bookshelf, fingers tracing the spines of her beloved Pessoa and Lispector. She stood in the kitchen doorway, watching him, and felt something shift—not with a crash, but with the quiet click of a key turning in a lock.

She didn’t know how the story would end. But for the first time in a long time, she was in love with the not-knowing.