Chapter 8 — The Absence

Naia stopped appearing on a Wednesday.

Not suddenly.

The way important things disappear — without announcement, without a scene.

Hugo noticed on Thursday morning when he went to make coffee and reached for two cups.

He stopped.

Because he didn’t know why he’d done it.

There was no arrangement with Naia. No reason for her to be in his flat.

But the reflex was there — the automatic movement of someone who has been making coffee for two for long enough that the body has stopped asking permission.

He had done it before. With someone else. For a different life.

He put one cup back.

Made the coffee.

Sat down.

Tried to remember the last time he’d seen her.

He couldn’t.

---

He tried a different way.

Not the last time. The details.

The grey coat. Always too thin for the hour.

Hair pulled back without much attention.

Both hands around the cup — as if she needed the warmth even when the flat wasn’t cold.

The way she looked slightly up and to the right when searching for the right words — not at the ceiling, but at some specific point in the air that only she could see.

All of that he remembered. With precision. With the clarity of something observed many times without knowing it was being memorized.

But the face.

Hugo closed his eyes.

The face wouldn’t come.

Not blurred. Not distorted.

Simply not there.

---

He picked up his phone.

Searched the gallery.

Nothing.

Opened the chat with Naia.

It existed.

Messages. Dates. Conversations extending weeks back.

Hugo read them. They were his — his way of writing, his sentences, his answers.

But hers were different. Not in style. In content. She knew things he hadn’t told her: details of the flat, the brand of the cup, the bolt he put on at night, the exact ratio of the coffee.

As though they had spoken in a language he had since forgotten.

He kept scrolling down.

To the last message.

From her.

Three days before.

Five words.

When you start to forget me, sign.

23:12.

---

He went to the living room.

The coat was on the hook in the hallway. Beside his jacket. As if she had taken it off when she came in and intended to come back for it.

Hugo held it.

It weighed what a coat weighs.

It smelled of something he couldn’t name but recognized — the way you recognize a smell that belonged to a particular period of time, not to a place. He had that smell associated with something before. Something he had also lost, without knowing when.

The coat existed. Naia had existed. But the face still wouldn’t come.

He went to the kitchen.

On the counter there were two cups.

He hadn’t left them there. He’d made coffee that morning with one — the one with the repaired handle — and washed it. But on the counter there were two.

The second one was small. Smaller than his. With a thin blue rim that Hugo didn’t recognize as his but didn’t feel was foreign either.

He picked it up.

Clean. Used, but clean — the kind of clean of something washed carefully because it matters.

Hugo held it for a moment.

He searched inside himself for something. Any memory attached to this cup. Some scene. A voice. The gesture of someone holding it with both hands.

Nothing.

The cup was there and said nothing to him. As if it had always been his and had never belonged to any other story.

That was the worst of it.

Not the forgetting. But the cup lying so still in his hands. With no weight of anything.

He put it back on the counter.

Next to the other one.

He opened the gallery again. Searched by location. Photos from the building.

One appeared.

He opened it.

A terrace. Afternoon light. Naia sitting. Same coat. Hair pulled back. Hands on the table. Looking at him.

He zoomed in on the face.

Tried to hold it.

One second.

Two.

And then something happened that shouldn’t have been possible.

The face stopped resolving. It didn’t blur. It didn’t change. It simply stopped being a recognizable face — like a word repeated too many times until the sound loses its meaning.

Hugo put the phone down. Breathed. Picked it up again.

The photo was still there. Naia was still there. But the face was a space his eyes moved across without being able to anchor to anything.

He set the phone on the table and sat on the sofa.

In the photo, in the moment before he’d looked away — her eyes. Looking at him. Something in them he had taken a long time to name.

He picked up the phone.

Opened the chat.

Typed: Where are you?

Waited.

Delivered.

One tick.

Then two.

Read.

Naia didn’t respond.

But at 23:12, the phone vibrated.

A message.

No text.

Just a photo.

The form.

Questions blank.

And the last line.

Awaiting signature.

Below it, one more line.

There isn’t much time left, Hugo.