"PROLOGUE- Before Us"
There are some people who enter your life with a warning.
You meet them, you notice them, and somewhere in the back of your mind, a quiet little voice tells you—
Remember this person.
And then there are people who arrive without making any noise at all.
No warning.
No grand entrance.
No music playing in the background.
They simply appear.
And you continue living your ordinary life, completely unaware that something has just changed.
That was how it began for us.
I didn't know his name would one day feel familiar in a way that no other name did.
I didn't know there would be a time when I'd recognize his silence, understand the difference between his “I'm fine” and his actual fine, or find comfort in the smallest things he did without even realizing he was doing them.
I didn't know that a person I had once been nothing more than a stranger to would eventually become someone I would look for in a crowd.
Someone I would miss.
Someone whose absence could make an ordinary day feel strangely incomplete.
Someone I would build memories with.
Someone who would become a part of the stories I told myself before falling asleep.
Back then, though, there was no us.
There was only him.
And there was only me.
Two separate lives, moving in completely different directions, neither of us knowing that they were slowly approaching the same point.
If someone had told me then that one ordinary meeting would eventually become the beginning of one of the most beautiful chapters of my life, I probably wouldn't have believed them.
Because love doesn't always announce itself when it arrives.
Sometimes, it disguises itself as a normal day.
Sometimes, it looks like a stranger.
Sometimes, it begins with something so small that you don't even think to remember it.
And sometimes, months later, you look back and realize—
Oh.
That was the beginning.
This is the story of how two people became an us.
But before there was an us,
there was December.
