Izzy & Noah ✔️

Six: Peace in the Final Chapter

We walk slowly, our steps coordinated, as if we had always been close. We walk side by side towards the train station, the streets around us are full of hustle and bustle, but it seems as if there is only us. A man who has known me for only a few days believes in me more than anyone has ever believed in me. Ironic, isn't it? How strange life is. How unpredictable.

I stare ahead of me, but at the same time I feel his gaze on me. There is no doubt, no hesitation - just that unwavering faith that seems almost unbelievable to me.

"Why?" I ask, without looking towards him.

"Why what?" he answers with a slight smile in his voice.

"Why do you believe in me?" I feel vulnerable, like I've said something I shouldn't have.

He stops and I instinctively do the same. When I turn to him, I see that he is watching me with that warm, penetrating gaze that always finds a way through my masks.

"Because I see who you are," he says simply. "And who you will become."

My heart stops for a moment.

We walk in silence to the train, each lost in our own thoughts. When we reach the platform, we sit down on the cold metal seats.

I watch the lights flicker in the distance and the darkness spread around us. Everything is the same, yet I sense that something is different.

It is as if something has shifted inside me.

I don't know if it's his words or the moment itself - that brief, intangible insight that changes the way I see the world.

Suddenly I feel lighter somehow, like I have let go of something I have been carrying around for too long.

I look at him out of the corner of my eye.

He is sitting next to me, relaxed, with a slight smile, as if he understands something I cannot yet articulate.

"What are you thinking about?" I ask quietly.

He stays silent for a moment, then murmurs, "That you have more power in you than you think."

I swallow the lump in my throat.

Maybe he is right.

Beginnings are scary, especially if you're me - someone who clings to the familiar, who doesn't like change and is even less comfortable with novelty.

Every new thing throws me off balance, like I'm walking a tightrope over a precipice, with no guarantee that anyone will catch me if I fall.

Yet here I am.

I am sitting on the train, with him by my side, and instead of running away, I stay.

Maybe because his presence calms me.

Maybe because this moment is different from all the previous ones.

I look at him as if expecting an answer to questions I have not yet dared to ask.

But he just smiles and, leaning slightly towards me, says:

"Change is not necessarily bad."

I do not know why I believe him.

But I do.

"I know," I reply quietly, almost inaudibly, as if the word itself has a weight I am not yet ready to carry.

I look at the floor, then back to him.

There is no pressure in his gaze, no expectation - just patience and something I cannot yet articulate.