Before you start reading: This novel has: 2,288 words in English. 2,179 words in Spanish. Therefore, if you see any inconsistencies, please run the translation from Spanish to English using DeepL

He had no name. He was just another shadow in the gray crowd that trudged to the subway every morning, ate in front of the television, and returned home empty-handed. To the rest of the world, his face was worth no more than a stone on the sidewalk: it was there, but it didn't matter. He was one of those people who consumed themselves day after day in a grueling routine, without questions, without hope. And then he saw her...! He found her. He found the reason he had never had to live. It was just another night. He pulled back the curtain on his window, looking for some fresh air, and there she was: in the red brick building across the street, she appeared. He knew nothing: not her name, not her age. It didn't matter anyway. All that existed was that image, bathed in the yellowish light of a lamp, wearing a light dress, distracted on her sofa. So calm, so distant, so... perfect.

He felt a throb in his throat, an unbearable heat in his blood. He couldn't look away. He pressed himself against the glass, holding his breath, convinced that even the air could give him away.

From then on, every night became a ritual. He turned off the lights in his apartment and sat silently in front of the window. The world was reduced to that illuminated rectangle on the facade opposite. He watched her read, fold her legs on the sofa, take a slow bite of food, laugh alone at the television, talk on the phone with a slight smile. Everything was hers: every gesture, every shadow, every silence. She didn't know it, of course. But that didn't matter. He knew it, and for her... she was his world. Soon her face began to appear everywhere: in the reflections in the subway, in the dim edges of his computer screen at work, even in the dreams that robbed him of sleep.

The need grew in him like a tumor. Observing was no longer enough. The window only offered him crumbs of her life, insufficient glimpses. He wanted more. He wanted to brush against her, touch her even if only with words, leave an invisible mark, like a cold breath on the back of her neck. One night, after watching her turn off the light and sink into the darkness of her apartment, he turned on his own lamp and opened a notebook. The blank page stared back at him like a mirror, reflecting the emptiness that consumed him. Then he understood. He began to write. A letter. Yes, a letter. The simplest, most intimate gesture. His hands trembled, as if his lost youth had been suddenly restored to him. He rediscovered an old tremor, the forgotten sensation of being alive. He didn't sign it. Not yet. His name was a secret that had to be kept, even if she never knew it. The ink vibrated in his anxious handwriting, but each word emerged like a whisper:

She reread the letter over and over, her heart pounding like a drum in a closed room. It wasn't enough to write it. It had to reach her. It had to cross that invisible border between two buildings. The next day she left work early, with a plan already in place. It was Tuesday, and on Tuesdays she always took a little longer to come back. He went up to her building, folded the paper with almost religious care, and, in a moment of carelessness, slipped it under the door. No one saw him. The rest of the afternoon was an unbearable torment of anxiety. Had she found it yet? Would she read those lines as a shared secret, or would she throw them in the trash? That night, returning to his post in front of the window, he clung to the frame like an expectant animal. She appeared, punctual, with her cup of tea in her hands. She seemed distracted... but there was a moment when she stopped... looked around and remained thoughtful. That tiny gesture was enough. For him, it was a sign. That confirmation he was looking for, he went to his room and threw himself back on the bed, lying there looking at the ceiling, thinking about her and the doubts she must be having right now. The first letter had crossed that door of love, that love he was now rediscovering.

That afternoon, she couldn't stop sweating. She had left the third letter under his door. The most daring one yet: in it, she talked about how she knew his routines, how the light in his living room was an altar where he worshipped her existence. She wondered if she had gone too far. If that brutal confession would scare her away. But when night fell, the answer came. He saw her enter the living room with a sheet of paper in her hand. From his window, in the dim light, he held his breath. The woman sank onto the sofa, her legs tucked under her, and unfolded the letter. The paper glowed under the yellow lamp. He leaned forward, as if he could cross the glass and sit next to her. He observed every detail: the way she frowned as she read the first lines, how she bit the edge of her lower lip slightly... and then, what completely disarmed him: the smile.

It wasn't a big smile, just a flash at the corner of her mouth. But for him it was enough. A revelation. He felt something break inside his mind. The smile couldn't be accidental. It couldn't be indifferent. Had she understood? Had she accepted it? Maybe she had been waiting for it all along, she feels the same way about me, he thought.

He knelt by the window, his chest pounding, thump... thump... thump... his heart beating inside him like a war drum. He was no longer an observer. He was... the chosen one. And every word he had written was confirmed as prophecy. She is the one...!!! he thought. In his mind, the woman was no longer an unknown neighbor. Now she was his... secret lover... his accomplice on cold nights. His destiny. The place where he was meant to be. That night he didn't sleep... but... how could he sleep when she had smiled at him? So he wrote until his fingers hurt, scribbling feverish phrases on the pages of his notebook:

When dawn began to tinge his room with gray, the man realized that his love for her was much greater than it had been the day before. And that gesture of smiling at him had “condemned” him forever.

The letters were no longer simple declarations. They had become gospels, sermons that spoke of love and death as if they were one and the same. In the fifth letter, he wrote:

He left the envelope under her door with trembling hands, almost in a trance, as if the act were a sacred ritual. And he returned to his window to wait... as he did every night. But... that night, the scene was different. The woman was not alone. Another woman had come to visit her, a friend perhaps?.... younger, with dark hair and nervous gestures. From his hidden position, he could see his beloved unfold one of the letters on the sofa and show it to her. The friend frowned. She shook her head. Her lips moved quickly, urgently. She seemed upset, as if warning her about something. He couldn't hear, but in his mind the words were clear: The friend wanted to take her away from him. The friend was an obstacle, an enemy. The woman, however, did not confront her with anger. Her gestures were more subtle: first a nervous laugh, then a shrug. And, to his elation, a moment when she hugged the letter to her chest, as if defending it. He clenched his fists in the darkness. The argument was not a rejection: it was a test. She was struggling with doubt, yes, but she was defending him. She was protecting him from the poisonous words of that intruder who wanted to separate them. The friend finally got up abruptly, furiously picked up the bag next to her on the sofa, and left, slamming the door behind her. The woman was left alone again in the living room, the letter still in her hand. She let herself fall onto the sofa, her eyes fixed on the paper, as if searching for an answer she couldn't find. At that moment, he knew he had dragged her into the same abyss in which he lived. She was thinking about him too. She felt it too. All she needed was one more push. So he sat down in front of his notebook, with maniacal devotion, and began to write the final letter:

When he finished writing, his hands were stained with ink from sweat and nervous tremors.

That day he didn't go to work. The clock struck eight, nine, ten, and he was still there, standing in front of the window, motionless, with the curtains barely ajar. The whole world had been reduced to a single word: wait. Every sound from the street, every shadow passing in front of the building, made him tense like a predator. The final letter was already in place. He had slipped it under the door as soon as she left for work, like someone leaving an offering on an altar. The die was cast. Now all that remained was to see her read it. And then, as evening fell... she appeared. The woman entered with her bag slung over her shoulder, tired, her hair loose over her sweat-dampened forehead. She closed the door with an automatic gesture, left her keys on the table, and bent down to the floor.

There was the envelope. He held his breath as he watched her pick it up. She let herself fall onto the sofa, tucked her hair behind her ear, and with trembling fingers, tore open the envelope. Her eyes scanned the first line, then the second. Her lips parted slightly, as if she were trying to silently pronounce what she was reading. He felt his whole body burning. His back felt a chill rising up. He couldn't wait any longer. The moment had come. He got up.

He crossed the living room of his apartment, opened the door with an almost liturgical calm, and stepped out into the hallway. Each step toward the staircase was a dull echo that reverberated in his bones. He descended slowly, as if time had folded in on itself, as if each step brought him closer to eternity. The street greeted him with its distant murmur. He crossed the asphalt with his gaze fixed on the building opposite and his head raised, looking up at the apartment window, not even noticing the cars passing by. Nothing else existed but her, up there, reading his letter. He climbed the stairs of the building opposite. Each floor enveloped him in deeper silence, as if the world itself were holding its breath. Finally, he reached the door. Her door. Inside, she was still reading. He could imagine her, the letter trembling in her hands, her heart racing at the words that bound them together forever. He raised his hand. The doorbell rang like thunder, breaking the silence.

Inside, the woman jumped up, startled. The letter slipped from her hands and lay spread out on the carpet, the last lines shining under the lamp:

She turned the doorknob. She opened it. And there he was. Smiling in the dim light of the hallway, his eyes sunken and ringed with dark circles from lack of sleep, as if he had waited his whole life for this moment. He bowed his head slightly, and in a low, grave voice, like the echo of something that should not exist, he whispered:

He paused, savoring the tremor in the air. He looked her in the eyes and said: