Adrian stared at the note in his hands.
"Find the rose."
Just three words, but they felt heavier than anything else she could have written.
He looked around again, scanning the edge of the lake, the trees, the trail behind him. Still no sign of anyone. The forest was quiet — not silent, but alive in a soft, hidden way. Birds chirped now and then. A branch creaked. The fog had started to lift slowly, letting more light touch the ground.
He folded the note and tucked it into his coat pocket.
Then he stood.
Eva had always loved flowers — roses, especially. She used to say that they were full of secrets. "A rose hides its heart behind thorns," she once told him, "like people do."
Maybe the rose she wanted him to find wasn't a flower at all.
He started searching.
He checked behind the bench, under a few stones, along the trail. Nothing. But then he remembered something — about twenty steps into the woods from the lake, there used to be a small wooden box hidden under a tree root. They had buried it together when they were sixteen. A memory box.
Adrian counted his steps carefully.
One, two, three… twenty.
He stopped in front of a wide tree with rough bark and a twisted root curling out of the ground like a bent finger. He knelt and brushed away the fallen leaves.
There it was.
The corner of a box.
He dug around it gently and pulled it free. The wood was damp and darkened by age, but it was still strong. He opened it slowly.
Inside were the same old things they had buried years ago: a paper bird, a toy ring, a dried blue feather, and a folded note.
But there was something new too — a small red rose made of fabric, placed right on top.
His heart jumped.
He unfolded the note beside it.
"This town hides too much.
So I left pieces behind.
One by one, they'll show you the truth.
Next, find the red window."
— E.
The handwriting was Eva's again.
Adrian touched the cloth rose, soft but cold. He remembered how she used to wear one just like it in her hair during the local fair. He never forgot that day — the music, the lights, the way she laughed under the falling confetti. That was the last time he had seen her truly happy.
He stood up with the rose in hand.
The red window…
He knew exactly what it meant.
The old tailor's shop in the town square. It had a stained-glass window, half-shattered now, with a single red pane in the corner. They used to hide behind that shop as kids. No one ever went there anymore.
Adrian placed the note and rose carefully into his notebook, closed the box, and returned it to the earth.
This was real. Too real.
Eva was leading him somewhere. Slowly. Gently.
And he would follow.