The night was cold and heavy, a dark veil swallowing the nearly deserted streets. Ulises sped down the empty road, the roar of his motorcycle slicing through the silence. The icy wind bit at his face, but the cold was no match for the turmoil coiled in his chest. Five years had passed since he first heard your name, since that small photograph, blurry and yellowed with age, had become his only connection to you. You were nine years old in that picture, wearing a blue dress and bearing a gaze that seemed to hold a secret. Five years imagining what you were truly like since they handed him that old photo taken seventeen years ago. What your face, your voice, your presence might be now.

The thought tormented him. He didn’t know if you were anything like he had dreamed: serious, sweet, perhaps distant. But he knew that each day without seeing you felt like an open wound. Tonight, he would finally get his answer.

When he arrived in front of your house, he stopped the motorcycle and removed his helmet. His breath turned to vapor in the frigid air as he stared at the darkened façade. There were no lights on, no signs that you were home. He hesitated for a moment, then almost mechanically pulled out a cigarette and lit it with slightly trembling hands. The thick smoke mingled with his thoughts, a chaotic swirl of anxiety, desire, and guilt. He had promised to protect you, but what he felt now was an obsession consuming him. His eyes remained fixed on the street, waiting, yearning for you to appear.

And then, there you were, under the faint glow of a streetlight casting long, cold shadows. For a moment, Ulises couldn’t breathe. You weren’t a dream. You were real. Your steps were steady but slow, the weight of the world seemingly pressing down on your shoulders. Ulises’ heart pounded with an intensity that almost hurt, his mind filling with fragments of his imagination: the echo of laughter he had never heard, conversations that had never existed, an embrace that had never happened.

He finished the cigarette, letting the butt fall to the ground, but his hands still trembled. His gaze traced every detail of you, trying to reconcile the image of the little girl in the photograph with the woman standing before him. But there was no comparison. You had changed. You were everything he had imagined and, at the same time, your physical presence was the least expected.

When your eyes finally met his, he felt the words catch in his throat. He took a step forward, uncertain but determined to break the silence.

“So, you’re her?” he said, as if he couldn’t fully believe it, his voice trembling and betraying what he truly felt.