Echoes Between Strangers

Foreword

Sometimes our lives brush against others in ways we don’t expect. A glance on a rainy street, a kind word from a stranger, even the faint sound of someone humming in the dark — all these small collisions shape us more than we realise.
These seven stories follow Arthur, Maya, Daniel, and a girl with a sketchbook, four people carrying quiet burdens. Their lives cross in fleeting, luminous moments. Alone, each story is just a fragment. Together, they show us what it means to be human: fragile, grieving, but endlessly reaching for one another.

1. The Bench

On the corner of a quiet street, where the traffic hum softened into a kind of lullaby, sat a bench beneath a crooked tree. The paint was peeling, the wood cracked from years of weather, yet people came and went, leaving fragments of themselves there.

This evening, an old man lowered himself slowly onto it, his knees stiff, his breath a little short. His name was Arthur. In his pocket rested a photograph so worn it had almost become translucent: his wife in her twenties, laughing into the sun, hair caught mid-whirl as though even the wind adored her. She had been gone a decade, but he still carried her with him, as one carries the pulse of a memory that refuses to fade.

At the other end of the bench sat a young woman. She was hunched over her phone, eyes red from tears she tried to blink away before anyone could notice. Her name was Maya, and she had just left the hospital after saying…