Almost six months after that night in the mountains, Adrian's shadow was still haunting me. The obsession with knowing if he felt the same, if he ever thought about me, had become a constant weight. My friends, worried, had taken me to the coast to clear my head, and although the laughter and the sea helped, when I returned to the city, the emptiness came back. I decided that I needed a deeper change, something that would force me to let go of his memory. I chose the Dolomites, in Italy, a destination of imposing mountains and landscapes that promised to renew me. I was alone, with a light backpack and the hope of leaving Adrian behind once and for all.

The first days in the Dolomites were a relief. I walked on trails surrounded by sharp peaks, green meadows, and lakes that reflected the sky like mirrors. The solitude was good for me; the physical effort silenced my thoughts, and the fresh air seemed to cleanse something inside me. I stayed in a small cabin in a village near Cortina d'Ampezzo, where I spent the nights writing or gazing at the stars, trying to convince myself that I could move on.

One afternoon, after an exhausting hike to a lake with crystal-clear waters, I entered a rustic refuge to rest. The place was full of life: backpackers chatting, the smell of coffee and burned wood, a warm atmosphere that contrasted with the cold outside. On a wall, a corkboard overflowing with photos, notes, and postcards caught my attention. It was a mosaic of memories left by travelers: snapshots of summits, scribbled messages, promises to return. I approached, attracted by the idea of leaving my own mark.

Then, a photo stood out among the others. It was an image of a dawn over a mountain, with golden light pouring over a snowy peak. Something in the framing, in the way it captured the quiet of the moment, hit me like a lightning bolt. My hands trembled as I took it from the corkboard. I turned it over, and there it was, written in black ink: Adrian R. And below, a date: just a week ago.

My heart stopped. It was him. The initial of his last name wasn't much, but it was a clue, a thread to pull after months of nothing. I looked at the photo again, searching for some detail that would give me a clue: where was it taken? Was he still in the Dolomites? The idea that he had been here, so close, made me dizzy. Had he left the photo by chance, as a gesture of a traveler, or was it something more? A message? A sign?

I asked the owner of the refuge, an older man with a strong accent, if he knew anything about the photo or who had left it. He shrugged, saying that dozens of people passed through there every week. "Mountaineers always leave things like that," he said, pointing to the corkboard. I returned to my table, with the photo in my hand, feeling a mix of euphoria and desperation. Adrian was alive, real, and had been here. But what if he had already left? What if I would never know if he also carried my memory i...