Even though the temperature outside was a hot 28 degrees, my boyfriend absolutely refused to take off his thick winter down jacket. He was sweating bullets, but whenever I asked him about it, he would just brush it off and say, "I'm fine, it's just a bit cold."

We first met back in February. Back then, wearing a heavy winter jacket made total sense. But as the weeks passed and the seasons changed, the jacket stayed on. March turned into April then May and now it was June. He still wouldn't take it off.

Because of this, he always hated outdoor dates. Even when we sat inside a warm café, he kept it zipped up. I could literally see sweat beads on his forehead.

He went quiet for a long moment, looking down. "If I take this off, you might hate me," he whispered. I was completely confused. I thought maybe he was self-conscious about his body, but he was actually a very skinny guy.

The mystery was finally solved when I visited his apartment for the first time. I opened his closet to hang my bag, and I froze. There were five identical down jackets lined up in a row. They were the exact same color and style, just slightly different sizes.

When I asked him what this meant, he finally broke his silence and told me the heartbreaking truth.

That specific style of jacket used to belong to his older brother, who had tragically died in an accident two years ago at the age of 24. To my boyfriend, his big brother was his absolute hero. The jacket was the only special keepsake he had left.

But wearing it every single day would eventually ruin it. Since the jacket was discontinued, he spent two whole years searching secondhand markets just to buy four more matching ones. He rotated through them carefully so he could preserve his brother's memory for as long as possible.

"We met in February, right?" he said softly. "You fell for me while I was wearing this. I felt like if I took it off, I would become a different person, and it would feel like I was erasing my brother."

Hearing this, my heart melted. I looked at him and said, "Let me meet your big brother."

He brought out a photo. In it, his smiling older brother was wearing the jacket, with a younger, smaller version of my boyfriend standing proudly next to him. I looked at the picture, bowed slightly, and said, "I'll borrow your little brother for a bit."

That was the very first time I saw him cry.

That summer, he finally took off the heavy jacket. He carefully cleaned it and stored it safely in the closet. He realized that his brother's love didn't live in a piece of clothing—it lived inside him.

At 28 degrees, the jacket he refused to take off wasn't a weird habit. It was just a loyal brother's way of keeping a beautiful memory alive.