The drug took hold like a whisper.
No crash, no shatter—just stillness.
Like the hush before a storm.
Or the silence after everyone's left the room.
Ilya blinked.
The ground beneath him was gone.
He stood ankle-deep in water that reflected not the sky, but memories.
Flickering frames shimmered below: faces, hands, smiles.
People he had loved.
People he had failed.
His breath caught in his throat.
The sky above was not blue, not black, not even real. It was a canvas of tears, constellations forming faces that stared down at him without judgment. Just presence.
Then the water began to ripple.
Footsteps.
One by one, figures emerged from the horizonless pool—not ghosts, not hallucinations, but truths made flesh.
His brother, first.
Wiry frame, hospital bracelet dangling. Eyes sunken, lips cracked.
He looked up at Ilya, his voice soft:
"You told me to keep fighting. But you stopped checking in."
Ilya took a step back, chest tightening.
Another shape waded toward him. A girl he once loved in high school, who disappeared without saying goodbye, swallowed by the world when her world was already falling apart.
"You said I mattered," she whispered, soaked in moonlight.
"But you forgot me the moment I didn't smile back."
More came.
A friend who overdosed.
An uncle who raised him and died in a country far away.
A classmate who confessed his pain, and Ilya didn't have the right words.
They formed a circle around him.
No rage.
No blame.
Just grief.
Not theirs.
His.
Ilya fell to his knees in the shallow water, sobbing.
But the water didn't splash—it absorbed him. It mirrored him, multiplying his pain back at him.
His voice shook:
"I tried—God, I tried. I was just a kid
"All the Times I Worried in Silence" — Ilya's Quiet Vigil
There were no monuments built for the moments Ilya worried.
No loud declarations.
No savior speeches.
Only thoughts…
Small, soft ones—
folded into the corners of days like pressed flowers no one saw.
When Anselm skipped two meals in a row,
and said he was "too focused to eat,"
Ilya ordered takeout for both of them
and blamed his own hunger.
He'll eat if I do. Right?
When Eric stopped drawing for weeks,
claiming he was "working on a bigger idea,"
Ilya noticed how red his eyes were.
How quiet his voice had become.
He sent him memes.
Nothing deep. Just enough to say:
I see you. Even if you don't want to be seen.
When Julian came back from a date and locked himself in the bathroom,
laughter still echoing on his lips,
but his knuckles white and his eyes unfocused,
Ilya didn't ask.
He just sat on the hallway floor,
head against the door.
Said nothing.
I'll be here. You don't have to pretend all the time.
He remembered every late-night call from his aunt,
her voice shaking about test results she was too scared to read.
How he stayed on the line as she cried.
"It's probably nothing," he told her.
Then googled symptoms in the dark
until 4AM.
His uncle's sudden collapse.
The way the hospital smelt like bleach and panic.
How he held his younger cousin's hand,
even though his own was trembling.
I'm not strong, but I'll be here until someone who is shows up.
His mother's quiet cough.
His father's bad back.
The nurse at the cancer wing who always smiled too much.
The classmate who flinched when people raised their voices.
The boy who never came back after summer break.
Ilya worried for all of them.
And when he couldn't help,
he punished himself quietly.
He read articles about how to manage stress,
how to offer emotional support,
how to spot signs of depression in friends.
He kept it all in his head.
If I know enough, maybe next time I can do something.
He had hundreds of text messages he never sent.
Phone numbers saved under "check in later."
Memories cataloged under "maybe I should've done more."
And in the stillness of his trip,
they came back—
Not to haunt him,
but to remind him:
He loved more than he could carry.
And it was breaking him from the inside.
It all became too much.
The memories stacked like bricks on his chest.
The guilt, a quiet choir humming dissonant notes in his ears.
He dropped to his knees on the empty hospital floor of his mind—
a hallway with no end,
lights flickering above like breathless stars.
His hands trembled.
He pressed his palms to the cold floor,
as if to hold himself to this imagined place where he had failed everyone.
"I should've done more."
The words slipped from his mouth like a confession.
Thin. Brittle.
True.
"I should've called back. I should've known. I should've stayed. I should've…"
He couldn't finish.
His voice cracked like porcelain in winter.
And then—
a warmth.
A hand touched his shoulder.
Small. Soft. Familiar.
He turned.
And saw himself.
But not the broken version.
Not the overthinking, overstretched ghost he'd become.
It was a younger Ilya.
Eyes wide, but not with fear—with hope.
That version of himself before the weight of the world taught him to flinch before loving too loudly.
"I know you were scared," the boy said.
His voice sounded like early mornings.
The sound of pages turning.
Of laughter behind closed doors.
"You wanted to save them," the boy said, stepping closer.
"But you were still learning how to save yourself."
The older Ilya broke.
Tears fell soundlessly.
Not the cinematic kind.
Just… real. Relieved. Exhausted.
He shook his head.
"I watched so many people slip through my fingers. I didn't hold them tight enough. I let them fall."
The boy smiled.
"Sometimes love isn't about holding tighter.
Sometimes it's just about being there,
even when you don't have all the right words."
And in that moment, the hallway changed.
No longer fluorescent and sterile.
It became a sun-drenched room.
The kind of place you nap in when you're finally home.
Books lined the walls,
all with titles like:
You Did Enough
You Tried
You Were Just a Boy
You Loved Them
They Knew
He sat there, surrounded by warmth.
By light.
By every version of himself that ever tried.
No more alarms.
No more monitors.
No more echoes of what he didn't say in time.
Just… peace.
A long-held breath finally released.
For the first time,
Ilya didn't whisper apologies to ghosts.
He whispered