It had been six days since she ran into Khánh. Six days since his voice touched her like a whisper she hadn't prepared to hear again.
An kept count in the small notebook she carried everywhere, not out of sentimentality, but out of instinct—as if knowing how long it had been might somehow help her understand what it meant. But meaning was harder to grasp than numbers, and she had always been better with the former.
In those six days, she hadn't gone back to the same café. She told herself it was coincidence—there were hundreds of places to write in this city, and she had always liked exploring new corners of Hà Nội. But deep down, she knew she was avoiding the possibility of seeing him again. Or perhaps the truth was harsher—she was afraid of not seeing him again.
The silence between them had been unspoken for years, yet somehow louder than ever now that they were in the same city again. He hadn't called. She hadn't messaged. Their reunion had ended as abruptly as it began, like a song cut off before its final chord.
And yet, something in her had shifted. She found herself reaching for the keyboard at odd hours. Sentences she thought had died began to pulse back to life. Characters who had refused to speak started whispering again.
She sat by her window every night, laptop open, the quiet of the city a backdrop to her thoughts. Her fingers moved slowly at first, reluctant. Then with more purpose. The story she had abandoned was becoming something else—no longer a tale of lovers who lost each other, but of people who had once been whole and now weren't quite sure where all the pieces went.
In the middle of a paragraph, she would pause. And without fail, his name would come.
Khánh.
It sat there, untyped, but ever-present. She never put it down on paper, not since the first chapter of her last novel—the one she never published. It wasn't that she didn't want to. It was that the name felt like a thread. Pull it, and everything she had worked to bury would unravel.
That night, the city was unusually quiet. The hum of distant motorbikes had softened, and even the wind seemed to hush itself as if holding its breath. An sat curled on her sofa with her knees drawn up, her laptop warm against her skin. She stared at the blinking cursor.
It was strange, how silence could feel crowded.
She wrote:
"He didn't forget her. Not in the way people forget things. He simply placed her in a part of his mind that didn't echo. Until one day, something moved—and the silence cracked."
She paused, reading the line back to herself. Was that how it had been for Khánh? Had he tucked her away somewhere quiet, somewhere painless, until she accidentally shattered it by showing up in his line of sight?
Or had he never stopped hearing the echo of her name?
It wasn't just the past that haunted her. It was the version of herself that existed when they were still "them." That girl had laughed more freely, dreamt more bravely. She was fearless in a way that only love could allow. But heartbreak reshapes courage. It turns boldness into caution. And caution into silence.
And now?
Now, she was someone who wrote about people who left and didn't look back—because sometimes that was easier than writing about the ones who stayed and couldn't say why.
The next morning, An met her editor for breakfast. Lâm was a kind man in his forties who always wore linen shirts and had a soft spot for mango tea. He'd published all three of her novels and had waited patiently through her eight-month drought without complaint.
"You're glowing," he said, narrowing his eyes playfully. "Either you've fallen in love, or you've killed a character you really hated."
An smiled, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Neither. Just writing again."
"Well, that's a kind of love, too," he said. "Anything you want to share?"
She hesitated. "It's not finished yet. Still figuring it out."
Lâm nodded. He didn't push. That was why she trusted him. Over the years, he had come to recognize her silences almost as well as her words.
After he left, An stayed a while longer. She sipped the rest of her tea and let the morning buzz of the café wash over her. Across from her sat a young couple, their hands intertwined under the table, speaking in soft tones that sounded like secrets.
She used to be that girl—the one who leaned in close, who laughed too loudly, who believed love could rewrite any ending. But time has a way of teaching you that some stories aren't meant to be rewritten. They're only meant to be remembered differently.
Still, she couldn't help but wonder if he thought about her.
Not in the big, dramatic ways stories often pretend love works—but in the quiet, inconvenient ways: Did he still order black coffee out of habit because she used to drink it that way? Did he remember her favorite song when it played unexpectedly in a taxi? Did he think of her when he couldn't sleep, wondering what it would have been like if he'd said one more thing before she left?
She didn't know. She'd never ask. And he'd probably never say.
But feelings have a way of lingering in the unsaid.
That night, she walked home slowly. The sky was a patchwork of city lights and distant stars. She looked up, letting the warm breeze brush past her cheeks, and for the first time in months, she didn't feel lost in the noise.
She felt found—in the quiet.
When An got home, she didn't turn on the lights.
She stood quietly in the hallway, letting her eyes adjust to the dark. The quiet felt deeper here, almost sacred. She walked to the bookshelf where her old notebooks sat in a neat row, like memories disguised as pages. One of them was thinner, almost forgotten.
The notebook she kept the year they broke up.
She pulled it down without thinking, the motion muscle memory. Her fingers trembled as she opened it, expecting nothing, but the very act of revisiting that winter felt like opening a window after years of stale air.
Inside, her handwriting had changed. She used to write faster then—more impulsive, more alive. There were lines scribbled out furiously, whole pages soaked with dried ink and the weight of unsent letters.
And in one corner, she found a sentence written without context:
"If we had fought more, maybe we would've lasted."
She stared at it for a long time. Back then, she didn't understand what she meant. But now she did. They had been so afraid of hurting each other that they never really told each other the truth. The silence wasn't peace—it was avoidance. And it had cost them more than any argument ever could.
That night, she wrote again. Really wrote.
The words came slowly at first, hesitant. But then they flowed—pages and pages of a new story. A woman learning how to forgive without forgetting. A man learning how to return without expecting anything.
And as she finished the last line before midnight, An realized something she hadn't let herself admit in years: her story with Khánh was not over.
Maybe it never had been.
Maybe it was just waiting for the right chapter.