There was no dramatic goodbye.
No hospital doors swinging shut. No farewell text. No whispered final words that would echo forever in Kian's ears.
She just… stopped showing up.
The first few days, he convinced himself it was nothing. A cold. A bad flare-up. She'd text him when she was ready. He told himself that lie a dozen times before it stopped sounding like hope and started sounding like grief.
Her desk at school remained untouched.
The pencil she always chewed was still in the little groove.
The last note she'd scribbled on the edge of his paper, "your handwriting is criminal" had faded into the page like dust.
She was gone, but not in the way people are when they die.
Not yet.
This was a different kind of absence, quiet, shapeless, unfinished.
She hadn't told him.
Hadn't said why she was missing classes.
Hadn't said where she'd gone.
And he hadn't called.
He couldn't.
Because deep down, something in him already knew.
******************************************************
That morning, he opened the box.
Not like before, not carefully, not gently. Just opened it like he couldn't bear to wait anymore. Like he needed to know what her last words were before the silence took over completely.
There was only one letter left.
It wasn't sealed.
The paper wasn't folded.
It was resting on top, crooked, smudged, and unfinished.
There was no date written on it.
But he knew.
He didn't need a timestamp.
This was the letter she wrote on the day she died.
13th December 2024
Dear Kian,
I'm sorry I disappeared.
I didn't mean for it to happen like this. I didn't mean to just vanish, but everyday it got harder to move, harder to think, harder to be the version of me you remembered.
You kept texting. I read every one.
And every time, I told myself: Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll answer. Tomorrow I'll be strong enough to say something real.
But I never was.
I don't want to go.
I don't.
God, I want more time. I want more mornings. I want one more dumb argument about movie genres. I want to sit next to you without shaking.
I want to see your face. Just once more. I want to hear you laugh. I want to tell you
I don't even know what I'm trying to say.
My hands won't stop shaking. It's hard to hold the pen. It's hard to breathe. Everything is starting to blur.
I thought I had more time. I thought I could finish this. I thought I could finish something.
I thought I could see you again.
I thought I could tell you
Kian stared at it for a long time. He didn't move. Didn't blink. The silence pressed in on him from all sides, not sharp, hollow. Like someone had scooped everything out of him and left only skin behind.
"I thought I could tell you—"
Tell him what?
That she loved him?
That she forgave him?
That she wished he had kissed her on that goddamn bench?
He would never know.
And somehow, that was worse than hearing goodbye.
He reached for his phone and opened their last conversation.
KIAN: Movie night soon? I'll even let you pick the sad one this time.
KIAN: You okay? You haven't been at school.
KIAN: Please tell me I don't have to get my own coffee. I can't deal with the guy who always spells my name wrong.
KIAN: Miss you.
The last one had been sent on December 5th. She'd read it. But she hadn't replied.
He dropped the phone and closed his eyes.
The letter still lay open in his lap. Unfinished. Like her. She had been disappearing for weeks. Gently. Quietly. Carefully.
And now she was completely gone.
But even in her last breath, she had been trying to say something.
Trying to reach him.
And he would spend the rest of his life wondering what that something was.