That afternoon, Ren believed he had a clear idea of where he stood, even though he didn't fully understand what he had gotten himself into. Marriage was something very serious, and his mother had reminded him of that more than once.
As his thoughts began to settle, he understood that it was a decision far too important to be made at a moment when his senses were only just beginning to recover. He wasn't running away, but neither could he move forward blindly.
So he decided to wait. Three days. Three days in which anything could happen, and Ren knew that very well. Losing Miya was not part of his plans, but she had already warned him, and now that warning was beginning to feel real.
There were no calls. No messages either. Nothing.
On top of that, every time Ren looked at Miya's house, there were no signs of life. It was strange. Miya always turned on the lights in the morning, filling her house with brightness from early on, but right after their argument, even a day later, that had stopped happening.
That only increased his fear. Thoughts began to pile up in his mind. Ren loved Miya and did not want to lose her.
At one point, he felt a sense of loneliness that completely crushed him. With no mother and no one else, he sank into a depression he didn't understand. He had no one to ask for help, no one to lean on.
He thought about talking to Yaina about the problem, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. For some reason, Ren felt hurt. He had helped her when she needed it, and even so, she hadn't truly wanted to accept that help. That memory still made him hesitate.
When the three days he had decided to wait finally passed, Ren went straight to Miya's house and knocked on the door.
A few seconds passed.
No one opened.
There was no sound, no movement visible inside the house. That struck Ren as strange.
After nearly an hour of knocking, with pauses between each attempt, Ren finally gave up and returned home. He thought that maybe Miya wasn't there that day or that something had happened, so he decided to wait until the next day to try again.
The next day, he arrived early and knocked on her door again, but nothing happened. Once more, he was left outside, receiving no response.
Ren waited twice as long, but the silence did not change. He wanted to talk to her in person, look her in the eyes, and clear everything up, but it didn't seem possible. Even so, he didn't lose hope. He decided to wait one more day and then call her or send her a message, hoping that way he could see her and finally talk to her.
And that seemed to be the only idea he had left.
After sending her several messages following a long day spent in front of Miya's house, Ren stared at the screen, waiting for any of them to be read.
But it didn't happen.
"What happened?" he murmured, full of doubt.
This was no longer normal. Had Miya really kept her word? He didn't know.
"Maybe she left the house."
Ren immediately rejected that idea. It hurt too much.
"Maybe I should have accepted it back then…" he said quietly to himself. "Damn it."
Ren stayed like that for twenty-one consecutive days. By then, he was already starting to accept the idea that maybe he would never see her again.
Everything he had achieved, everything he thought he had, had vanished. Now it seemed that his only companion was loneliness itself.
With tears building up and the beginning of a cry threatening to spill over, Ren asked for help. Not from someone specific, but from what he felt, from that emptiness that was consuming him. In his desperation, he tried calling Miya's number, but got no response. Then he tried Yaina. Nothing. The silence was enough to push him to do anything that would make him stop feeling this way.
Then his gaze fell on a few bottles Yaina had left behind. Without thinking too much about it, he began to drink. At first, the taste was awful, almost unbearable, but little by little it stopped mattering. He felt his body begin to give in, to relax, as his thoughts grew blurry and the sadness dulled. He stayed like that all afternoon, until someone knocked on his door.
Ren, completely dizzy, walked over without much interest. When he opened it, the bottle slipped from his hand and fell to the floor.
Standing in front of him was Miya. She looked ashamed, her gaze averted, not daring to look at him directly.
"Hello, Ren. May I come in?"
Chapter 23: Unexpected News