Time had a strange way of softening pain.
Not erasing it.
Not fixing it.
Just… making it familiar. Like an old wound you forget to hide after a while.
It had been weeks now—months, maybe. And though she still passed by me in the corridors, it wasn't the ache that caught me off guard anymore. It was the calm.
A strange, bitter calm.
We didn't talk. We didn't look.
But I knew… she felt it too—this unspoken weight we both carried.
The world around me had moved on.
Final-year announcements, exam pressure, farewell preparations—everything kept flowing, as if nothing had happened. But inside, there were words I never said. Feelings I never delivered.
"I miss you"
"I still care"
"You were my whole world"
"And maybe… I still wish we had more time."
But none of it ever left my lips.
We lived in a parallel silence—her world full of laughter, mine filled with echoes.
One evening, I sat on the school rooftop—alone. The sky had just begun to bleed orange, and the wind felt colder than usual.
I remembered the time she once said,
"If you could listen to someone's silence, you'd know how loud hearts can be."
That day, her silence was the loudest thing I had ever heard.
I realized something that evening:
Love doesn't end with a goodbye.
It lingers… in songs, in scents, in half-finished conversations.
It stays even when the person doesn't.
My friends had stopped teasing me now.
Varun once said, "Bro, I think you've changed."
I smiled faintly and nodded. I had.
Not bitter. Not broken.
Just quieter, more aware—of what it means to care deeply, and still let someone go.
In class, she sat two benches ahead.
Her laughter still danced across the room like sunlight on glass.
But it didn't pierce anymore.
It shimmered—distant, untouchable, but beautiful.
And in that moment, I understood—
Some people aren't meant to stay.
They're meant to teach you how deeply you can feel.
Even if the only words you ever share again…
are the ones you never say out loud.