Some people are born into warmth and some are not.
Arin Calder was not one of them.
His earliest memory was not of being held by, or laughed at, or called by his name. It was of him standing alone in a narrow apartment hallway, staring at a door that had already closed. He did not remember who had walked through it—but the only thing that he knew was they were not coming back.
People told him that he had been too young to understand.
They were all wrong.
Children may forget faces, but they remember their absence.
Growing up, Arin learned to live quietly. He learned when not to speak, where not to expect kindness, and how to stretch what little he had until it was enough. When hunger came, he endured it. When loneliness settled in, he accepted it as a part of his life.
He worked hard—not because he believed that the effort would be rewarded, but because it kept him moving forward. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking led to questions with no answers.
Even when affording it was difficult, I found a way to keep going to school, though it passed in a blur of sleepless nights and silent classrooms. He was neither exceptional nor dull—just persistent. He did not chase friendships. He did not reject them either. He simply never reached out to them first.
Eventually, people stopped reaching for him.
When he entered the workforce, Arin believed things would change. Adults, he thought, were different. More honest. More stable.
But reality corrected him quickly.
The first betrayal came from someone he trusted with his ideas. The second from someone he helped rise. Praise came easily, but loyalty never followed. Each time, Arin adjusted—not by lashing out, but by pulling inward.
Trust became unnecessary. Emotion became inefficient.
By his late forties, he was respected. Successful, even. Yet every accomplishment felt hollow, like building a house with no intention of living in it.
Then suddenly his body failed.
At first, it was exhaustion he could not shake. Pain that lingered longer than it should have. Doctors spoke carefully, choosing words meant to soften what could not be softened.
Arin listened without panic.
He had lived long enough to know when something was ending.
The final days were quiet. Machines hummed softly beside his bed. Outside, the city moved on without him, indifferent and intact.
He did not resent it.
And one night, as the world grew quiet, a sound drifted through the open window.
A guitar.
The player was not skilled. Notes wavered. Some strings buzzed, others rang hollow. And yet, Arin found himself listening more closely than he ever had before.
It sounded… unfinished.
Like a story that had never been allowed to reach its end.
For reasons he could not explain, his chest tightened. The sound lingered longer than expected, echoing somewhere behind his thoughts.
As his breathing slowed, one strange idea crossed his mind:
If I had heard something like this sooner… would anything have been different?
The final note faded.
So did he.
Air burned his lungs.
Arin gasped, the violence of it ripping the air from his lungs. His body convulsed, and a thin, weak, desperate cry escaped his throat.
Hands caught him. Warm. Steady. Voices spoke urgently above him, filled with relief and panic and something unfamiliar.
LOVE.
His thoughts scattered. He could not move properly. His limbs felt wrong—small, uncoordinated. Wrapped in cloth, pressed against a heartbeat that was not his own.
A woman's voice trembled as she spoke.
He did not understand the words.
But he understood the feeling.
He had been reborn.
Not into silence—but into sound.
Arin's eyes closed, not because he was tired, but because he had finally let go.
Somewhere, deep within him, the memory of a broken guitar lingered.
Waiting.