Ethan didn't plan to turn the camera into a diary of her life. It happened naturally, quietly, almost without thought.
It started one night when Luna came home past dawn, laughing with Maya and smelling like perfume and alcohol. Ethan had cooked rice, eggs, and her favorite fried tilapia, but she barely looked at the table. He felt a pang in his chest, a mixture of sadness and longing, and instinctively lifted his camera from the shelf.
She was asleep on the bed within minutes, her hair splayed across the pillow, lips slightly parted, chest rising and falling in slow rhythm. Ethan didn't touch her. He just pressed record.
At first, he felt guilty—what was this? Spying? But then he realized it wasn't about control. It wasn't about ownership. It was about memory. About keeping her close when her presence in his life had become unpredictable.
From that night on, the camera became a secret ritual.
He recorded her mornings, when she woke late, hair messy, yawning, scrolling through her phone. He recorded her quiet moments in the living room, feet tucked under her, humming to herself while Maya's playlist blared through the speakers. He even recorded the nights when she angrily brushed him off, yelling, "Stop filming me!" and trying to push the camera away.
Those were the moments he treasured most. The ones that felt alive, raw, real. Because deep down, he knew—without saying it—that they might be the last moments he could keep.
Ethan didn't stop caring for her. He still cooked, still cleaned, still waited. The apartment smelled of freshly cooked adobo every morning, untouched, while Luna slept off the night she had chosen outside. She didn't ask, didn't thank him, didn't notice. But he didn't need acknowledgment. His love had become something private, something sacred.
And every time she came home late, giggling with Maya, Ethan smiled quietly to himself. He might not have her love anymore—not fully—but he could preserve these fleeting fragments of her. He could hold onto them, even if no one else knew.
The camera became his silent witness. A way to be with her when the distance between them felt unbearable.
It was also, unknowingly, the first step toward the truth she would one day have to face.
Because Ethan's love, as gentle and enduring as it was, had already begun to outlive the life he still carried inside him.