The Echo of Unspoken Words

the EP 0

The world had changed. The streets had been repaved, shop signs replaced, and yet, the moment I saw you, time collapsed. Six years, eleven months, three days, and thirty minutes—each second accounted for, each breath measured. You stood there, sunlight catching the sharp planes of your face, tall and formidable, as though carved by something divine. I wanted to look away. I wanted to run. But I stood, trapped in the gravity of your presence.

Your eyes—forest green, deep as the quiet between stars—had not changed. They held the same light, the same warmth, as if time had dared to alter everything about you but that. The sun turned them into something almost holy, a cathedral of light and shadow. And I, a weary traveler, stood before them as if before God.

My heart clenched—a slow, suffocating ache that had lived inside me for years, settling into my marrow, making a home beneath my ribs. I had spent years rehearsing this moment, whispering the words over and over in the silence of my room, letting them press against my lips only to be swallowed whole.

Should I say hello? Or should I let silence claim me, as it always does?

I saw the car you once spoke of. Of course, you had it. Of course, you did. You always got what you wanted. You said it had been six years, but I could not tell you that I had counted each moment. That I had measured your absence like a prisoner etching days into a cell wall.

And then, the bouquet in your hands. Flowers. They suited your snow-white skin more than they did mine. In your grasp, they looked alive. In mine, they would have withered, just like everything else.

You smiled.

A wrecking ball to the walls I had built.

"Hey, young lady."

I flinched at the words. Not me. I had aged a thousand years in your absence.

You handed me chocolate.

I thought you forgot.

It was just a passing thought, a fleeting conversation in the dead of night, but you remembered. You always remembered the things I wished you wouldn’t. We walked the same road as if sixteen never left us. The supermarket smelled the same. The air still hummed with old ghosts.

You told your stories, laughed about how Johnny got drunk and stumbled into your apartment. Johnny, always Johnny. The clever, the kind, the beautiful Johnny. Who wouldn’t love her? Unlike me. A shell, hollowed and dark, with ordinary brown eyes that never caught the light. No beauty, no brilliance. Just a girl who once dreamt of stars and now drowns in the weight of existence.

I thought of your children. How they would have her eyes, her perfect skin, her light. And yet, why did the thought of it taste like poison?

You looked at me. Too deep. Too knowing.

"Don't worry," you said.

I was not worried. I was something worse. I don’t know what.

You asked about me.

"Same as always," I lied. A dry, empty lie.

But you looked into my eyes as if you heard every unsent letter screaming inside me. I covered it perfectly, I thought. But you stood there, listening to the silence I left behind.

Was it me who grew weaker, or you who grew stronger?

I hated this. I hated how easily you belonged to the world. I hated how I noticed you. I hated how you noticed me. I hated how you touched my favorite book, my favorite anime, how you pulled me into your orbit like gravity, like fate, like something I could never escape.

I hated how I could never hate you at all.

I knew it then, at the English center, when you brought chocolates from your vacation in Spain. I can still taste it now, but there is no chocolate, only your name dissolving on my tongue.

You told me you traveled all this way to see me.

But did you know?

I failed my English exam on purpose. Chose a distant school. Just to sit in the same class as you.

But how could you?

I never wanted you to know. Just like the countless poems I never sent you.

"Missed ya, Dostoevsky girl," you said. Like it was nothing. Like I was still her.

But I am not.

Not Dostoevsky, not Kafka, not Camus. Not a philosopher, not an otaku. Not anything.

I walk away when I hear those words now. They are forbidden fruit, and I have long stopped tasting the world.

You said I was the reason you chose your major.

But do you know why I chose mine?

No. You shouldn’t. You mustn’t.

We walked close, inches apart. Your scent wrapped around me, the same scent that always made me stay near you. It felt like a crime now. Something inside me screamed: Wake up.

But I didn’t want to.

I wanted to stay. To reach for you. To say the forbidden words. To finally get my answer.

Even in this decayed body, my feelings were eternal.

"You said wait for me."

And I did. Even though I never promised you.

Like a child waiting for a father to return. Like a fool who mistook absence for devotion.

My grandmother warned me to stay away from men.

And I did.

But wasn’t it okay to listen to you? To let your voice become my favorite song?

You told me your everything. You showed me your tears. I held them close, pressed them into my ribs, clutched them in my palms like something holy.

I swore I would fight for you. That I would be your soldier.

But I am no warrior.