The days after the letter felt⦠different.
Not louder.
Not better.
Just different.
He still woke up at the same time.
Still walked through the same school gates.
Still sat on the same bench during breaks.
But something inside him had stopped moving.
Not broken.
Not healed.
Just⦠paused.
Like a song that used to play in his heart had finally run out of sound.
Some people say grief feels like a heavy rock tied to your chest.
But for him?
It felt like silence.
The kind that doesnât press down on youâ¦
But drifts around like fog â
Getting into your lungs,
Into your thoughts,
Into your hands when you try to draw and nothing comes out.
He hadnât opened her sketchbook in days.
Not because he didnât want to.
But because he was afraid of what it would do to him.
He had read her last letter.
He had cried.
He had screamed in his head, telling the world how unfair it all felt.
But now?
Now, there was nothing left to scream.
Only the kind of quiet that wraps around your bones and refuses to leave.
At school, people walked past him like before.
Teachers talked, wrote things on the board, and moved on.
Classmates passed jokes, threw paper balls, whispered about their weekend plans.
He nodded when he had to.
Smiled when expected.
Laughed once â it felt like a lie, so he didnât do it again.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
They thought he was okay now.
Just another student with tired eyes and messy hair.
No one asked about her anymore.
No one remembered.
But he did.
Every hallway still held a piece of her.
That corner near the staircase where she once slipped and blamed the floor for âbeing moody.â
The spot near the art room where she drew a smiley face on the wall with chalk.
The window near their classroom â the one she always pointed at and said,
âLook, the skyâs trying to talk to us.â
He stopped looking at that window.
It hurt too much.
One evening, he walked past a group of students laughing loudly near the canteen.
Someone shouted her name.
For a moment, his body froze.
He turned.
But it wasnât her.
Just someone else with the same first name.
The laughter felt too sharp.
Like it cut through the little numbness he had built around himself.
He walked away.
And behind the school building, where no one could hear him â
He finally cried again.
Not loudly.
Just tears slipping down like soft rain.
No thunder.
No sound.
Only wet cheeks and quiet breaths that shook too hard.
He wrote in his notebook that night.
Just one line:
âI thought the pain would kill me.
But the silence after itâ¦
Thatâs worse.â
He started skipping lunch again.
Not because he wasnât hungry.
He just didnât want to sit at a table that didnât have her across it.
She used to sit sideways, one leg half folded under her, hands always playing with something â a feather, a piece of thread, the corner of her sleeve.
Now, the table looked too clean.
Too perfect.
And her seat?
Empty.
Always.
Sometimes, he found himself talking to her in his head.
Like she could still hear him.
âYou promised youâd stay a little longer.â
âI wasnât done being found yet.â
âYou said you saw me⦠but now I canât even see myself.â
The words felt hollow.
But he still said them.
Because silence⦠was worse.
One night, he had a dream.
A soft one.
They were on the hill again.
The same place.
Same wind.
She was there.
Sitting beside him, eyes closed, breathing in the sky like it was music.
He didnât say anything.
Didnât dare break the moment.
Then she whispered,
âYouâre doing better than you think.â
When he turned to look at her â
She was gone.
And he woke up.
Heart racing.
Eyes wide.
Sweat on his neck.
But there were no tears.
Just that sentence stuck in his head.
âYouâre doing better than you think.â
He didnât believe it.
But for some reason, he wanted to.
The next morning, he sat in the back of the class.
Far from everyone.
Took out her sketchbook for the first time in days.
It smelled the same.
Like pencil dust and old paper.
He flipped through it slowly.
Clouds.
Birds.
Feathers.
Half-finished doodles.
Inside jokes written beside silly drawings.
One sketch made him stop.
It was of a boy.
Alone.
Head resting on a window.
Eyes looking out â not at the sky, but through it.
Below it, she had written:
âHeâs not sad. Heâs just waiting for the world to stop pretending heâs fine.â
He closed the book gently.
Pressed it to his chest.
And whispered,
âIâm still waiting.â
That evening, he walked to the tree again.
The one near the bus park.
Where she once said,
âIf you wanna see something beautifulâ¦â
It didnât feel beautiful now.
Just cold.
Still.
The kind of place where memories sit beside you and donât speak.
He sat on the bench.
Watched the streetlights flicker.
And realized something:
He didnât know how to be happy without her anymore.
Not even a little.
He stayed until it got too dark to see.
Then stood up.
Walked home.
And for the first time in weeks â
He didnât cry before sleeping.
Not because he felt better.
But because even the tears had run out.
And that scared him more than anything else.
The next day, he passed a younger kid in the hallway.
Alone.
Head down.
Books held too tightly.
He recognized that silence.
Felt it before.
Wore it before.
And for one second â
He thought about leaving a note.
Just like she used to.
Just four words:
âI see you too.â
But he didnât.
Not yet.
Because part of him still felt too broken to save anyone else.
But maybe soon.
Maybe when the sky didnât hurt as much.
Maybe when her name didnât echo like thunder.
Maybe⦠after a little more silence.