Tracy...
I wasn't trying to eavesdrop.
I swear I wasn't.
But sometimes, when people talk too loud in quiet corridors, the truth slips into ears that weren't meant to hear it.
"…her fiancé is coming back soon."
My head turned before my heart could stop it.
Laila.
That name didn't even need saying anymore.
She was the only one whose silence I could feel even when she wasn't in the room.
I lingered behind the pillar, books hugged to my chest, listening to two girls from her class talk like the news was some holy secret. They didn't sound cruel, just... curious.
She was engaged.
And not just engaged. Already engaged.
Suddenly, everything about her made a new kind of sense. The way she looked away when people stared. The quiet sadness that clung to her smile. The invisible walls around her — built long before I ever noticed her sitting in the rain.
---
I found her later, sitting on the low wall behind the library.
Alone, or trying to be.
I didn't say her name. I just walked over, slow, like the ground wasn't quite sure if it wanted me to get there.
She noticed me. Didn't move.
So I sat.
We didn't talk for a while. Birds chirped. The wind rustled the leaves. I looked at her hands. There was no ring — just soft fingers curled into a fist.
And then I said, quietly:
"You don't have to say anything. I just wanted to check on you. I heard. And… I guess I just wanted you to know someone sees you. Not the version they expect — but you."
Her eyes widened — not with fear. With a kind of recognition. Like I'd knocked softly on a door she hadn't realized she left open.
She didn't reply.
But she didn't ask me to leave either.
That was enough for me.
---
Later that night, I wrote again. Not in my usual brown notebook, but on loose paper I didn't plan to keep.
> "I think she's the kind of person who feels everything too deeply but has been told to feel nothing at all. I don't know what she needs right now. I just hope I can be something quiet she can lean on — like a shadow that doesn't ask questions."
I folded it once, twice, then left it under my pillow.
Not everything we feel needs to be sent.
Some things are letters we write just to remember we're still alive.
---