Some things don't scream when they break. They simply vanish—quietly, invisibly—like the scent of something that once lingered, now lost. Memories have no scent. Not really. But somehow, they still manage to suffocate you.
Léna sits motionless in her chair, the old wooden one by the window, the same one she used to curl into while he read aloud from his favorite books. It creaks slightly under her weight. Or maybe under the weight of everything unsaid.
The sky outside is a dull sheet of gray, pressed close to the window like it's listening. Rain taps lightly on the glass, rhythmic, unhurried, persistent. Like a memory that refuses to leave.
She stares at the cup on the table—half-full, long gone cold. The coffee's bitterness echoes the taste of what used to be sweetness.
She reaches for a notebook. A worn-out one with pages dog-eared and ink stains smudged into pale blue paper. It's filled with fragments—unfinished letters, clumsy poems, torn-out corners where emotions were too heavy to write down.
Fragment from an old letter
"Do you still remember the way the light fell across the floor in that tiny flat? Do you remember the silence between us—how it was sometimes softer than music, and sometimes louder than thunder?"
Sometimes she wonders if forgetting would be easier. If she could simply box up the past like old photographs and bury them in some dark attic of the mind.
But love—real love—doesn't work like that. It lingers. Even when the skin forgets the touch. Even when the lips forget the taste. The soul remembers. And that remembering—slow, unrelenting—is what kills softly.
The Drowning Stillness
After the storm of heartbreak, what follows is not peace. It's silence. A kind of stillness that drowns you in its calm. Days blur. Time becomes a thing without shape or direction. Léna stops counting. Stops hoping. Starts existing.
She walks around the apartment like a ghost inhabiting the ruins of something once alive. Every object is a landmine. The book on the shelf they bought together. The cracked mug he used. The record player that no longer plays.
But it's the scent—his scent—that's truly gone. The memory of it has faded. And that, somehow, is the deepest wound.
She opens her phone, scrolls through old photos. Not to see his face, but to feel something again. Even pain would be welcome. Pain means you're still capable of feeling.
Camille's Visit
Camille arrives one evening, unannounced but not unwelcome. She brings tea, and warmth, and that rare ability to say nothing when silence is needed.
"You haven't left the house in days," Camille says, gently.
"I wouldn't know where to go," Léna replies. "Every street looks like somewhere we walked together."
Camille watches her for a long moment, then speaks, not unkindly:
"You're not grieving him anymore. You're grieving the version of yourself that existed when he loved you."
The words cut deep. Because they're true.
The Dream
That night, Léna dreams of Élise.
They stand at the edge of a lake. The water is perfectly still, like a mirror. Élise smiles, but says nothing. The sky above them shifts rapidly—blue to dusk to storm-gray. And then she vanishes, dissolving into the mist.
Léna wakes up with the taste of lakewater in her mouth. Or maybe it's just tears.
Memory Traps
She begins to notice the traps.
A song in the café that holds the memory of their first dance.
A red coat passing by on the street—just like the one Élise wore that winter.
The way the wind blows through the alley behind her building, echoing a laugh she used to chase.
Each moment harmless on its own. But together, they are lethal.
Monologue
"I wish memories had a scent. Something I could trace. Something that would tell me when to brace myself. But they don't. They come without warning. They kill gently, like slow poison. Like the absence of air in a sealed room."
The Bookstore
On a day when the sky forgets to cry, Léna steps out.
Her feet lead her to the old bookstore tucked behind the cathedral. A place untouched by time. A place where silence lives.
The old bookseller greets her with a soft nod, eyes filled with the kind of understanding that doesn't need words.
"You look for something lost," he says.
"I'm not sure what I'm looking for," Léna replies.
He hands her a secondhand poetry book. The spine cracked, the title faded. On the first page, a handwritten note: "Sometimes, the most loyal thing we can do to a memory is let it go."
She doesn't buy the book. But she carries the sentence with her, tucked inside her coat pocket like a secret.
The Archive of Pain
Back at home, Léna opens a box.
Inside: old letters, dried flowers, ticket stubs, a crumpled drawing of a future they once dreamed of. She spreads them on the floor like a map of another lifetime.
There's a photo of them by the sea. Élise's hair is wind-tossed, her eyes squinting from sunlight and laughter.
Léna stares at it for a long time before finally turning it over.
Blank.
No words. No date. Just silence.
She realizes then: she's been waiting. Not for Élise to return, but for the pain to mean something. As if her suffering might justify the love.
But maybe pain doesn't justify anything. Maybe it just is.
The Phone Message
Late one night, Léna's phone lights up.
One name.
One message.
"We need to talk. There are things you don't know."
Her heart stumbles.
The ground beneath her shifts.
The ghost has spoken.
She stares at the screen, frozen.
She doesn't respond.
Not yet.
Closing Reflection
In the quiet that follows, Léna sits by the window again. The chair creaks under her, same as always. But she is not the same. Something has shifted. Slightly. Inwardly.
The memories are still there. They still hurt. But for the first time, she wonders:
Maybe I can remember and survive it.
Maybe remembering isn't always dying.
Maybe it's also... healing.
Outside, the rain has stopped.
Inside, something else has started.
End of Chapter 8
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