I was living an ordinary, uneventful life — the same routine every day, going to work and coming back home, nothing new, nothing exciting. I lived alone, and my world was quiet.
One day, I decided to break that routine. I went out for a casual walk, just to breathe in something different. Wandering through a park, I saw a girl sitting in a corner. She seemed to have come with her friends, but instead of joining their games, she was seated alone on a bench, watching them from afar.
I approached her with the intention of starting a conversation and sat beside her. She looked at me warily at first — that hesitation we call shyness — but her nature was gentle. Within minutes, we were talking comfortably, and by the end of that encounter, we were no longer strangers.
She told me she came to the park with her friends every weekend, but they didn't really value her presence. I said, "What's the use of such friends who don't value you?" She smiled faintly and replied, "I only come so I don't lose my place in the group chat." Her gaze was lowered, and I could tell she was hiding something. I had lived long enough to read faces.
After a while, her friends called her, and she quickly said goodbye and left. I too went home. I usually didn't make friends, so her absence didn't affect me much — but still, there was something about her. Something that told me she might be like me. That thought made me strangely happy.
A week passed, and the weekend came again. I was tired, but the thought that she might be there drew me to the park. As I had guessed, she was on the same bench, quietly watching her friends play. I smiled and went to her. She brightened when she saw me, and after exchanging greetings, we shared our week's stories.
And just like that, it became a habit. I started canceling all my weekend plans to meet her at the park — and it felt like she too was waiting for me. Gradually, she began joining me for lunch or dinner, and our bond grew. She called me her elder sister. But I often read changing emotions on her innocent face — sometimes sadness, sometimes sorrow, sometimes swollen eyes as if from crying. Even when she was silent, she smiled.
Many times I asked, "Why are you smiling?" and she would laugh it off. She loved poetry. One day, as we were talking, I held her hand — and she cried out in pain. Alarmed, I rolled up her sleeves and froze. Her arms were covered in wounds and scars, some fresh, some scabbed, blood still seeping from a few. My eyes filled with tears as I scolded her, asked her what she had done.
She sat with her head bowed, like a guilty child. She respected me deeply, perhaps why she never shared these things. I told her she could tell me anything, that her secrets would be safe with me, that I would never judge her. I think my words reached her. I tended to her wounds and made her promise she would not harm herself again.
After that, she disappeared for a week. I thought perhaps she was caught in some love-related troubles — young people often stray into those paths. When she finally returned, she seemed happy. I asked why. She said one of her college friends had gone on a two-month break. I asked, "And why does that make you happy?" She replied, "You wouldn't understand." I didn't press further.
She soon cut her hair short, saying she liked it better that way. I respected her choice. She often asked me, "What does playing mean?" I told her, "It's something that brings happiness, something two people share." She would laugh and ask, "Is playing with hearts fun too? Does it also bring happiness?" I was left without an answer.
Sometimes I felt she was more mature than me, as if she had seen more of the world. She would say things like, "Sweet words are like sugar — too much and you'll get diabetes. Bitter words belong to honest people."
She became part of my lifeless life, breathing life into it. She was so young and innocent… yet I felt she had endured far too many wounds.
Two months later, she came looking sad. I asked why, and she said her friend had returned. A few days after that, I noticed she was quieter, more withdrawn. She sighed often, as if holding onto some hope. When I asked, she would laugh and say, "People are strange… they crave attention, and without it, they feel alone."
I often felt she spoke more to me than to anyone else. When she was happy, she wouldn't let me get a word in. When she was sad, she would silently listen, her eyes vacant. Whenever I tried to ask what was wrong, she would dodge the question.
Our friendship was nearing a year. She told me one day that her college was ending, and her friends were planning their last day together. I said, "That's a good thing — now you can move forward." She smiled faintly and whispered, "If only time could stop at yesterday's hour."
She often visited my home, saying it was the only place she felt peace. Her own home, she called "hell." I never saw fresh wounds on her hands again. She stayed over at my place many nights. Sometimes I heard her talking to herself in her room. At first, I thought it was typical teenage behavior, but she wasn't a typical teenager — she understood the world's harsh truths.
Sometimes she would laugh to herself at night. Gradually, she began to change. Her style, once mature and sober, became more childlike. She would tease me, make strange noises. I should have been happy that she no longer looked sad, but I wasn't.
She kept her personal diary at my house, perhaps knowing I would never invade her privacy. But when alone, she would talk as if to someone, even responding to them. Sometimes she would fall completely silent.
Two months ago, for the first time, we fought. It was over something small — I simply asked if her family ever questioned where she stayed at night. Suddenly, she started yelling, accusing me of being just like the fake people she hated, saying she was tired of me, that she was done. I tried to calm her, but she wouldn't listen and stormed out.
I felt I had made a terrible mistake, but I was angry too, so I didn't go after her. A month passed with no sign of her — no message, no meeting at the park. I searched for her and even went to her home, but learned she hadn't been back either.
I grew truly worried, regretting my question. Then one day, my door opened. She walked in while I was sleeping. She came into my room and started waking me. I opened my eyes — and screamed, recoiling.
This was not my friend.This was someone else entirely.She had changed… completely.
Her face was nothing but bones now.Her body was swollen in places, in others marked with scars — some from wounds, some from burns. Her hair was unevenly, carelessly cut.
The moment I saw her, I began to cry."What have you done to yourself?" I whispered.
She smiled faintly and embraced me. She was so frail that her bones pressed sharply against me. She wept then — bitter, broken sobs — and began apologizing. She told me, "You are the only true friend I have in this entire world… the only one who, despite being a stranger, gave me more warmth than my own… the only one who didn't turn me away. But my death is near now."
When I asked about her injuries, she said she had done this to herself — that in order to silence her pain inside, she had given herself pain outside. "But," she added, "the intensity of the pain is still the same."
I dressed her wounds, fed her, and for that night, she seemed almost happy. She slept in my house.
But when I woke in the morning, she was gone.All she had left was a note — a suicide note.
In it, she wrote that she could never repay my kindness, that I had been the light in her life when there was nothing but darkness, and that if I wanted answers to all my questions, they were in her diary.
I read it… and my world collapsed. Every pain, every word, every truth she had never told me was written there. All the things I had never known. Maybe she had never wanted to tell me… or maybe I had never been a good enough friend to ask in the right way.
Whatever the reason, I didn't see her for a week.And then, a week later, the news reached me — she had been in an accident. She was gone.
That innocent girl, with her dark eyes and long hair, who could never harm anyone… life had been cruel to her. It had not let her live. She had never been able to speak her grief aloud — and at last, she had fallen asleep forever in the arms of death.
She was the friend who left me terrified of the word "friendship" itself.She was the one who stayed loyal, but never allowed me to keep her.She was the silent bud that love had withered, that people's cruelty had erased, that her own family had hollowed out and torn apart.
And I… I saw her break before my very eyes.But I could not save her.