She was a brilliant presence behind a glowing screen, hiding behind perfectly timed text messages, beautiful voice notes, and excuses for why her camera was always turned off during our late-night calls. She was typed out in witty replies and cheerful emojis, carefully concealing the IV drips, the sterile hospital walls, and the exhausting toll of chemotherapy. She was fighting a silent, monstrous war inside her body, fiercely determined to be a source of pure joy in my digital world rather than a patient seeking pity.

I was the boy on the other side of the screen, falling deeply in love with her soul, her mind, and the sound of her voice. I was noticing the sudden, unexplained gaps in her replies, the faint breathlessness in her voice notes, and the subtle ways she avoided talking about her physical health. I was accidentally discovering the truth one night through a mutual online acquaintance, my heart shattering as I stared at my phone in the dark.

But even though I knew everything, I chose to play along. I pretended to be completely oblivious, keeping our chats filled with laughter just to give her a virtual escape where she could forget she was dying. To keep the heavy truth from crashing into our sacred space, I started filling the digital silence with stories from my own past. I told her about my childhood, painting a picture of the absolute monkey I used to be.

I sent long, breathless texts about how I would sneakily steal pocket money from my mom’s purse, thinking I was a master thief, only to get caught and get a legendary beating afterward. I shared every ridiculous, embarrassing, and funny thing that had happened to me growing up, trying to transmit the warmth of a chaotic, loving home right through the glass.

Her replies came back filled with a soft, aching longing. “I wish I had a childhood like yours,” she typed. Then, the walls she had built so carefully cracked just a little. She confessed that her own childhood was a blur of bad memories, overshadowed by parents who were cold, distant, and cruel. The most painful blow came when she subtly let slip that they didn’t even care now, leaving her to face the monstrous terror of cancer entirely on her own.

Reading those words in the quiet of my room broke my heart into a million pieces. The injustice of it suffocated me—that someone so radiant could be so neglected by the people who should have loved her most.

But I swallowed the tears threatening to spill and forced my fingers to type words of comfort. “The past is the past,” I told her, sending all the strength I could muster. “Let’s make a new memory right now.”

And we did. In that fragile, beautiful digital sanctuary, we smiled through text messages and sent a universe of love through our screens. We created a world where pain couldn't touch her, built entirely out of pixels, laughter, and an unspoken promise to hold on to each other for as long as the light stayed on.

She was a ghost in her own life back in 2018,

carrying a past that was far worse than anything I could have ever imagined.

She was a young girl abandoned by her own parents, who had packed up, moved abroad, and left her behind to live with her aunt and her cousin, Mina.

She had been promised a quiet life with a personal home tutor who would teach her away from the world, but her parents betrayed her trust yet again, forcing her into a crowded public school. She sat in those classrooms in absolute silence, a target for the cruel. One afternoon, three girls approached her, sneering, "Hey, rich kid heir, come here and give us money." They began to bully her relentlessly, and when she met them with only silence, one of them struck her. She didn't fight back.

She simply walked back to her aunt’s house, stood in front of the mirror, and stared at her reflection. She wasn't crying; she was just watching the cold reality of her life.

That night, she began pouring her soul into her diary, writing until she fell asleep from pure exhaustion.

She was fading away day by day as a monstrous sickness began to take root inside her.

She started vomiting blood, but terrified of causing a burden or showing vulnerability,

she would quietly wipe it away before anyone could see.

She lost her appetite completely, her weight dropping rapidly in the shadows of her room.

When her aunt noticed her frailty and asked if anything was wrong, she met the question with her trademark silence. Days blurred together as she locked herself inside a pitch-black room, refusing to eat.

Her aunt, possessing a kind heart beneath her strict exterior, would leave plates of food in the fridge. Only in the deep dead of night, under the cover of total darkness, would she crawl out to eat what had been left for her.

After a week of isolation, her cousin Mina lost her patience, calling out through the door, "Are you a girl? Act like a woman and come out!"

When she finally stepped into the hallway, she was wearing a plain white dress.

Her skin looked terrifyingly pale and bloodless, shocking Mina and her aunt to the core.

Her aunt gasped, "What is wrong with you? Do you think we are just like your parents, letting you do whatever you want? If you live here, we are a family."

But she stood her ground, her voice cold as she replied, "I don’t count you as my family. And who are you to mention my parents?"

In a flash of anger and misunderstanding, her aunt slapped her across the face. She remained entirely silent, turned around, and walked back into her dark room.

But the sickness wouldn't wait for the family to heal. Late one night, she was on her knees, violently vomiting blood onto the floor. Outside, her aunt, consumed by a mother's instinct and deep worry, began knocking on the door constantly,

her voice trembling in the hallway as she cried out into the dark, "Is there anything wrong? Please, tell me, is there anything wrong?!"

She was opening her heavy eyelids to the blinding, sterile glare of a hospital room, waking up in 2018 to find her aunt sitting silently by her side.

She was listening to her aunt’s voice tremble with a mix of fear and regret as she asked, "Aiko, why didn't you say that you were sick lately?"

But she met the question with her familiar wall of silence, her numb gaze fixed entirely on the empty hospital ceiling. When her aunt gently revealed that she had already called her father and that they were moving forward with surgery, her heart sank into a dark, bottomless pit.

She didn't protest, she didn't cry out—she simply didn't care enough about her own life to argue. As her aunt left her side to arrange the medical appointments, she found herself wandering aimlessly down the cold hospital hallways, a frail, solitary figure lost inside an oversized white patient gown.

She was standing invisible in the corridor, watching the cruel contrast of the world around her.

She was witnessing other patients surrounded by the burning warmth of their families—holding hands tightly, wiping away each other's tears, and whispering soft, protective words of encouragement. Looking at the love she was starving for, she retreated to her room, locked the door against the world, and finally shattered.

Her voice broke into a violent tremble as she whispered to the empty room, "Why do I always end up being alone? Do I not deserve to be loved by anyone?"

A choked, desperate sound escaped her throat as she wept, "Mom... I don't want to get surgery... I'm scared."

Hearing her loud, agonizing cries, her aunt rushed in, pulling her shaking, trembling body into a tight embrace, whispering, "Don't worry, babe, I'm here."

But her hands were shaking violently, her tears uncontrollable as she screamed into her aunt's shoulder, "Now I don't wanna live... just let me dieeeee. Just let me!"

Her aunt desperately silenced her, repeating, "Don't say that, you will be fine."

She was wheeled into the operating room days later, enduring a massive surgery that left her body broken and stitched together, yet there was still not a single trace of her family.

As the anesthesia faded, she asked her aunt with a cracking voice, "Where are my parents? Why are they not here? Why are they not calling me?"

She was forced to swallow her aunt's gentle, protective lie: "Don't worry nah, I'm here, Aiko, sleep. They will come after your recovery."

Days passed into weeks, and she spent them entirely alone, watching other people be happy, just keeping a desperate wait for her family to come.

At the end of the day, her heart felt completely dead, even though she was still breathing. With a hand shaking violently from weakness and despair,

she picked up a pen and wrote in her diary:

"Watching other people happy is so painful for me when I can't be in their situation. Am I jealous, or do I just want to be a part of them?

I have been living day after day,

yet death comes only once. But Today, for some reason,

life does not seem very different from death......."