To Be Continued...

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* sigh *

One week.

It had been one week since everything in my life turned upside down, and I still didn't know how to carry it. The pain hadn't dulled the way people said it would. It hadn't softened at the edges or become easier to hold. It just sat there — constant, crushing, indifferent to the passing of days.

Why didn't I die too?

The thought came often. I wasn't sure anymore whether it frightened me or comforted me.

Once vibrant walls echoed with laughter, the constant chatter of dinner conversations everything was still. But in reality nothing was left.

I sat beside the window in the room, staring outside and thinking about the past memories. I lightly traced my fingers on the cold window glass, drew a sad face. I stared at it for a moment, then looked past it at the empty street below.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember what it felt like to feel completely alive. To have a family. A home full of warmth and noise and people who knew me.

All I could recall now was a faint echo of their voices, an image of my father’s strong though soft hands on my head, the teasing laughter of Crystal, the blush on Yang's cheeks, Johan was someone whom I always used to rely on if I needed any help, Ali's crazy dance at the party never failed to make my day even if I was in depression he always knew how to light up my mood, the way my mother would hum a lullaby as she prepared dinner—every single details. Now, it was all gone—like fragments of a dream slipping through my cold fingers like sand in the fist.

I opened my eyes again and the silence in the room seemed louder than it ever had before. It pressed on my chest, squeezing the air from my lungs. I couldn't breathe. The surrounding emptiness wasn’t just the room, it was inside me, consuming me, hollowing me out.

The guilt settled in my chest, heavy and permanent, the kind that doesn't ask permission to stay.

"Why I was the only one left behind?"

I had seen them all go, while I was the one who somehow survived. I could not understand why. My mother, with her soft hands and warm smile, her father’s protective embrace, Crystal, Yang, Johan, Ali—all gone. The weight of their absence was like a storm crashing inside me, each wave of grief stronger than the last.

I wanted to scream at the world, to shout at the injustice of it all, but nothing came out. I wanted to throw something at the sky, at the indifferent world outside this window that was still turning, still moving, as if nothing had been broken, as if nothing had changed, as if it hadn’t stolen everything I loved.

* knock\, knock *

I turned .

Rony was standing in the doorway, leaning slightly against the frame, his expression was a mix of concern and confusion. He had been with me since the day the storm had taken my family away. We were the only survivors. Somehow that fact had bound us together in a way that neither of us had words for yet.

"Alice." His voice was soft, careful, barely a whisper. "You need to eat something. It's been a week."

"I'm not hungry." My voice came out flat and distant, my eyes dropping to the floor, though I wasn't sure if I was angry at myself or at the world.

" Alice…"

He stepped closer, his face etched with worry.

" You have to— "

" I said I’m not hungry! "

The words snapped out of me before I could stop them, sharp and cutting, and I turned back to the window — the cherry blossoms long fallen from the empty street below — as I heard him go still behind me.

"I can't eat, Rony." My voice dropped. "It's not that I don't want to. It's that I can't. Everything gets stuck. I feel sick just thinking about it."

He didn't leave. He didn't push me, either. He just stood there in the quiet, and waited.

" You don’t understand. " I muttered, barely above a whisper, my voice breaking as tears began to pool in my eyes." You don’t get it. How could you? I lost everything. "

"You're right." His voice was steady, unhurried. "I can't fully understand what you're feeling. I won't pretend I do." A pause. "But I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

I turned sharply, looking at him through tear-filled eyes. His words felt hollow, as if they didn’t reach me, as if the void inside me had grown too large for anyone to fill.

The silence stretched between us, a chasm that neither of us could cross at this time. I looked at Rony, my heart aching with the knowledge that he was the only one left, the only one who could possibly understand the weight of the loss I was carrying. But even he, as close as he was, couldn’t truly understand what I was going through. But  redness of edges in his eyes , said a lot . I knew how much he was holding himself together by sheer stubbornness, the way you hold a cracked thing carefully in two hands and just keep walking , and tried to minimize my pain. And I realized , not for the first time, but more clearly than before that he was grieving too. My family had been his family in every way that mattered and he lost his friends just like me. His parents were abroad most of the time, because of their work so he used to spend most of his time in my house. He had eaten at our table and celebrated our birthdays and fallen asleep on our couch more times than any of us had counted. He had lost them too. So, I knew how much pain he was in.

He was just choosing, every single day, to fall apart quietly so I didn't have to.

" Alice..."

His voice broke on my name, just slightly. A hairline crack.

"We'll get through this. Together."

I hadn't realized I had been holding my breath until his words softened the air.

I didn't answer. But I didn't look away, either.

The pain was still there—sharp, raw, relentless—it hadn't moved, hadn't softened, hadn't done any of the things pain was supposed to eventually do. But something in the room had shifted. Some small, stubborn thing. But for the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel quite as alone. I was assured that Rony was with me.

And for a fleeting moment, as Rony reached out, I allowed myself to let his hand brush against mine, the smallest connection in a world that had turned into an ocean of grief. His fingers closed around mine without hesitation. Tightly, the way you hold something you're afraid of losing.

I shut my eyes.

Maybe it wouldn’t be easy, and maybe I could not heal overnight. But I wasn’t completely alone. Not anymore, never was. Rony was here, warm and real and steady, and for this one moment that was enough to keep me from letting go entirely. So I would try my best, for the two of us.

That was all I could promise. But for now, it was something.

I squeezed his hand tightly, and looked into his brown eyes filled with a new hope.

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\*....To be continued....\*

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