Chapter 22: The Message That Stays Unread

I had been sitting at my desk for hours, the sketchbook open in front of me, pencils scattered across the table. Outside, the evening had fallen, a quiet drizzle painting the city in blurred lights. My parents’ words from earlier in the day still echoed in my head, harsh and unrelenting, like a storm I couldn’t escape.

“Hanami, you must comply. This is for your future.”

I had nodded, my hands trembling over the edge of the table. Inside, I screamed, my chest aching as though someone had pressed their hands against it and refused to let go. My life wasn’t my own. Every decision, every step, every moment of my future was being dictated by others.

And yet, even as I sat there, drowning in that sense of helplessness, my phone vibrated. A single notification, small and almost innocent, yet heavy with meaning.

I picked it up, heart catching. It was from him. Kosuke.

“Are you doing okay?”

My breath caught in my throat. The screen glowed softly in the dim room, and for a moment, I couldn’t move. Seven years. Seven years of distance, silence, and absence. Seven years in which I had tried to bury every memory, every thought, every trace of him in a corner of my heart I didn’t dare touch.

And now… he was here, reaching across that time, reaching into the hollow space that still belonged to him.

I wanted to reply. I wanted to type something—anything—that could tell him I was alive, that I remembered, that I had never stopped caring. My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I typed, erased, typed again, paused. Every word felt too small, too fragile, too meaningless.

Because I couldn’t tell him the truth. Not yet. Not while my parents’ plans loomed over me like an unyielding shadow. I couldn’t tell him that I had been forced into silence, that I had wanted to reach out a thousand times but had been unable. That I had held back my heart not out of choice, but out of fear, obedience, and circumstance.

I stared at the message, the words blinking at me, pleading for attention. And yet, I didn’t press send. I couldn’t.

I imagined him lying somewhere, exhausted, waiting, hoping. And I couldn’t bring myself to crush that fragile hope with the impossibility of my life. If I replied now, I’d tell him too much, reveal the storm I couldn’t control, admit the things my parents would never forgive. And he didn’t need that. He didn’t need me trapped in the chaos of my own life while he carried the weight of seven years without a word.

So I stayed silent.

Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. I pressed my palm to my face, inhaling sharply. My pencil rolled across the desk, forgotten, leaving a faint mark on the paper. The sketches I wanted to create, the images that might have expressed even a fraction of what I felt, remained blank. My heart felt frozen, split between the person I was forced to be and the girl who still belonged to Kosuke.

I thought of the letters he had written, the letters I had cherished, the words we had exchanged that now felt like echoes from another life. I thought of the first snow, the library, the quiet afternoons, the hidden corners of the school. I thought of every stolen moment, every glance, every unspoken sentence, and I realized how impossibly far away he had become, even though he was just a message away.

And yet, even in the ache, I felt a strange warmth. That he had reached out, that he had remembered, that he had not given up, even after all this time. Seven years of silence, seven years of longing, and still he cared enough to ask one simple question.

Are you doing okay?

I pressed the phone to my chest, holding it there as if the proximity alone could give me strength. I wanted to tell him so many things, but I couldn’t. I had to wait, and waiting felt like drowning. I had to obey my parents’ plans. I had to keep moving forward, even if it meant leaving the one person I had always belonged to behind.

And so I stayed silent.

The rain tapped gently against the window, a quiet rhythm that matched my heartbeat. I traced a line on my sketchbook, a line that didn’t form a shape or a face, just a mark—a reminder that I existed, that I was still alive, still here, and still feeling everything I could not say.

I knew he would wait. I knew he would wonder. I knew that for him, silence was pain. For me, silence was survival. And even though my fingers ached to reach out, even though my heart ached to speak, I couldn’t.

Not tonight. Not ever, until the storm of my life passed, until the day I could breathe without my parents’ shadow pressing on my chest.

I whispered his name into the quiet, a prayer, a promise, a confession that would remain unspoken.

Kosuke… I’m still here.

But the message stayed unread.

And in the silence that followed, I felt both heartbreak and hope entwined, a fragile thread stretching across seven years of distance, waiting for a day that might never come.