Chapter 23: What They Don’t Tell Each Other

Kosuke stopped checking his phone every few minutes. Not because it didn’t matter, but because it mattered too much. The unread message sat there like a quiet bruise. He didn’t open the drawer where he kept their old letters. He didn’t let himself wonder what she was doing or if she was happy.

He told himself she probably forgot him.

People grow up.

People move on.

So he buried himself in lectures, in assignments, in late-night library sessions that kept him too busy to think. His friends joked that he was trying to graduate twice in one year. He forced a smile and let them believe it. It was easier than explaining the truth—that he was studying to fill the silence she left behind.

At night, when the campus was quiet, he’d sit on his balcony and stare at the sky. The stars looked smaller than when they were kids. Or maybe he was the one who changed. He whispered constellations to no one, as if repeating their names would keep something alive.

But each time he looked back at his phone, the screen stayed blank.

Some part of him still hoped, and that hurt the most.

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Hanami, on the other hand, kept her phone face-down on her desk. If she didn’t see the message again, maybe her heart would stop aching. Maybe she wouldn’t feel the sting every time she imagined Kosuke waiting for an answer she couldn’t give.

She told herself she had no right to reach back.

Not with her parents watching.

Not with her future already being folded and arranged for her like someone else’s clothes.

So she practiced small smiles for strangers—men her parents introduced her to with polite descriptions and hopeful glances. She bowed, listened, kept her voice soft. She acted as if she wasn’t drifting farther from the life she once wanted.

In the evenings, she painted. Not landscapes, not portraits—just colors, layered gently, like feelings she didn’t know how to explain. She never signed her name on the canvas. She didn’t feel like she deserved to.

Her art friend asked once, “Do you miss someone?”

Hanami shook her head.

But her brush kept choosing the same shade of blue she remembered from a winter long ago.

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Kosuke thought she had moved on.

Hanami thought she wasn’t allowed to hold on.

Both kept living.

Both kept hurting in silence.

They walked forward on different roads, each believing the other was already far ahead, not realizing they were still moving in the same direction—just miles apart, unable to see it.

And in that space between them, all the words they never said began to gather, waiting quietly for the day one of them found the courage to break the silence.