Chapter 26: A Different Kind of Quiet

Five years passed quietly, almost as if they slipped through the seams of my days while I wasn’t paying attention. When I was younger, I used to think five years was long enough to change a person completely. Now I know it’s only long enough to teach you how to live with the things you never figured out how to let go of.

At twenty-eight, I’m a professor now. A title that still feels a little too big for me sometimes. My students think I have everything figured out. They greet me in the corridors with bright faces, call my classes inspiring, and sometimes linger after lectures just to talk about their dreams. I listen, I guide them when I can, and I try to be steady enough that they feel safe.

My colleagues trust me too. They say I’m reliable, consistent. I attend meetings on time, I submit reports early, I help new faculty adjust to campus life. On paper, I look like someone who has found his place in the world.

But spring still catches me off guard.

It always starts with the light. Softer in the mornings, lingering in the afternoons. Students sit under cherry trees with their lunches, couples laugh over iced coffee, and petals float around the courtyard like slow snowflakes.

And every year, something in me grows heavier.

It’s not dramatic. Not the kind of ache that makes you stop walking or sit down to breathe. It’s quieter than that. A feeling that slips in when I’m alone in my office, or when a stray petal lands on my shoulder. A memory that rises without permission, like a whisper caught in the wind.

I tell myself I don’t think about her anymore.

Most days, it’s even true.

But spring… always brings back that soft, familiar weight.

Hanami.

I don’t say her name out loud. I haven’t for years. It feels like touching something fragile—something I’m afraid will break if I think about it for too long. The last message I sent her was seven years ago. I lay on my apartment floor, exhausted and lonely and stupid enough to hope she might still care.

She never replied.

I don’t blame her, not anymore. Life moves people in different directions. I became busy. She built her own life somewhere far away. We drifted without trying to, and by the time we realized it, the distance between us had already grown too wide to cross.

Still… sometimes, when spring comes, I catch myself wondering how she’s doing. Whether she still draws. Whether she ever laughs the way she did back then—with her whole heart, like she was unafraid of being seen.

Sometimes I wonder if she ever thinks of me too.

Not with longing. Not with sadness. Just… with a kind of quiet recognition. The way you think of someone who changed you without realizing it.

I keep her letters in a drawer I never open. They’ve sat there for so long that the paper must have yellowed. I haven’t touched them because I’m afraid of what I’ll feel if I do. Nostalgia is a gentle thing, but it can leave deep cuts if you’re not careful.

People think I’ve moved on. That I’m at peace with my life, and maybe that’s true most of the time. I enjoy teaching. I enjoy watching students grow into themselves. I even enjoy the routine—my morning coffee, the quiet walk across campus, the echo of footsteps in empty hallways when I arrive before everyone else.

But every spring, the past finds me in the smallest ways.

A laughing girl with long hair reminding me of her.

A sky full of drifting petals that looks like the one we once walked under.

A sketch left behind in the art building, careless and soft, like something she could have drawn.

I’m not unhappy. I want to make that clear, even to myself. My life is stable, and stability is something I used to pray for. I don’t wake up with regrets. I don’t go to sleep wishing for a different path. I’m doing well.

But sometimes, when the world grows too gentle, I feel the ghost of who I was. The boy who believed letters could hold two people together across any distance. The boy who waited at a snowy station with his heart too full. The boy who didn’t understand how fragile people’s paths could be.

I don’t know if that version of me still exists.

Maybe he dissolved over the years, like a stain fading from fabric.

Or maybe he’s still somewhere inside me, waiting for something I can’t name.

This morning, as I crossed the courtyard, a single cherry petal brushed against my hand. I looked up without meaning to. The branches above were full of pink, swaying in a wind that felt softer than winter, softer than memory.

And just for a moment, I felt that old tightness in my chest.

Not a wound.

Just a reminder.

Some seasons move forward whether you’re ready or not.

Some hearts… stay exactly where they were left.

I exhaled, steadying myself, and continued walking toward the lecture hall. Another class, another day, another spring.

Life goes on. I’ve learned that.

But the quiet never really leaves.

It just changes shape.