The city didn't sleep, not really. Even in the quietest corners, something pulsed underneath—voices from a distance, footsteps echoing in narrow alleys, a song leaking from a window cracked just enough to let in the summer breeze. An stood by her balcony railing, looking down, not at anything in particular but at everything all at once. The wind pulled gently at her hair, and for a moment, it felt like someone brushing their fingers past her cheek.
She hadn't written for days.
Not because she didn't want to. But because the words… they didn't come the way they used to. And when they did, they weren't hers anymore. They were tainted—colored by memory, by longing, by fear. There was a story inside her trying to claw its way out, but it didn't know how to begin. Or maybe, An just didn't know how to let it.
It was easier to stay silent.
Easier to live in the pages of books written by other people—people who knew how to transform pain into poetry. She had forgotten how to do that. Or maybe she never really knew. Maybe all she ever did was bleed neatly onto paper and call it writing.
That night, she picked up her old notebook again. The one she had avoided since the day she saw Khánh at the bookstore. Its cover was frayed at the corners, smudged with fingerprints and coffee stains. She ran her fingers over the spine, hesitated for a second, then opened to the last page she'd written.
The ink was faded, the words cut off mid-sentence.
She remembered writing it.
It had been a Wednesday. A storm had rolled through the city, shaking the windows of her apartment. She remembered feeling safe, oddly enough, as if the chaos outside somehow steadied her inside. It was one of those rare days when she had believed that she was okay. That the worst had passed. That she had survived the loss of Khánh, of herself, of everything in between.
She hadn't.
She began to write—not about him, not directly. But he was there, in the way the main character hesitated before speaking, in the way she looked away whenever someone got too close. In her silences, in her almosts. The man in the story was not named Khánh, but An knew that every line of dialogue was shaped by his voice. Every unfinished sentence mirrored the ones they never said.
Sometimes, she wondered if Khánh ever thought about her. Not in a romantic way, not even in a guilty way—just... wondered. Did he ever walk past a bookstore and think of her tracing spines with her fingertips? Did he remember the night she cried over a film neither of them understood? Did he know that she had kept the little note he once scribbled on the back of a receipt, telling her to "just breathe"?
She hadn't meant to keep it. But something about the hurried handwriting, the ink smudged by a drop of rain, made her tuck it away in a drawer. It lived there now, between old letters and receipts, silent but present.
Later that week, Linh showed up at her door again, uninvited but not unwelcome. She held up two plastic bags of takeout and a half-grin.
"You look like you haven't eaten in days," Linh said as she slipped off her shoes. "And don't lie. Your fridge is probably as empty as your inbox."
An didn't argue. She just stepped aside and let her in.
The apartment felt warmer with Linh there. Not just in temperature, but in energy. Linh moved through the space like she belonged in it, like she could fill all the hollow corners An pretended weren't there. They sat cross-legged on the floor, eating silently for a while. The only sound was the crinkling of wrappers and the occasional clink of chopsticks against the plastic boxes.
"I saw him," An said suddenly.
Linh looked up. "Khánh?"
An nodded.
"At the bookstore. A week ago."
Silence again. But not the kind that stretched too far. Linh simply waited, knowing better than to rush her.
"He looked the same," An continued. "Like no time had passed. But when I looked at him... I felt like I was seeing him through glass. Like he was close but not reachable."
"Did you talk?"
"No," An whispered. "I couldn't."
Linh didn't offer clichés. Didn't say things like "maybe next time" or "you'll get closure." She simply leaned back, closed her eyes, and let the weight of An's words settle in the room.
"You're not broken," Linh said softly after a while. "You're just carrying something too heavy on your own."
That night, An wrote again.
Really wrote.
The words came slowly at first, hesitant. But then they flowed—pages and pages of a new story. A woman learning how to forgive without forgetting. A man learning how to return without expecting anything.
The following morning, the apartment felt different. Not quieter, not louder—just... lighter. As if the pages she'd filled had taken something with them, a weight that had pressed against her chest for far too long.
An stood by the kitchen counter, waiting for the water to boil, her notebook still open on the table. The last line she'd written stared back at her.
"Forgiveness isn't about letting go of what happened. It's about letting yourself breathe again."
She didn't know where that sentence had come from. It wasn't something she had read or something someone had said. It had come from a part of her she rarely touched—the fragile part, the honest part.
When the kettle whistled, she poured the hot water over the tea leaves, watching them bloom slowly in the glass pot. The rising steam curled toward the ceiling like memories drifting upward, weightless and unspoken.
She carried her cup to the window, her bare feet brushing softly across the wooden floor. Outside, the world had already begun again—people hurrying, cars honking, children tugging at their mothers' sleeves. It made her feel both connected and detached at the same time.
She thought of Khánh. Again.
Not with the ache she used to, but with something softer. Gentler.
She remembered the way he used to sit on the floor by her feet as she read aloud. He never interrupted. Just listened. Sometimes his fingers would trace lazy circles against her ankle, grounding her without even trying. It was a small thing, that touch. But she remembered it more vividly than most words they'd said to each other.
He had always been better at listening than speaking.
And she had always been better at writing than saying what she truly meant.
Maybe that's where they broke—between all the things they never said aloud.
There had been love. Of that she was certain. But love was never enough when buried beneath silence and pride. When neither of them knew how to bend without breaking. When the space between "I'm fine" and "please stay" grew too wide to cross.
She took a sip of tea. It burned a little, but she didn't mind.
There was something sacred in letting herself feel again. Even if the feelings came in fragments, scattered and unsure.
Her phone buzzed. A message from Linh.
"Come out today. Book fair downtown. You need air and people and overpriced iced coffee."
An smiled. Linh knew her too well.
She hesitated for a moment, then typed back.
"Okay. I'll come."
She hadn't been to a book fair in years.
Last time had been with Khánh.
They'd walked between booths, flipping through poetry collections and vintage hardcovers, challenging each other to find the oddest title. She had picked "The Art of Listening to Rain". He had chosen "Maps for the Heartbroken". They'd laughed, standing shoulder to shoulder beneath the fluttering canopy of tents.
Back then, everything had felt possible.
Now, it simply felt distant.
But maybe distance wasn't a bad thing. Maybe space gave things room to shift, to change.
Maybe it was time to stop walking in circles around the past.
She finished her tea and glanced back at the notebook. The page was still open, the ink still wet in some places. She ran her fingers lightly across it, then closed the cover.
Some stories needed to be written, not lived.
And some lives needed to be lived, not rewritten.
She grabbed her bag, her phone, her keys.
Then she stepped out.
Into sunlight.
Into noise.
Into now.