The cold breath of the wind brushed over me.
I was standing on top of the wall.
Just before I jumped, I heard that voice.
"Years have passed… and still the same wall?"
The voice was familiar.
My heart leapt to my throat.
Slowly, I turned around.
Alara.
The years hadn't taken anything from her.
Only her eyes had changed — there was no longer curiosity in them, but the silence of a woman who had learned to live behind walls.
The moonlight fell on her hair; it felt as if time itself had stopped just to watch us.
"Are you trying to escape… or to return?" she asked.
Her voice was the same, but it carried a new hardness.
I paused.
"I don't know," I said. "Maybe they're the same thing."
She smiled. That smile was like a song that had echoed in my memories for years.
"The same boy who jumped off this wall still doesn't know the answer," she said.
I sat down on the edge of the wall, my legs dangling.
"You haven't changed," I said. "This house… you… everything's the same."
Alara stepped closer.
"You've changed a lot," she said softly, "but you're still running."
"Sometimes running is the only way to live."
"No, Alpay," she said sharply. "Running just takes you farther from where you are. But you can't run from what's inside you."
When we fell silent, the wind passed through the trees like a sigh.
I remembered the night we once sat in this garden — she showed me a flower, and I told her about the stars.
"This place is still the same," I said. "It feels like nothing has changed."
"You're wrong," she replied. "Nothing is the same."
She took another step — now standing right before me.
In her eyes were anger, longing, and fear all tangled together.
"Everything changed after you left, Alpay. That night, your disappearance… it changed everyone's fate. Your father didn't speak for days. He wouldn't eat, wouldn't drink. Then suddenly, he was gone — replaced by someone else entirely.
But you… you were always planning to leave, weren't you? And you did. So, tell me, what did it change?"
I took a deep breath.
"I just wanted to be free."
"And what about us?" she asked.
Those two words stabbed me like a knife.
"Us… what do you mean?" I asked quietly.
"Your father, the people who worked here, me… we all worried about you. But you just left a letter and disappeared."
"I didn't leave. I was taken!" I said.
"For days, I was tortured, starved, kept in dark, wet places while you slept peacefully in your warm bed.
One day they broke my bones, the next they electrocuted me — for fun. Then they healed me, and did it all again.
For months I was sold like a slave, beaten, humiliated. Look at my body, Alara. Do you really think I'm the same as the boy you remember?"
Her eyes began to fill with tears.
"After your letter, we thought you'd run away. Then six or seven months later, we received news of a burned body. They said it was you. 'Unrecognizable,' they told us. Do you know what that did to me?" she whispered.
"Tell me," I said.
Her words awakened something I had buried deep for years.
I moved closer, reached for her hand — she pulled away.
"Don't," she said. "I'm not that girl anymore. I was learning to live with your death, and now you're standing here."
"I'm not that boy anymore," I said. "But I'm still here."
Silence. Only the sound of our hearts.
"No," she said softly. "You're not here. You're still living in those days of pain, Alpay. Am I wrong?"
"Is that Doctor Alara speaking," I said bitterly, "or my friend?"
She slapped me.
"What does that mean? I cried for you for days. Do you think I did that as a doctor?"
I grabbed her arms and looked into her eyes.
"Then who are you, Alara? My doctor? The master's niece? Or… are you still my friend?"
She tore her hands away and slapped me again.
"You're such a fool. Years may have changed your face, but your mind is still the same, Alpay!"
She turned to go inside.
I leaned against the balcony railing and said,
"My father isn't the same either. I don't know what kind of business he's involved in, but he's hiding something. Does it have anything to do with your uncle? Tarık Bey is still with him."
Her face changed — for a brief moment, her mask fell.
"You should be grateful to be here, and you're questioning your father's work?"
"Yes," I said firmly.
"He saved your life, brought you home. Spend time with him, make up for the lost years."
Silence again.
"Alpay," she whispered. "Things could have been so different. If you hadn't left, maybe you'd be standing beside your father now, building your own world. But instead, you've come back and started questioning everything. What are you trying to do, play detective?"
"Don't I have the right to ask? Nothing has been explained."
At that moment, I saw the weight she'd been carrying for years.
"You know something, don't you?" I said.
"You're the only one who knows what should have been… would everything have stayed the same?"
"Some things," she said, "are safer not to know."
The wind filled the space between us.
The moonlight lit her face, but there was something dark behind her eyes.
"Alara," I said quietly, "tell me something. That night… why didn't you stop me?"
She averted her gaze.
"Because if I had, I would have wanted to go with you."
Her words burned through me.
So she had wanted to escape too.
But her chains were different from mine.
I reached out again. This time, she didn't pull away.
"I don't have to run anymore," I said.
"No," she whispered. "Now I'm the one who has to run."
The silence between us said more than a thousand words.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
My phone vibrated.
Alara's eyes flicked toward it.
"Your father's calling," she said.
"I know," I muttered, silencing it.
"What did you mean, Alara?"
"Some questions," she said softly, "don't have meaning anymore, Alpay."
She took a deep breath.
"Good night, Alpay. Take care of yourself… and don't make your father worry."
In the distance, I heard the sound of car engines.
Lights flashed at the mansion gate.
Alara looked at me.
"You have to go," she said.
"What about you?"
I looked into her eyes one last time.
In that moment, I knew — nothing would ever be the same again.
I jumped from the wall.
What I left behind wasn't just a house — it was my past.
And inside that house… a secret still lingered.
My phone rang again.
I answered.
"Father?"
"Where are you, son? Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, father. I'm right outside the house."
"How did you get away from the guards? I put so many men to watch over you."
"It's not my first time escaping from a mansion, father."
"Alright, come home. I brought a nurse to clean your wounds and stitch you up."
As he spoke, men appeared by the gate.
I threw myself behind the wall and hid.