The night is breathing slowly. The rain has softened into a drizzle, tracing faint rivers down the windowpane. Inside the old house, everything smells of wet earth and medicine. The small lamp on the bedside table hums quietly, throwing a pale circle of light across the room.
Kai sits there still, hollow-eyed, a shadow of himself. Three days without sleep. His shirt clings to his skin, wrinkled, smelling faintly of sweat and rain. His fingers tremble as he wrings out the damp cloth, folding it again before laying it gently across Alina's forehead.
Her skin is cooler now. The fever has eased, but she hasn't opened her eyes. He watches her chest rise and fall, slow and steady. He tells himself that's enough that as long as she breathes, he can keep going.
But inside, something's tearing. A kind of helplessness he's never known before. The kind that doesn't roar, it just sits there, quietly burning. He leans back in the chair, runs his hands over his face, then lets them fall into his lap. His eyes flick to the bedside table.
Her diary lies there, small, brown leather cover, edges worn, a few loose pages tucked between the folds. It's been sitting there since he found it. He had the thought of reading it earlier, but he didn't touch it.
Now he looks at her again. Her face pale, fragile, peaceful. Too peaceful. He swallows. His chest tightens.
"I shouldn't," he whispers.
The words sound hollow in the empty room. He doesn't move for a long time. Just stares at the diary as though it might speak first. But curiosity doesn't push him, pain does.
Because he doesn't understand how someone so full of quiet kindness could end up breaking this badly.
He needs to know. Not out of intrusion, but out of desperation because maybe her words can tell him what her silence can't.
His hand moves before his mind agrees. Fingers trembling, he picks up the diary. It feels heavier than it looks.
He opens the first page slowly. The handwriting is uneven, delicate but rushed, like the words were fighting to escape her before she changed her mind.
"I don't know how I'm feeling right now. Is it tension, anxiety, or just sadness for no reason, absolutely no reason?"
Kai's eyes move slowly, tracing every curve of the letters.
"There are many reasons why I'm the way I am. I don't even know why I'm living this life because everyone has a reason to live and be happy. But I don't have one."
He stops reading for a moment. His throat burns. He looks at her again, the faint flutter of her lashes, the fragile slope of her nose, the way her lips look dry, colourless.
"I don't even know how many days it's been since I laughed. Even when I smile for a minute, I realize that I'm going to cry and get hurt. So I'm afraid of smiling. Because if you already know that you're going to hurt, then...Why do it?"
The sentence hits him like a punch. He presses the back of his hand to his mouth, eyes stinging. He pictures her smiling towards each customer, the corners of her mouth trembling like she was forcing joy through a wall of glass. And now he understands why it always looked that way.
"I'm just moving with life. It's like I've caught a train and I keep going without knowing where my stop is."
He exhales shakily, his chest tightening until it hurts. That's how she's been living, drifting. Lost, alone, quietly falling apart while pretending everything's fine. He wonders how good she is at pretending. She only shows the things that she wants everyone to see. He turns the page.
"Nowadays it feels like we're all running, chasing the things we want…
But what if, in the future, we get what we were chasing and lose ourselves on the way?"
Kai's eyes blur as he reads. He closes them briefly, pressing his fingers against his temples. He knows that feeling. The endless chase. The lights, the applause, the loneliness hidden behind fame. He's been running too. But she.....she was running just to survive. And somewhere in that run, she forgot what it felt like to be held still.
He opens his eyes again. Alina's face looks softer in the lamplight. Her breathing remains steady. He brushes a loose strand of hair from her cheek.
"I thought I was the best actor... he whispers ...but you've totally outclassed me."
His hand trembles as he turns another page.
"In this room I'm currently in… it feels suffocated. I wish to run from everything that's coming. But what about the problems? They'll follow me no matter how hard I try."
He swallows hard. His reflection ripples faintly in the window, a man half alive, half broken.
"I closed the door, hoping that I could be safe within these boundaries, hiding from everyone. I'm too afraid to open that door and face the cruel world."
He glances at the closed door of the room. The irony isn't lost on him; she really did close herself. He imagines her sitting on the bed, curled up, writing these words with shaking hands, eyes swollen, breath shallow, the weight of grief pressing against her ribs.
The image breaks him. He sets the diary down for a second, leans forward, elbows on his knees. His hands cover his face. His breath comes unevenly, like he's trying not to sob but can't stop the tremor in his chest.
He doesn't cry loudly. It's not that kind of pain. It's quieter, the kind that just leaks out in gasps, as if his heart is too tired to break properly. He looks up again, his eyes red, his lips trembling. Then he reaches for the diary once more. The next page smells faintly of old ink.
'' 'Life is hard to play'.... No one has said this to you since you were born."
He blinks at the strange phrasing, and somehow, it makes the words even more fragile.
"It's very hard to live on with the things life throws at you. No matter how bad things get, you can't quit halfway. You have to see the worst side… and the most beautiful side of this game."
He reads the paragraph twice. This one feels different. There's pain in it, yes, but also something else. Resilience. A flicker of hope, faint but there. He stares at the page, eyes wet, lips parted as if he's afraid to breathe. Then he looks at her again, Alina, still lying there, the girl who thinks she's lost her reason to live. And yet she wrote that.
"You're stronger than you think," he whispers, voice cracking. "You just… forgot."
The house is silent except for the rain and the slow ticking of the clock.
Kai leans back in the chair, holding the diary against his chest. His heartbeat is loud in his ears.
He closes his eyes for a long moment. The words echo inside him. Why live when there's no reason? He wants to tell her she's wrong. There is a reason that maybe she's been his reason all along. But she can't hear him. He looks at her again, her eyelashes fluttering faintly as if she's dreaming.
He sets the diary down on the table, fingers lingering on the cover. Part of him feels like he's sinned, like he's crossed a line he shouldn't have. He's always respected privacy, boundaries, and the quiet dignity of others. But this time… he had to know.
Because now he understands. Her silence wasn't just grief; it was drowning. And he's been sitting here the whole time, watching her sink, not realizing she was screaming beneath the surface.
He looks down at his own hands, pale, trembling, veins showing. "You're such an idiot," he mutters under his breath. He gets up, stretches his stiff limbs, and walks toward the window. Rain still falls softly outside, blurring the lights of the street.
He rests his forehead against the cool glass and exhales. "You'll smile again..." he whispers. ''..and laugh too... just like a little kid''
When he turns back, Alina shifts faintly. A small sound escapes her lips, a breath, maybe a word. Kai freezes.
"Alina?" he whispers in the hope that maybe she will reply to him, but no response. Just the rhythm of her breathing, steady and slow. But something in her face looks lighter, her brows no longer furrowed.
He walks closer, sits down again, his hand hovering above hers. Finally, he gathers the courage to take it. Her fingers are cold, but her pulse is warm. He holds her hand gently, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles.
"You've been fighting alone for so long, he murmurs ''but I'm here now, and I'll always be here to remind you that I'm with you."
The lamp flickers once. Outside, thunder rolls softly in the distance. Kai leans back, still holding her hand, still staring at the diary on the table.
He reaches out one last time, flips it shut, and whispers, "I don't want to read it, I want to hear it from your soul, and I will wait till you are comfortable to tell me everything from your mouth''
The leather cover closes with a faint sigh. For a long time, he sits there with the diary beside him, her hand in his, the rain outside whispering like a lullaby. His eyelids grow heavy, his breathing uneven.
He doesn't realize when his head drops forward onto the edge of the bed, his fingers still intertwined with hers. In the quiet room, with the faint hum of rain and the smell of medicine in the air, two broken souls rest, one healing, one still learning how to. And the diary, lying closed on the table, holds the weight of everything left unsaid.