Time has a funny way of turning everything ordinary into something unbearable.
Years passed. Seasons changed, but neither Arman nor Liyana stopped carrying the other in the corners of their minds.
Arman became successful, ironically, writing love stories he didn't believe in. His books were praised for their emotional depth, for capturing relationships with honesty—but he knew the truth: he had never fully loved anyone as much as he had Liyana. And that truth gnawed at him quietly, like a candle burning from the inside out.
Liyana, meanwhile, built a quiet life teaching literature. She guided students through the labyrinths of heartbreak and human folly, all the while convincing herself that she had mastered her own heart. She smiled at her students when they wrote essays about love, but deep down she knew that love was not something you could control—or escape—by teaching it to others.
They did not meet often. The occasional message, brief and polite, existed only to remind them that the other still breathed somewhere in the same world. Each encounter was carefully avoided, each near reunion a test of restraint neither fully passed.
Then tragedy arrived—not in the dramatic way that one expects, but in the most ordinary, cruel fashion.
Liyana had an accident. Nothing cinematic, nothing preventable. A slip on a wet sidewalk, a car braking too late, and suddenly, she was in the hospital with broken bones, a concussion, and a reality that no one could soften.
Arman received the call in the middle of the night. He dropped the pen he had been using to rewrite a love story and felt his heart seize. Every rational thought screamed for him to wait, to breathe, to act normally—but action was the only thing left that mattered.
By the time he reached the hospital, the corridors were eerily quiet, the fluorescent lights humming above like a slow, judgmental clock. He found her in room 402, lying still, fragile, yet unmistakably herself.
"You're here," she whispered, eyes fluttering open. Her voice was a mixture of relief, irritation, and faint humor—a combination that had always made him fall harder than he should have.
"Of course I'm here," he said, trying to sound composed. "Where else would I be?"
She smirked, despite the pain. "Anywhere but here, apparently."
For the first time in years, neither of them pretended. The years of pride, the misunderstandings, the carefully maintained distance—all of it crumbled in the face of the obvious. They needed each other, desperately, painfully.
"I thought… you were engaged," she said suddenly, almost as if testing him, almost as if she wanted to make the same mistake again.
"I thought… you were leaving the country," he replied. And just like that, the entire weight of their silence, their assumptions, and their stubbornness was placed between them.
They both realized, in that suspended moment, that the rumors, the half-truths, and the unspoken fears had cost them years. And yet, here they were, still alive, still stubbornly connected by an invisible thread stronger than time or distance.
Arman reached for her hand, hesitating only slightly. "We can fix this," he said. "If you want to."
She squeezed his hand, a small, firm acknowledgment that love, even when delayed or damaged, could survive—if only they were willing to be honest now.
For the first time, the river outside seemed to make sense. Its current was relentless, just like time, but it carried everything forward. Nothing stopped. Nothing waited. And perhaps, like the river, love, too, could move steadily forward—if they finally let it.
That night, Arman stayed in the hospital until her parents insisted he leave. He walked home in the rain, unbothered by the wet, unbothered by the world. For the first time in years, he felt a sliver of hope that was not tinged with regret.
And Liyana, for her part, realized that even pain, even fear, even near-loss could not make her stop wanting him.
Because sometimes, tragedy doesn't knock.
It quietly moves the pieces into place, forcing love to speak when it can no longer remain silent.