3.The Massage He Never Sent

David didn't sleep that night.

He sat on the floor of Mavia's room until the rain faded to mist, until the darkness outside gave way to a dull grey morning. The notebook lay open beside him, the last full page circled in his thoughts like smoke in a sealed room.

"He was right."

What had he said?

He couldn't stop asking himself. It was like a whisper with no mouth, a truth waiting behind a closed door he wasn't sure he ever wanted to open.

The torn page was a wound. And it bled in silence.

By midmorning, Meher knocked gently on the open door. Her voice was softer than usual. "You should eat."

David nodded, though he didn't move.

She walked in quietly, sat cross-legged on the floor near him, and looked down at the notebook. She didn't ask to read it again. She just said, "He used to write all night sometimes. Thought I didn't know. But I heard the pen. I always did."

David looked over at her. "Why didn't he talk to anyone?"

Meher picked at a loose thread on her sleeve. "Because he didn't want to be fixed. He just wanted to be seen."

The words landed harder than they should have.

David glanced at the window. "I thought leaving would give him space."

"It did," she said. "But not the kind he needed."

They sat there for a while. Long enough for the quiet to become comfortable. Familiar, even.

Then Meher asked, "Do you remember the campfire?"

David blinked. "Which one?"

"The one in the forest. When you, me, and Mavia went for his sixteenth birthday."

He remembered. Of course he did.

It had been cold that night.

They were deep in the woods, wrapped in blankets around a tiny fire that refused to grow, eating burnt marshmallows and telling ghost stories that weren't scary. Mavia had looked different in that light — softer somehow, shadows playing across his face, making him look older.

That was the night David had said something he now wished he could unsay.

"Maybe people like us aren't meant to last."

It was meant as a joke, a half-hearted comment about how broken they all were inside. But Mavia hadn't laughed.

Instead, he'd stared into the flames and whispered,

"You might be right."

David hadn't thought much of it then.

Now he couldn't stop thinking about it.

Back in the present, David stood up suddenly. "I need to go somewhere."

Meher looked up. "Where?"

"I need to see something. Maybe someone."

She didn't ask questions. She just nodded.

The walk to Mavia's favorite place took over twenty minutes.

It was a small overlook at the edge of a wooded trail near the outskirts of town — a place they used to go after school, skipping rocks down the ravine, lying in the grass, talking about things that didn't matter and things that mattered too much.

The rain had made the path slick. David's shoes were soaked by the time he reached the edge.

There it was.

The view they used to call "the quiet world" — hills rolling into nothing, sky stretching endlessly overhead. It looked the same. But he didn't.

He pulled the notebook from his bag and sat down on a damp bench.

Flipping to the final entry again, he read Mavia's words out loud this time.

"He was right."

David shook his head.

"I wasn't," he whispered. "Not about that."

He closed the book and stared out into the mist.

He didn't realize someone had come up the trail until he heard footsteps behind him.

Turning, he saw a boy — maybe seventeen — standing with an umbrella. Pale face, anxious eyes.

"You're David?" the boy asked.

David's stomach flipped. "Yeah. Who are you?"

"I'm Karim," he said. "I… I knew Mavia. From school. We had literature together."

David stood, notebook clutched in his hand. "You knew him well?"

Karim hesitated, then nodded. "Not like you. But well enough to know he didn't trust people easily."

David nodded slowly. "He didn't. But he trusted me once."

Karim reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. "He gave this to me the week before…"

He didn't finish. He didn't have to.

David took the note with shaking hands.

Karim stepped back, gave him space, and waited.

David unfolded it.

It was Mavia's handwriting. No doubt.

If you're reading this, it means I couldn't tell him myself. Maybe I was too afraid. Maybe I ran out of time.

Tell David: I never blamed him. I disappeared because I didn't want him to watch me fall.

But he wasn't wrong. Some of us don't last. And maybe that's okay.

But I want him to know—he was the only thing that made staying feel possible for a while.

That has to count for something.

— M

David's legs gave out. He sat heavily on the bench again, note trembling in his hands.

It wasn't a confession. It wasn't an apology.

It was something deeper — recognition.

The feeling that, even in pain, someone had seen him too.

When David looked up again, Karim was gone. The trail was empty. Just mist and trees and the sound of distant birdsong.

He folded the note slowly, tucked it into the notebook, and placed both in his backpack.

The pain hadn't gone away.

But it felt… sharper now. Clearer. Like the edges of a memory being restored after years of blur.

That evening, David returned home just as the sky turned gold.

Meher was waiting at the door.

He didn't say anything. Just held out the folded note.

She read it silently. Then handed it back, eyes glossy.

"He really loved you, you know," she said.

David nodded. "I know now."

And for the first time since Mavia's death, he let himself cry.

Not because of guilt. Not even because of loss.

But because someone had left behind love in silence —

And someone else had finally heard it.