Chapter 10: The Stories Left Behind

The rain didn't come that morning.

But the sky wore grief like a heavy coat—thick, gray, and unmoving. The clouds hung low over the house, pressing down on the world, on the breath, on the soul. They felt dense with something unshed, like the sky was still deciding whether to cry.

David stood at Mavia's window, hands resting lightly on the frame. He wasn't looking out. He was just there—still, like the quiet had claimed him.

The wood beneath his fingers was worn and splintered in places, weathered by years of sunlight and monsoon. It creaked faintly under the pressure of his hand—a tired, almost human sound. It reminded him of something Mavia once said during one of their late-night conversations:

"Even the quiet things break… if you hold them long enough."

David hadn't meant to stay up all night. But sleep had become a distant concept lately. The voice memo kept echoing in his mind—not haunting like a ghost, but steady, rhythmic. Like footsteps in the hall. Like a second heartbeat under the floorboards.

> "Don't forget me. But don't freeze either."

He wasn't frozen anymore.

Not since that voice cracked through the silence and touched something inside him he hadn't realized was still alive.

He turned back toward the desk. Mavia's journal lay open, a blank page waiting like an empty stage. The pen in David's fingers trembled—not with fear, but with the weight of truth. Of memory. Of responsibility.

For a long time, he didn't write.

He just sat.

Staring at the page like it might speak first.

Then—quietly, deliberately—he began to write.

> "There was more than one goodbye.

The one we heard.

The one he wrote.

And the one he lived quietly, a little more each day.

We missed them all.

But maybe… maybe we weren't supposed to catch them.

Maybe some goodbyes are meant to echo.

To teach us what not to miss next time."

His fingers paused. The words hung there, open and honest. He didn't cross them out.

He closed the journal softly, as if afraid the page would bleed if disturbed.

---

When Meher arrived later that morning, she didn't ask if he had slept. The answer was in his eyes—in the glassy tiredness, the red edges, the slow blink.

Instead, she just said, "Let's go."

David blinked. "Go?"

"The bookstore," she replied, pulling her hoodie sleeves over her knuckles. "Not to escape. For clues."

He understood instantly.

Mavia had a strange habit of leaving things in books. Not bookmarks—notes. Scribbled lines on margins. Thoughts slipped between chapters. Sometimes cryptic, sometimes emotional. Sometimes just weird.

"Page 89 will break your heart," he once wrote. Or, "This one's about me, but it never says my name."

The idea that Mavia might have left pieces of himself in public spaces didn't feel far-fetched. In fact, it felt exactly like something he'd do—disappear by scattering his presence.

---

The bookstore was quiet. Warm yellow lights, old carpet, the comforting scent of paper and dust.

They split up.

David wandered toward the poetry aisle, fingers trailing along worn spines. Meher disappeared into fiction. There was something sacred in this search, like they were chasing footprints only visible to those who loved him.

Time passed in hush.

Then—her voice.

"David."

He turned. Meher stood at the edge of the aisle, a small paperback in her hand. Its cover was faded. The spine cracked from too many reads.

She opened it gently, revealing a message scrawled in faint pencil inside the front cover.

> "This ending hurts less if you've already lived through it."

And just below it, in darker ink, a reply:

> "But it still hurts."

David's heart stuttered.

He stepped closer. Meher didn't say anything else. She didn't need to. It was Mavia's handwriting—and someone else's. Someone who had read the same pain and felt compelled to speak back.

"Who…?" David whispered.

Meher shook her head slowly. "We may never know."

They bought the book.

And in silence, walked back through the drizzle that had started to fall—soft, misty, like the sky had finally decided to mourn.

---

That night, David sat cross-legged on the floor of his room. Around him: Mavia's journals, old sketchpads, the ancient iPod with the cracked screen, and a mug of untouched tea that had long gone cold.

He reached for the journals first.

Most of the pages were filled with poetry—some structured, some wild. Others were ramblings, single lines written like sighs:

> "I hate February for no good reason."

"If silence had a color, it would be this sky."

"Zayan. Why did you look back if you weren't going to stay?"

David's pen hovered above the last one.

He circled it. Then beneath, he wrote:

> "Because sometimes we need to see what we're leaving before we walk away.

And sometimes, that's the mistake."

It wasn't a perfect answer. But it felt like part of one. Like a sentence missing its paragraph, yet still worth saying.

When he posted the next chapter of The Last Message, it didn't follow the usual format. No clear plot. No timeline. No structure.

Just fragments.

Mavia's fragments.

> "If this feels broken, it's because it is.

And because he was.

And because sometimes, we all are.

But broken doesn't mean lost.

It just means unfinished."

> "So I'm still writing.

For him.

For me.

For whoever is sitting in the dark right now,

needing to know someone else once felt like they didn't fit either."

The post didn't go viral.

It did something better.

It connected.

The comments started slowly. Soft. Vulnerable. Real.

> "I'm going to therapy next week. I used to think that meant weakness."

"This made me call my brother. We hadn't spoken in two years."

"I think I miss someone I never got to say goodbye to."

David didn't reply to all of them.

But he read every one.

Let them settle.

Let them live with him, the way Mavia's words did.

They weren't just responding to the story.

They were entering it.

---

Later that evening, while organizing the top shelf of his closet, David found something he hadn't seen in years: a camcorder. Dust-covered. Heavy in his hands. Still intact.

He didn't expect it to work—but when he flipped the screen open and hit power, the light blinked on.

There was only one clip saved.

Curious—and suddenly breathless—he pressed play.

The image flickered, then focused. Mavia, sixteen years old, stood in the clearing of the woods, the familiar bonfire flickering behind him. His hoodie swallowed him whole. His smile was real.

Not the practiced one from school pictures.

But the one that reached his eyes.

"Hey, future us," he said into the camera. "If you're watching this, I hope you figured it out. And if not… that's okay too. Just don't give up before you get to the part that makes sense."

David stared at the screen as if it held something sacred.

Then he paused it.

The silence afterward was different. Not hollow. Not empty.

Just... still.

"I'm trying," he whispered.

And he meant it.

He returned the camcorder to the shelf, gently, reverently. Then opened the journal again and wrote his final thought of the night.

> "He left us stories in every silence.

It just took time to hear them."

---

That night, David slept.

Not lightly. Not haunted.

But deeply.

And for the first time in days—without dreams.

End of Chapter