What Her Silence Left Behind
> "I thought killing him would silence the past.
But the past doesn't die when you bury a body.
It dies when you face it with your own name."
The blood was dry now.
It had crept beneath my fingernails and drawn lines across the creases of my palms, like forgotten lyrics etched in skin. The smell lingered — not metallic, but sweet. Like burnt flowers. Like the ending of something sacred.
I didn't run.
I didn't scream.
I just walked.
The corridor of that unreal house blurred behind me like a stage being dismantled after the final curtain.
No applause.
No encore.
Just silence.
The kind that listens back.
---
When I stepped outside, the air was different.
Thinner.
Sharper.
As if it had been waiting for me to do it.
The sky above was a smudge of purple and gray — a bruise across the world.
I had done something irreversible.
But I had also done something mine.
---
I didn't know where I was walking.
Not exactly.
But my feet moved like they'd been here before.
Carrying me toward the one place I had refused to return to since the erasure:
The Room.
Not the studio.
Not the performance hall.
The room where they'd taken my name
and replaced it with a brand.
The room where I'd been told Joon was a phase.
Where tears were treated like glitches.
Where I'd been congratulated for staying silent.
---
The door opened easily.
No creak.
No resistance.
Like it had been waiting, too.
Everything inside was untouched.
Files.
Folders.
Photos.
A shrine to my success.
But none of them looked like me.
Too much light.
Too much makeup.
Not a single one captured the version of me that had bled to breathe.
---
There was a chair in the center.
I sat in it.
The light above buzzed once.
Then dimmed.
And then…
She came.
---
Not a person.
Not a ghost.
A memory made flesh.
She looked exactly like I had the year they reshaped me.
Perfect posture.
Perfect lips.
A stillness that could win awards.
But her eyes were hollow.
Not because they were empty—
Because they were full of everyone else.
---
She circled me like I was an imposter in my own life.
And maybe I was.
She leaned in.
> "You were never meant to survive me," she whispered.
> "You were never meant to exist," I replied.
Her smile cracked.
Like porcelain under heat.
> "Do you think they'll love you now?"
> "I don't need them to."
She tilted her head.
Mocking.
> "But you needed him."
That broke something deeper.
> "Yes," I said.
And my voice didn't shake.
> "I needed Joon.
And I needed me.
The me you buried under awards and fan letters and contracts written in guilt."
---
She started to dissolve.
First the hands.
Then the mouth.
Her form pixelated, blurred —
not like death.
Like editing.
But her voice lingered as a whisper in the air:
> "You'll be forgotten."
> "Good," I said. "Let them forget the lie."
---
I sat in the chair after she disappeared.
Just breathing.
For the first time in years,
it wasn't rehearsed.
And the silence?
It didn't ask me to perform.
It just held me.
---
I opened the drawer beside the chair.
Inside was the last letter Joon had ever written to me.
I had never dared to read it.
Until now.
I unfolded it with trembling fingers.
It read:
> You don't have to choose between survival and love.
The real you — even broken — is the only one I ever needed.
> If you remember me, remember this:
Truth doesn't kill.
Lies do.
---
I cried.
Not because I was broken.
But because I was whole enough to feel it.
And the tears?
They weren't silent.
They sang.
---
I stood up.
Left the room.
Didn't look back.
Because for the first time,
the version of me that walked forward
was the only one left alive.