After seeing him again, I carried with me a very strange feeling.
It wasn't clear, yet it was unmistakably present.
A feeling I had never named.
A feeling I had never dared to understand.
I still thought of him as someone who had always been kind to me.
Someone who had once been by my side when I was still naïve.
Someone who had cared for me in a way no one else ever had.
But I still didn't think that he loved me.
Or perhaps… I didn't dare to think about it.
That night, when I returned to my room, everything around me was the same.
The walls were still silent.
But inside me, something had changed.
I sat there for a long time, doing nothing.
Just staring into the empty space in front of me.
His image kept replaying in my mind—
The way he stood in front of me.
The way he looked at me.
The way he spoke.
The way he kept his distance.
Everything was so clear that I couldn't pretend we hadn't met again.
I took out the small notebook he had once given me.
I had kept it for a long time.
But I had never read it as slowly as I did that night.
I turned each page.
Familiar handwriting.
Simple reminders:
"Remember to eat properly."
"Don't stay up too late."
"If anything happens, call me."
I stopped at the last page.
His phone number.
I didn't need to look at it—
I had memorized it long ago.
Naturally.
As if it had always been there.
I stared at those numbers for a long time.
My fingers gently touched the page.
I could have called him right then.
Just one call.
Or one message.
But I didn't.
Not because I didn't want to—
But because I didn't dare.
As I read his words again, a discomfort slowly rose inside me.
Not toward him.
But toward my own life.
Toward the marriage I was living in.
I had never once felt happiness in it.
Not a dramatic kind of suffering—
But a quiet emptiness that stretched over time.
Every day felt the same.
No care.
No understanding.
No feeling of being important in someone's life.
I had once thought that maybe marriage was supposed to be like that.
Ordinary.
Stable.
Nothing special.
But after seeing him again, I realized—
What I once thought was "normal"…
was actually something missing.
Missing care.
Missing gentleness.
Missing the feeling of being protected.
I began to think of him more often.
Not intentionally—
But unconsciously.
When I ate alone, I remembered the times he sat and ate with me.
When I felt tired, I remembered the way he would simply ask,
"Are you okay?"
When I stayed silent, I remembered how he could sit beside me without saying anything.
Those memories weren't loud.
But they were clear.
And the clearer they became,
the harder they were to ignore.
At night, when everything around me grew quiet,
I lay alone in my room.
No one asked how my day had been.
No one noticed whether I was tired.
No one looked at me the way he once did.
I turned toward the wall, closed my eyes—
But his image kept returning.
The more I tried not to think,
the more I did.
Some nights, I picked up my phone.
I stared at his number in my contacts.
I paused for a long time.
Then I put it down again.
I didn't dare to message him.
Not because I didn't want to talk—
But because I was afraid.
Afraid that just one message
would change everything inside me.
Afraid that I would no longer be able
to return to my current life as if nothing had happened.
At that time, I was in a marriage
that even I didn't understand why I was trying to hold onto.
I wasn't happy.
But I stayed.
Not because I wanted to—
But because I didn't know what else to do.
And I didn't know what he was to me.
I had never defined it.
Never asked.
Never dared to think deeper.
He was someone very special.
Someone I always remembered.
Someone who made me feel safe just by thinking of him.
But was that love?
I didn't know.
And perhaps…
I didn't dare to know.
Because if I truly understood it,
I would have to face another truth—
That I had lost something very important in my life.
That night, I closed the notebook.
Turned off the light.
And lay still in the darkness.
Everything around me was quiet.
But inside me—
it no longer was.
Some feelings begin very softly.
But once they appear,
they don't easily disappear.
Message of Chapter 22
Some feelings are left unnamed.
Not because they are unclear—
but because once we name them,
we can never return to how things were before.