Despite the walls of silence I had built, Ren-kun never truly disappeared. No matter how many times I blocked him, no matter how many blades of ice I threw his way, he kept searching for a way back to me. Deep down, past the depression and the anger, his persistence was the only thing that gave me a sense of peace. In a world that had abandoned me, he was the only constant left in the wreckage.
During this time, other boys tried to approach me. They saw the quiet, distant girl in the back of the classroom—the "Ice Queen" who never laughed—and thought they could be the ones to break the frost. But they were all met with the same fate. One by one, they were blocked without a second thought. My heart was a fortress, and I had no intention of letting anyone in.
By the time I reached 12th grade, a classmate tried to befriend me under the guise of academic help. He was persistent but polite, promising we would only talk about homework and exams. Eventually, I grew tired of saying no. I agreed, and a lukewarm, hollow friendship formed.
Internal Monologue (Hana): I have "friends" now. At least, that's what people call them. But they feel like ghosts. I sit among them in the cafeteria, listening to their shallow laughter, and I feel more alone than when I'm in a pitch-black room. I used to have a best friend—someone who knew the rhythm of my heart—until she found someone "better" and discarded me like an old, broken toy. Now, everyone is just a name on a screen. No one knows the girl behind the mask. No one even bothers to look.
I was a child forced to grow up too soon. The adults in my life had decided that my childhood ended the moment the crisis hit. "You have to take responsibility," they said, their voices heavy with expectations I never asked for. "You have to be the one to provide." They looked at my dreams and spoke as if they were impossible fairy tales. I had chosen the Commerce stream for a very specific reason—a secret ambition I never shared with anyone—but that dream now lay in jagged pieces at my feet.
Internal Monologue (Hana): They never even gave me a chance to try. They just handed me a heavy burden and told me to run until I collapsed. So, I'll run. I'll listen to their lectures and bury my aspirations in the same graveyard where I buried my smile. What does it matter? No one is coming to save me. I'm the anchor, and anchors are meant to stay at the bottom.
[The Miracle of September 20th]
While I was drowning in responsibilities and silent grief, Ren-kun was enduring his days in a distant hostel. He hadn't forgotten me. Not for a single second. The distance only seemed to sharpen his memory of us. On September 20, 2022, his persistence finally reached a breaking point that changed everything.
He made me a proposal—a desperate, thirty-day challenge. "Give me just one month," he requested, his words trembling with a mix of fear and hope. "If I can't win back your friendship in thirty days, I'll leave your life forever. I'll disappear, and you'll never have to hear from me again."
Internal Monologue (Hana): Thirty days. Seven hundred and twenty hours. A countdown to the end of his shadow in my life. I should want him gone. I should crave the absolute silence. But when I typed that one word—'Fine'—my heart didn't feel heavy. For the first time in years, it felt... expectant. Like I was waiting for a storm to finally break the heat.
I didn't make those thirty days easy for him. For the first week, I remained a statue. My replies were short, biting, and calculated to discourage him. But Ren-kun was like the tide; he just kept coming back, gentle and relentless. As the second and third weeks bled into each other, the iron in my voice started to rust. A subtle softness began to creep into my messages, a change so small I almost didn't notice it myself.
By the time Diwali arrived, the air was filled with the scent of jasmine and the distant thunder of festivities. That was the night I finally did it. I picked up the phone.
It was our first voice call in what felt like a lifetime.
I spoke to him with extreme, exaggerated formality. I treated him like a complete stranger, a distant acquaintance I barely knew. It was a shield born out of lingering anger and a strange, terrifying sense of shyness that made my hands shake. Ren-kun was overjoyed just to hear the sound of my breath on the other end of the line, even if my words were wrapped in layers of frost.
Internal Monologue (Hana): He's so happy... just for this? He doesn't realize I'm using this formal distance to keep him at arm's length. I'm still angry. I'm still hurt by everything life has thrown at me. But hearing his laugh through the speaker... it's like the first warm sunbeam after a long, soul-crushing winter. Is it okay for me to feel this? Is it okay to let the ice melt just a little?
[The Turning of the Tide]
Before the thirty-day countdown could reach zero, the walls finally crumbled. I realized I didn't want him to disappear. I agreed to be his friend again—truly his friend. We began to share the tiny details of our days: the sweet moments, the bitter arguments that lasted until dawn, the shared laughter, and the ugly tears.
Then came the day I saw a side of Ren-kun I never expected: his shadow.
He had found out about the "academic friend" I had made in class. A sharp, protective instinct flared up in him—a deep, burning jealousy that he couldn't hide. He was so overwhelmed by the sight of someone else standing in the space he had fought so hard to reclaim that he turned his phone off, vanishing from the digital world entirely.
Panic, cold and sharp, seized me. I called him again and again, the ringing tone a rhythmic torture. Internal Monologue (Hana): Please pick up. Don't leave me in the silence again. I can't go back to the gray world. Not now that I've remembered what color looks like. When he finally turned his phone back on hours later, we didn't argue. We ended up on a video call, both of us exhausted and raw. We sat there in the glow of our screens, both of us crying together. It was the first time our tears had met in the light. He sensed something wrong with that other "friend"—a gut feeling that warned him of a hidden danger. For the first time, I wasn't the "Ice Queen" carrying the weight of a family. I was just a girl, and I was being protected by the boy who refused to let me go.