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(When you run away from a place, it doesn't mean you've survived… sometimes, the real war begins after you leave.)
The new city was cold, even in summer.
No one knew his name, no one was waiting for him, and no one asked, "Are you okay?"
Everything felt strange… the sidewalks, the faces, the language, even the air.
He rented a tiny room, barely big enough for his body, in an old building with walls as cracked as his soul.
No comfortable bed, no windows opening to hope… just a dim light hanging from the ceiling, and a fan that groaned like a wounded man.
He worked in a modest restaurant, washing dishes for long hours.
The smell of grease clung to him—even in sleep.
He didn't complain, never asked about his wages, and spoke to no one.
He would return home exhausted, silently remove his shoes, lie on the floor, and stare at the ceiling… as if waiting for something—something he couldn't name.
At night, he wrote…
He wrote in old school notebooks, pouring into them his anger, sorrow, and everything he never said out loud.
> "Nila,
I don't know if you still think about me.
But I… I think about you every day.
Not because you were my lover, no.
Because you were the only person who truly believed I deserved to live."
He applied to university.
They told him he had to wait for a response.
And in those days, waiting felt worse than rejection.
Sometimes he would see people his age—laughing, running, talking about the future…
He would smile bitterly, as if their lives were a romantic movie playing before his corpse.
One night, while folding his torn clothes, he heard a line from an old series playing on his phone:
> "Every person has a reason to live… but not everyone finds it."
He laughed shortly, like a sad cough, and whispered:
> "And if I don't find it?
Should I keep breathing for nothing?"
At the end of winter, a letter arrived…
He had been accepted into university.
But even that didn't stir anything inside him.
He only smiled faintly and closed the envelope.
> "Doesn't matter.
Success doesn't cleanse my pain…
It just makes it look prettier in front of people."
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