Chapter Text
Ayla never imagined that someone could vanish so completely. One day, Tawan was there, holding her hand through the pain, whispering that everything would be alright, and the next she was simply gone. There were no letters, no texts, no explanations. Only silence. That silence grew like a shadow in Ayla’s chest, stretching through her days and nights, filling every space where love used to live. The surgery had saved her life, but it had cost her everything else. She had survived, yes, but it felt like a cruel kind of survival.
She tried to call. At first every hour, then once a day, then just late at night when the ache became unbearable. The calls never went through. No voicemail. No dial tone. It was like Tawan had erased herself from the earth. Friends stopped asking where she was. They assumed it was a breakup — a messy, painful one. But Ayla had no story to tell. Just an empty space where answers should have been.
The resentment didn’t come all at once. It was a slow trickle, seeping through the cracks left behind by the loss. At first, Ayla was simply confused. She told herself there had to be a reason. That Tawan wouldn’t just leave. That something had happened — an emergency, an accident, anything. But weeks passed. Then months. And the silence remained.
Eventually, confusion curdled into anger.
How could she leave like that? Without a word. Without a goodbye. Without staying to see if Ayla even survived the operation. That was the part that stung the most — the idea that Tawan had left her at the very moment Ayla needed her most. It twisted inside her like a blade. She had gone under anesthesia still holding onto the thought of Tawan’s face, imagining her waiting by her side when she woke up. But instead, she had woken to an empty room and a nurse she didn’t recognize saying the words, “The surgery was successful. You’re going to be alright.” That should have been a moment of relief. Instead, it felt like betrayal.
Ayla convinced herself that Tawan had chosen to walk away. That she had seen the pain and the weight of the recovery ahead and decided it was too much. Ayla spent nights picturing her somewhere far away, living a new life, free of hospitals and worry and love that asked for too much. The thought poisoned her. She began rewriting their history in her head, casting Tawan not as her savior, but as a coward. She replayed every memory they had shared, trying to find the signs she had missed. Maybe she had never really known her at all.
She told her friends she didn’t care anymore. That she was moving on. That Tawan was selfish and cruel and undeserving of her grief. But it was a lie. The anger was a mask she wore so no one could see the hollow space beneath it. Because beneath all the rage was something worse — the unbearable sadness of being left behind.
She packed away the pictures. Hid the books they had shared. Stopped going to the little café where they used to sit and dream. But forgetting someone who had once made your world feel whole is never that simple. Everything reminded her. The way the light came through the kitchen window in the mornings. The music that played in the grocery store. The way her body felt stronger every day — a strange betrayal, as if healing meant leaving Tawan further behind.
And still, the silence continued.
Ayla thought about writing her a letter. Just to ask why. Just to scream in words. But she didn’t know where to send it. There was no address. No trace. It was as if Tawan had deliberately disappeared, like she had made a clean cut, not just from Ayla’s life, but from her own.
What kind of person does that? Ayla asked herself again and again. What kind of love just disappears? Sometimes, in the quiet of early morning when the city was still asleep, Ayla would feel her heart beating steadily in her chest and wonder if it was worth it. If this new life and this new body was worth the weight of being abandoned. Sometimes she wished she had not made it through. Because surviving had come with a price no one could see.
But she carried on. She lived, day by day. She returned to work. She learned how to laugh again, though it never quite reached her eyes. People called her strong. Brave. Resilient. They did not know that every step forward was fueled not by hope, but by spite. She would live. She would heal. She would do it without Tawan. That, she promised herself.
She said those words so many times that she almost began to believe them.
Until the day she found the USB drive.