The night was unusually quiet. Ethan sat by the window, staring at the faint glow of the city lights outside. His phone rested in his hand, screen still warm from the call he had just ended with Aria.
She had been laughing—her voice carrying warmth and hope. They had talked about the future, about where they would meet, about the places they wanted to see together. Ethan had promised her that he would come, no matter how hard it was.
Yet, as he set the phone down, a sharp pain gripped his chest. He had been ignoring it for weeks, brushing it off as exhaustion, as stress from work. But tonight, it was different. His breaths grew shallow, his hands trembling.
The room felt colder.
He tried to reach for his phone again, to call her back, to say something—anything. But his strength betrayed him. The screen slipped from his fingers, falling onto the floor with a dull thud.
---
At that same moment, Aria sat in her room, still smiling as she looked at their chat. She typed another message:
> "Don't forget—tomorrow morning, same time. I'll be waiting."
She didn't know that Ethan would never read it.
---
Hours passed before anyone found him. His body lay still, his expression soft, almost peaceful, as if he had simply fallen asleep. The empty coffee cup sat across from him on the table—the one he always pretended was for Aria.
---
Days later, Aria kept waiting. Her calls went unanswered, her messages left unread. At first, she thought he was busy, maybe overwhelmed. But as the silence stretched into weeks, her heart began to understand the truth it did not want to accept.
The distance between them had always been hard. But now, it had become eternal.
---
She wrote in her notebook one last time, her hand trembling as tears blurred the ink:
> "Across the distance, we loved. Across the distance, we dreamed. And across the distance, I'll carry you in my heart… forever."
Her sobs filled the empty room, the only reply she would ever hear.