There was no grand gesture.
No shattered glass.
No desperate goodbye scribbled on a napkin or the back of a receipt.
Just a pair of shoes left on the edge of the rocks—laces tucked in neatly, as if she didn't want them to trip anyone.
And a ripple in the water where she had once stood.
It was dusk.
The world had slipped into its in-between hour, where the light dulled into a hush and the wind whispered through the trees like a lullaby for the tired. The lake lay still, its surface smooth as glass, mirroring the grey-lavender sky that hovered above it. Birds were flying home in a lazy V-shape. Someone, somewhere far off, was closing a window.
She walked quietly, barefoot across the damp stones.
Each step felt light—not in the joyful, springy kind of way, but in the way paper drifts from a desk when the window's left open. Her body, for once, didn't feel like a burden. Her limbs didn't ache with the effort of being alive. There was no more pretending to be okay. No need to hold up the mask.
Just this slow,
-gentle surrender to the air,
thesky,
and the water below.
She had come here to stop trying-
The moment her feet touched the water, it greeted her like an oldfriend. The chill should've stung—it was early spring, and the wind carried the bite of winter still—but it didn't.
It was cool, yes, but not cruel. It embraced her. Wrapped around her ankles, her calves, her waist, as if to say, "I know. You don't have to explain."
She let herself slide forward, slowly, until her shoulders were submerged, her hair fanning out around her like ink in milk.
The surface broke like silk.
No splash,
No struggle-
Juststillness...
Above her, the sky faded to slate.
The trees swayed. The lake held its breath.
She screamed once beneath the water.
Not out of fear, or pain-
But more like an exhale.
A soft release of something that had long been knotted inside.
The sound went nowhere,
of'course.
It floated in bubbles that never reached the surface. But that was okay-
She didn't expect anyone to hear anyway.
She wasn't even sure she wanted them to.
Her thoughts quieted, the way snow hushes a street.
No more racing. No more rewinding the conversations she should've had.
No more trying to be brighter, better, easier to love.
She thought of the world she had left behind.
Not in flashes or in regret—just as something separate now. A place that kept spinning, kept breathing, without asking her to keep up.
The people she knew would wake tomorrow and go on. Some might notice her absence. Some mightnot.
But eventually,
they would all fold her away into a memory—neatly labeled, softly mourned, then forgotten.
And perhaps that was what she wanted most of all.
To be unremembered.
She had tried for so long to be someoneworthnoticing. She had laughed in the right places, complimented when it counted.
She knew how to editherself—to remove the inconvenientsadness, the heaviness that didn't belong in cheerful circles. Her journals were full of apologies she never sent, just in case her sadness ever spilled over into someone else's cup.
She was always afraid of being toomuch.
And yet, always terrified of being notenough.
It was exhausting...
Like treading water forever with noshore in sight.
She remembered once, as a child, standing in the middle of a party, holding a plate of cake, smiling because she was told to.
The music was loud.
The lights were toobright.
And yet she felt invisible-
Like a prop in someone else's photograph. Even then, she knew how to disappear while still being seen.
Below the water now, she felt none of that.
No pretending.
No posturing-
Just weightlessness.
She opened her eyes. The world around her was blue and blurred, soft at the edges. Her hair floated above her like kelp. A single leaf drifted past her cheek, and she let it.
She imagined herself dissolving—not as tragedy, but as grace.
Like morning mistfading from a field.
Like a paper boatfolding into the tide-
Forgotten after they set sail.
No one would have to carry her anymore.
No one would have to ask what was wrong and brace for the silence.
No one would feel obligated to check in.
And she—she would no longer have to explain.
Then—
A flicker of something warm touched her hand.
She didn't know if it was memory or light or simply the way the water caught the setting sun. But it reminded her of something.
-Of someone. A laugh. A pairofhands that once braided her hair. A moment by a bonfire, where smoke danced between words that were never spoken.
It was faint.
Fragile...
But real.
And before she could think—before the stillness swallowed it whole—her foot moved.
Once.
Twice.
She kicked, slow and unsure.
Not toward the surface out of panic.
Not because she was gasping for air.
But because maybe—just maybe—she wanted to try one more time.
The lake didn't resist.
It let her rise, quietly, the way night rises behind the sun.
When her head broke the surface, the air felt strange—sharper, louder.
The world had notnoticed her absence. A bird passed overhead, wings slicing the sky.
She looked back at the rocks where her shoes sat.
Still there.
Still waiting-
She floated in place for a while. The cold began to sink into her skin now. Her lips trembled. But she didn'tswim to shore-
She just... stayed.
Breathing.
Not in surrender.
Just in... presence.
And that was enough.
Beneath her, the lake held her gently.
Above her, the stars began to appear—one by one, quietwitnesses to a girl who had almost vanished.
The world went on.
But so did she-
Going down, slowly and gently.
Her eyes closed and darkness filledin.
(From the voice of Ashpen )
[Asphen is the protagonist friend]
I always thought she was okay.
Not perfect.
Not ecstatic. But... okay.
The kind of okay that passes unnoticed. The kind that wears "I'mfine" like a hoodie with frayed sleeves—comfortable, familiar, butwornthin.
She wasn't the loudest among us, but her laugh always lingered longer than the joke itself. She'd say something absurdly specific—like how clouds looked like sleepwalkingwhales or how tea tasted lonelier on rainydays—and we'd all just laugh, not at her, but with her.
Because her oddness had a rhythm, a warmth. It felt like safety.
And maybe that was the lie.
That she felt safe just because she made us feel that way.
---
The day she vanished felt like a skipped heartbeat in the rhythm of everything.
I remember the way the hallway felt colder, though no windows were open. Her absence wasn'tloud—it was the kind that tiptoed into rooms and made everything feel slightly off. Her desk sat exactly as she left it. Pencil rolled to the edge. A worn-out eraser with a couple of pages having clouds and ripple sketches. Notes written in soft cursive, all lowercase.
We didn't realize anything until late afternoon, when someone mentioned she hadn't shown up for class. Then came the texts. The calls. The awkward jokes to mask the concern.
"Maybe she just overslept."
-"Maybe she forgot today was Monday."
But by sunset, the tone had changed.
Her parents were called.
The lake was found...
Her shoes sat side by side on the rocks, toes pointing out.
---
I didn't cry at first.
I think part of me refused to believe it. I stood there when the officers arrived, when her mother wailed into someone's coat, when her father sat on the ground with his hands over his face like a child lost in a shopping mall.
I said nothing.
I just stared at those shoes, neat and still and terrifying.
The shoes that she had worn the day before.
The ones she had swung beneath the desk when she hummed a sadsong only I seemed to notice.
---
The days after blurred.
Some friends sent sad emojis in the group chat. Some posted vague quotes with rain-filtered photos. Others said nothing at all. And maybe that was their way of coping. Moving on. Swallowing grief without chewing it.
But Icouldn't.
I found myself retracing our steps—school corridors, park benches, the window seat in the café where she always sat sideways, legs folded beneath her. Every place whispered pieces of her. But none of them had answers.
Until her mother called me one rainy afternoon.
She said, "I think you should come. Maybe you'll understand something we don't."
---
Her room hadn't changed.
Not since that day.
It smelled like her—lavender and old notebooks.
The curtains were half drawn, letting in light the way she used to prefer it: gentle, slanted, never direct.
Her bed was unmade, sheets twisted like she'd left in a hurry but not without care. There were drawings on the wall—charcoal sketches of hands,incomplete sketches
, clouds over ripples.
I ran my fingers across her desk.
There were papercranes, all made from receipts. Her headphones still looped a playlist titled "songs for soft endings."
I clicked play-
The music was ambient.
Low-
The kind that feels like mist in your ears.
---
I found it by accident.
Tucked beneath her bed, inside a sketchbook with a plainblack cover. No stickers. No name-
Just dust and absence...
The pages were filled with quiet.
Drawings, yes—but not for display. These were private. . Lines smudged by thumbs. Water-stains from silent tears. A pair of hands letting go of a string. A silhouette with clouds where the head should be.
Then near the center, I saw it.
Folded slightly. A wrinkled page.
The poem-
---
Peace
A victory with no survivors,
A great weight pulling me under.
I screamed, but only the waters heard me.
Maybe losing isn't so bad—
I should be angry—should be mad.
All this effort and fun that we all had,
Yet in the strange peace of the defeat,
I don't have to struggle, don't have to—
Just a smile. It's not that bad.
There's kindness in this chaos—
The mess that we're made of.
Going quiet doesn't always mean giving up.
Sometimes, it's the only way to survive...
---
I read it once.
Then again.
And again.
It was her.
But not the her we knew.
Not the girl who gave everyone birthday doodles. Not the girl who could mimic bird sounds and recite film quotes from memory.
This version of her was heavier.
But also softer.
A girl who didn't want to be saved.
Just seen.
Just heard-
Even if only after she was gone.
---
The weight of that poem settled in me like winter in old bones.
I held it, unsure what to do. I wanted to tear it out and keep it. I wanted to return it and pretend I hadn't seen. I wanted to rewrite it with a better ending, one where she stayed.
Instead, I placed it back.
Closed the book gently.
And sat on her bed until the rain stopped.
---
Since that day, I started writing letters.
Not full ones. Just fragments. Sentences. Thoughts.
I fold them into little paper boats and leave them by the lake.
Tucked into the crook of a tree. Slipped beneath flat stones.
Some say things like:
"I miss the way you tapped your pencil when thinking."
"Did it ever feel like enough, even once?"
"I wore your favorite color today. I think you would've smiled."
They're notpleas.
They're notapologies.
Just echoes, sent into the world in case someone—anyone—is still floating, still pretending to be okay while quietly unraveling.
---
Some nights, I sit by the lake alone.
And I swear I hear her humming.
Not loud,
Not near,
But there-
In the hush of reeds.
In the soft hush of water brushing stone.
In the quiet that isn't empty, just listening.