When we both finished breakfast, we went upstairs at Kerem's request, leaving the table exactly as it was. I assumed we were heading to his room, but instead, he stopped in front of another door.
I looked at him with curiosity, but he seemed too lost in his thoughts to notice my questioning expression.
As I watched him unlock the door with a key from his pocket, my curiosity only grew. I wouldn't be lying if I said the whole thing felt a little unsettling.
Why would someone who lived alone lock a room inside their own house?
When we stepped inside, I looked around in confusion. I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting, but this definitely wasn't it.
Everything was too… normal.
It was just a regular double bedroom, decorated with elegant furniture in cream and latte tones. Nothing unusual at all.
Aside from being slightly larger than Kerem's room, there was nothing about it that seemed important enough to keep locked.
Wait.
How had I not noticed it right away?
The photos.
There were dozens of them.
On the walls. On the dresser. On the vanity. On the nightstands. Everywhere. The entire room was filled with photographs.
It was as if someone had taken every photo in the house and deliberately gathered them all here.
I stood at the foot of the bed for a while, scanning each one, until my attention finally settled on a large framed photo hanging above the headboard.
A woman in her forties with fair skin, long straight black hair reaching her waist, and a smile that seemed to light up the room stood beside a man with light brown wavy hair. He looked handsome for his age and was smiling at the camera with pure happiness.
They had to be Kerem's parents.
Considering how much Kerem resembled his father in general, it wasn't hard to guess. And those warm brown eyes—the warmest shade I'd ever seen—and that sincere smile he rarely showed were clearly inherited from his mother.
It seemed someone had inherited the best features of both parents.
Lucky kid.
"Your mother is very beautiful."
While looking at the photo, he swallowed with difficulty and nodded with a faint smile.
"She was."
Was.
For some reason, all my curiosity vanished at that word. And suddenly, I wasn't so sure I wanted to hear this story anymore.
After staring at the photo for a few more minutes, he sighed and sat down on the soft rug at the foot of the bed, leaning his back against it.
When I sat beside him and mirrored his posture, he began speaking without hesitation—as if afraid he might change his mind.
"Rüzgar's father and mine were partners in a large construction company. They'd also been close friends since university. The same went for our mothers. Both families started from nothing and worked relentlessly to succeed. They were so busy that even weekends were rare chances to spend time with us. That went on until we graduated high school."
He paused briefly.
"Somehow, that summer, they decided to change things. They told us we'd all spend a full month together at a summer house they'd just bought in Çeşme.
Since we were about to start university abroad in two months, the idea had sounded appealing to us too. After all, we probably wouldn't get a chance like that again."
It seemed he remembered something pleasant, because he glanced at one of the photos and sighed with a faint smile.
"We went out on a boat almost every day. Sometimes we didn't even swim—we'd just sit and talk until evening. Because Rüzgar and I insisted so much, we even took diving lessons together."
He chuckled and shook his head.
"Convincing my mother was the hardest part. She was a woman who was afraid to swim anywhere she couldn't touch the ground."
He laughed softly.
"You should've seen her face when she first heard about the diving. She was terrified. If my father hadn't caught her trying to sneak out the door before the first lesson, she probably would've gone back home."
He continued, still smiling faintly.
"When my father practically dragged her into the car so we wouldn't be late, she kept saying she must've done something terrible to deserve such a heartless husband and son. She threatened to leave both of us the moment the vacation ended if we didn't give up on that horrible idea."
I laughed along with him. I realized then that Kerem's mother and I were probably quite similar.
But as his smile slowly faded, tension crept into my chest.
"That summer, we had only one rule: we had to be home at night. We never really understood why, since they'd never been strict like that before. Still, we accepted it without questioning."
He swallowed.
"There was only one night when we broke that rule. And that one night was enough to turn our lives upside down."
Avoiding the photos now, he lowered his gaze to his hands folded in his lap. The warmth and nostalgia in his voice disappeared, replaced by a tired, heavy sadness.
"In the third week of the vacation, it was the birthday of a girl Rüzgar had started dating just a few days earlier. Her family had left the house to her so she could celebrate freely with her friends.
If we'd asked our parents for permission, they would've said no. And since they knew us well, they would've kept their eyes on us all night to make sure we didn't sneak out. So we only had one option left."
He paused, then continued.
"We parked the car on the street behind the house during the day. That night, once everyone was asleep, we climbed down into the garden using the tree outside our bedroom window. Then we went to the party."
His voice grew heavier.
"When I woke up at dawn to the sound of sirens outside, I didn't even bother looking twice at the unfamiliar girl beside me. I got dressed in a panic and started calling Rüzgar."
"When I finally found him half an hour later, asleep with his girlfriend in one of the rooms, I barely managed to wake him. He looked worse than I did—but we didn't have time to wait for him to fully wake up.
If we didn't get back to our rooms before anyone woke up, the consequences wouldn't be pleasant."
He took a sharp breath and fell silent.
I knew the worst part was coming.
Wanting to offer at least some comfort, I placed my hand over his. He squeezed it gently in response, but didn't look at me.
It was clear how hard this was for him. But after coming this far, telling him to stop would've been meaningless.
When he finally continued, his voice was thick and strained.
"As we turned onto our street, we saw smoke rising into the sky. We heard shouting. We knew something was wrong immediately."
"The entire street was chaos. Police cars. Ambulances. Fire trucks. People running everywhere. I've never been that afraid in my life. I can't even describe the panic I felt."
His breath shook.
"We abandoned the car and ran toward the house. And the moment I saw it, my entire world collapsed in seconds."
"The house—with our families inside—had burned to ashes.
The fire had mostly been put out, but it was already too late. Almost the entire building was destroyed.
While we were out drinking and having fun with people we'd met just two days earlier, the most important people in our lives had been fighting for survival inside that house all night. And they had lost.
We had lost.
We had lost the most precious thing we had… our families."
His words left a bitter ache in my chest—along with guilt.
All this time, I'd judged Kerem with shallow assumptions. I'd thought he was just another spoiled rich kid whose parents had money. I'd assumed he lived alone by choice.
I'd never even questioned why he never talked about his family.
I felt a tear drop onto my hand while I was holding his.
I rose onto my knees, pulled my hand from his, and hugged him.
There was nothing else I could do. No words could lessen the pain or longing he felt for his parents.
After a brief hesitation, he hugged me back.
Ignoring the aching cuts on my neck and arms, I held him tighter. My wounds were temporary—his were not.
Though he stayed silent and still, I could feel the dampness on my neck.
He was crying.
We sat like that for a long time without speaking.
"For six years," he whispered hoarsely, "there hasn't been a single day I didn't wonder if things would've been different if we'd stayed home that night."