Chapter 3: Years that did not erase him

Time passed the way it always does—quietly, without asking if you are ready.

I grew older. Life moved forward. The village stayed the same, but I didn’t.

Yet, even as everything around me changed, there was one part of my life that remained strangely unchanged.

Him.

He became a memory I visited in silence. Not every day. Not even every week. But in moments where my mind wandered, he was always there, standing at the edge of my thoughts like someone waiting for a story to continue.

Then one day, everything shifted again.

My brother mentioned him casually. Like he was just another name from the past. Like he hadn’t once been the reason I understood what it meant to feel something deeply.

I didn’t say much, but inside me, something moved.

A small shock. A recognition I didn’t expect.

He was still alive in the world.

Still existing beyond my memory.

And then came the moment I wasn’t prepared for.

Through my brother’s phone, I saw him again.

He was older now. Different in some ways, but still familiar in a way that made my chest tighten.

And then I saw something that stayed with me longer than I expected.

He had once said I was his crush.

“Once.”

That word should have been simple. But it wasn’t.

Because while I had been holding on without even knowing it, he had already placed me in a part of his life called the past.

And that was when I began to understand something painful:

Time does not stop for feelings.