Conundrum | h.s. (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/story/372359230-conundrum-h-s?
Here's just the prologue :) If you like what you read, you can find more on Wattpad :)
I guess at first I truly believed in the promise of new beginnings, but I should have known better. I am old enough to understand that life has a way of teaching us that things rarely end as they start.
And so, I tried to silence the ticking clock within me, pretending not to count the hours, the minutes, or the fleeting seconds of happiness I shared with you.
I was afraid that if I let myself look too far ahead, I would never reach the years I dreamed of sharing with you.
In the end, those years never came, just as I somehow always knew they wouldn't.
If I were truly honest with myself, I would stop telling myself that we are meant to be, that it's only a matter of wrong timing.
I would stop imagining how beautiful things must have been for us in a past life, and how much more beautiful they could be in the next.
I would stop dreaming of what it might be like to have our things intertwined in the same closet, to stand together in front of endless shelves of groceries, deciding what to cook for dinner. I would stop picturing myself waiting for you to come home from work, secretly using your shampoo in the shower just to keep a part of you close—so that, in some way, you would never truly leave.
For my entire life, I've been certain of everything I do, every thought I think, and every feeling that overtakes my body. I've taught myself to see things in black and white—where everything I do is either completely wrong or completely right, and there is no middle ground.
I did it all for myself—I shaped my thoughts, forced myself into a way of thinking so I'd always be ready for whatever life might throw my way.
But I wasn't ready for you.
How do you prepare for something like that?
And now, after you, I find myself answering every question with the same hollow words: "I don't know.
"Do I believe in fate? Are we just a small part of something much larger? Does fate even exist, or is fate simply the sum of all the decisions we make?
Which choice is right, and which is wrong?
Does such thing even exist?
Is it possible to have multiple right answers, multiple wrong answers, to the same question?
The question that lingers in my throat, soft and heavy, stealing the air from my chest. The one that makes my heart ache and stutter, my eyes fill with tears, my whole body tremble under its weight.
My question—the one I can't let go of, the one I still don't have an answer to.
Since the day we stopped knowing each other, since the moment we became strangers, I've sat alone on the edge of my bed in a room untouched by light. I sleep with one eye open, eating instant noodles for what feels like the hundredth time, staring out the window as our park fades beneath winter's cold, indifferent blanket. I stand under the shower for hours, letting the water flow over me, as if it could wash away everything we once were.
And yet, no matter how hard I try, I can't stop asking myself:Why us?Why were we the ones chosen for this? Why did we choose this for ourselves?
What is it that walks along the paths of our hearts, bringing us together in this way? And what is it that quietly creeps down those very same paths, pulling us apart?
When the sun begins to fall asleep from my stories, when the night becomes sad, cold, and lonely because of them, when my eyelids can no longer bear the silence of truth—I swear, for just a moment, I see us again.
I see us sitting together on the balcony at three in the morning, the wind pinching our cheeks and slipping beneath our skin. We share only one blanket, and our cold, stiff fingers touch gently, warmed by nothing but a cigarette we share, like a kiss that never was.
The kiss that never was, that's what you called it.
But maybe, in the next life, we will get to kiss each other again and we'll live and breathe as one once more.