The Girl Who Could Hear People's Regrets

The Girl Who Could Hear People's Regrets

by dzine huzaifa

Elara always thought the world was too quiet—until the whispers began.

It started on the morning of her eighteenth birthday. She stood on the subway platform, earbuds in, the train rumbling in the distance, when she heard it—a faint, sorrowful voice that didn’t come through her headphones.

"I should've told him I loved him."

Elara spun around. The man standing next to her stared ahead, blank-faced, holding his briefcase. His lips weren’t moving, but the words hung in the air, soft as mist, lingering only for her.

She shrugged it off as sleep deprivation. But the whispers multiplied.

"I regret not apologizing to my mother."

"I should've taken that job in Paris."

"Why didn’t I say goodbye?"

They followed her through crowded streets, seeping from strangers like steam. Some voices were filled with longing, others with shame, some cracked with grief so raw it curled in her chest.

At first, she thought she was going mad.

But by the third day, Elara realized these weren't hallucinations—they were regrets, spilled like invisible ink, only she could read them.

It wasn't just whispers. Their faces told her everything—the downward glances, the tightened jaws, the forced smiles masking oceans of unspoken sorrow. She could walk past a crowd and know which man missed his late wife, which woman still mourned the child she never had, which teen regretted not standing up for themselves.

It was overwhelming.

At school, her classmates' regrets filled the hallways like fog:

"I shouldn't have cheated on the test."

"Why did I ghost him? He didn't deserve that."

"If only I had the courage to be myself."

The weight of hundreds of unspoken laments pressed against her skull. Sleep became impossible; even her dreams were filled with phantom voices.

But it came with something else—a price.

For every regret she heard, her own voice faltered. It was subtle at first—a lost word, a missed syllable. But soon, Elara found herself struggling to speak at all. Her own regrets, buried deep, clawed to the surface.

"I regret not being there when Dad left."

"I regret staying quiet when Mom cried herself to sleep."

"I regret never telling Liam… everything."

Her voice cracked whenever she tried to confess, as if the universe had traded her speech for this curse of hearing others' sorrows.

Desperate for answers, Elara visited the old bookstore on Hollow Street—the one rumored to sell more than dusty novels. The woman behind the counter, ancient and sharp-eyed, listened as Elara scribbled her story onto a notepad.

The woman nodded knowingly. "The gift of regret," she whispered. "Rare… dangerous."

Elara's eyes pleaded for more.

The woman continued, "You hear what weighs on hearts, but the price is your own silence. The more you absorb, the less your voice remains. Until…" She paused, her gaze heavy with warning, "you forget your own truths entirely."

Panic gripped Elara. She didn’t want to forget. She didn’t want her voice to dissolve into the ether of other people's mistakes.

"Is there a cure?" Elara scrawled quickly.

The woman hesitated, then pointed to an ancient, leather-bound book. Inside, Elara found faded ink drawings of people like her—listeners, burdened with the regrets of the world.

The cure was clear, yet cruel: Confront your own deepest regret. Speak it aloud, no matter how painful. Only then can the whispers cease.

Elara knew what hers was. It had haunted her for years—the boy with stormy eyes and a crooked smile. Liam.

She found him at the café where they used to spend endless afternoons. His face lit up with cautious familiarity as she approached, trembling, her throat raw.

The whispers hissed around her, a storm of other people’s sorrows, but she pushed them aside. She opened her mouth.

Nothing.

Her lungs burned. Her regrets strangled her from the inside.

"I regret never telling you how much you meant to me."

The words sliced through her silence, fragile but real.

Liam's eyes widened. "Elara…"

For the first time in days, the whispers faded.

Her voice cracked but grew steadier with each word. The café's walls pulsed with stillness—the world, for a breath, belonged only to them.

And though new regrets would surely come, Elara realized something powerful:

Hearing regret is easy. Carrying it is suffocating.

But facing your own? That’s the only way to set yourself free