Must Read This

She found the diary on a rainy evening, tucked behind the third shelf in her father’s old study. Dusty, almost forgotten. Its cover was worn out, the pages slightly torn at the edges. But as she opened it, her hands froze. Her name—"Aaliya"—was written on the very first page. The handwriting wasn’t hers. It wasn’t her father’s either. It belonged to someone she hadn’t seen in ten years.

Rayyan.

Memories hit her like a storm.

The first time they met was in college. He was the kind of boy who always sat in the last row—quiet, observant, never part of the noise, but always part of the moment. Aaliya was everything opposite—talkative, ambitious, always laughing loudly in corridors and collecting attention like petals in spring.

And yet, something connected them. Not instantly, not dramatically. But slowly—through exchanged books, late-night assignments, and silent walks back to the hostel gate. They became friends. Good friends. The kind of friends who know each other’s moods without asking, who sit in silence and still feel heard.

But he never said it.

And she never asked.

Even when her heart began skipping beats every time he smiled. Even when her eyes looked for him first in every room. Even when, on her 21st birthday, he gifted her a handmade sketch of her favorite poetry line:
"I have loved in silence what I dared not speak aloud."

She kept it on her wall for years.

Rayyan left suddenly. No goodbyes. No calls. One morning he was gone from campus, gone from their chats, gone from her life. Rumors said his mother was ill, some said he dropped out. She didn’t know what to believe. And slowly, heartbreakingly, she learned to live without knowing.

She became a teacher. Moved on. Dated, almost married once. But something—someone—always lingered in the background like an unfinished song.

And now here it was—his diary. In her father’s study.

Hands trembling, she turned the pages. And with each one, the truth unfolded.

He had loved her. From the very beginning.

Every page carried a moment she had forgotten. Her laugh outside the chemistry lab. The way she twirled her pen while thinking. How her eyes sparkled when she talked about old books. He had written about their first walk under the full moon, the time she cried because of a low grade, the time he almost told her… but didn’t.

And then came the final entry:

> *“She will never know that I left because the doctors said I only had one year. I couldn’t make her fall in love with a dying man. I loved her too much to give her memories full of hospitals and pain.

So I gave her silence.

I gave her the freedom to forget me.

But I never forgot her. Not even once.”*

Aaliya dropped the diary.

Rain began pouring outside. She ran out, the diary pressed to her chest, her mind racing. She didn’t know where his grave was. She didn’t even know if he was really… gone. She only knew one thing now—

She had to speak what he never did.

By evening, she was at the old train station where they used to sit every Friday after class. The same bench. The same wind. The same ache.

She took out a pen, flipped to the back of the diary, and wrote:

> “I loved you too, Rayyan.
Always.
Even in silence.

Must read this—wherever you are.”

And then, she left the diary there. On that bench. For the wind to carry. For the universe to read. For the soul that had once walked away… to know.

Because some stories don’t end with goodbye.

They end with truth finally spoken.