PROLOGUE

Have you ever spent your life thinking about what it means to have everything when you actually have nothing? It’s a strange, hollow question to carry around. Most people think "having nothing" means a lack of money or a roof over your head, but there’s a deeper kind of poverty. It’s the kind where you have your health, a job, and a place to sleep, but you lack the one thing that would make any of it matter.

It’s the gap between who you are and who you want to be for someone else.

​Then there’s the second part of that question—the one that actually keeps me up at night. Have you ever thought about what it’s like to love someone who already has the whole world, while you’re still standing there with empty hands?

​I used to hate the rain. I hated the way it turned the sky a bruised, heavy grey and made the air feel thick with a sadness I couldn’t quite name. It felt like the world was mourning something, and I didn’t want to be part of the funeral. Back then, rain just meant wet shoes, delayed buses, and a mood that I couldn't shake for days. I’d stay inside, staring out the window, waiting for the sun to come back and lie to me that everything was fine.

​But then, I saw her.

​It wasn't a movie moment. There was no slow motion, no music playing in the background—just the aggressive drumming of a downpour against the metal roof of a cramped bus stop. She was standing there, trying to shield a stack of books with a designer jacket that probably cost more than my monthly rent. She looked like she belonged in a different world—a world of bright lights, high ceilings, and polished surfaces. A world where people didn't have to worry about getting their shoes ruined by a puddle.

​I looked at her, and for the first time, I didn't care that I was soaked to the bone. I saw my entire future in the way she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. It sounds cliché, I know. It sounds like something a teenager would say. But when you spend your life feeling like a background character, meeting the protagonist of your life changes the gravity of the room. Suddenly, I didn't hate the rain anymore. I started to love it, because the rain was the only reason she had stopped running. It was the only reason we were standing three feet apart.

​How do you even begin to bridge that gap? How do you pursue someone when you know that if they stepped into your life, they’d be stepping down? I wanted to tell her how I felt, but the words felt like lead in my mouth. I felt like if I reached out to touch her world, I’d only leave a smudge on the glass.

Fifteen years had passed.

​I still love her. The feeling hasn't faded; it has just become part of my anatomy, like a bone that healed wrong. I catch myself wondering: if I finally managed to "get the world" too—if I had the status, the wealth, the polish—would she finally see me the way I see her? Or is this distance permanent?

​I’ve had a thousand opportunities to tell her. I still can’t bring myself to say those three words. I’m afraid that saying them out loud would break the only connection we have left.

​I guess this is what they call it. This is the quiet, heavy reality of UNSPOKEN LOVE.