Between Two Points

Chapter 32: The Silence That Drowned Me

I don’t remember how I got home.

Or maybe I do, but I just don’t want to think about it.

The walk from the park to my dorm should have been short, but it felt endless. The streets blurred together, the sounds of the city muffled, distant like I wasn’t really there. Like I was just floating, weightless, lost.

By the time I reached my room, everything felt heavier. My limbs. My breaths. The thoughts crashing against my skull.

I sat on my bed.

And then I just stayed there.

Hours passed. The sky darkened. My phone vibrated a few times, messages from Dustin, Aira, and Janine. Calls I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t think.

All I could do was feel and I hated it.

I hated how every second felt like a blade slicing through my chest. I hated how my hands trembled even when I wasn’t doing anything. I hated how the silence of my room was so suffocating, yet I couldn’t bring myself to turn on the lights or play music.

This wasn’t me.

I was Alliah. The girl who always had something to say, who filled every space with laughter, who lived for stolen moments and unspoken words.

But now I felt empty.

***

I used to love silence.

In the early mornings, when the world was still yawning awake. In the late hours of the night, when my thoughts hummed like poetry against my ribs. In between laughter, in between moments, in between the spaces where words were never needed.

But now, silence was a wound that refused to close.

It stretched through my days like an echo that never faded, an emptiness that clung to my skin.

I stopped going to the publication.

I stopped checking my messages.

I stopped being me.

It was finals week.

The library smelled like paper and exhaustion, pages turning too fast, coffee cups abandoned on the corners of wooden desks. My books lay open in front of me, unread. The letters blurred together, swimming in ink, but nothing sank in.

I stared at them anyway.

Pretended to read. Pretended that my mind wasn’t elsewhere, that it wasn’t replaying a name I refused to say out loud.

A shadow fell over my table. Then another. And another.

I didn’t look up.

Didn’t move when someone pulled out the chair across from me.

I didn’t flinch when a sigh, sharp and heavy, broke the silence.

"Ano bang ginagawa mo sa sarili mo?"

Dustin’s voice.

Soft, but edged with something heavier.

Concern. Frustration. A knowing that I wished he didn’t have.

I blinked down at my book. "Nag-aaral."

"Nag-aaral?" Aira scoffed, arms crossing as she leaned against the chair beside me. "Alliah, hindi mo nga ata alam kung anong libro ‘yang nasa harap mo."

I didn’t answer.

Because she was right.

Janine exhaled beside her, quieter, but just as firm. "Alam namin kung bakit ka ganyan."