Until the Last Message

Chapter 5: Archive of Us (End)

Time passed.

Not in grand, sweeping ways.
Not in milestones or major life events.
But in the small, unnoticed fade of a once-burning light.

Days bled into weeks.
Weeks blurred into months.

Their chat, once alive with rapid-fire texts and endless sticker storms, now sat idle — quiet, unopened, untouched.

Not deleted.

Just untouched.

Aiden didn't mean to forget. But the world had a way of filling every gap with noise.

College consumed him. Research wrapped around him like vines. Part-time jobs, exams, group chats with strangers who didn't know he used to stay up until 3 a.m. just replying to a girl who typed "helloooowww" like it was a war cry.

Every now and then, he'd open WhatsApp, scroll past her name, and hesitate.

The chat was still there.
Still pinned.
Still titled with her emoji: 💖💔

He never changed it.

He told himself he would — just for the sake of moving on. But he didn't.

Because changing it felt like erasing proof that it mattered.

And it did.
More than he had ever told her.
More than he ever dared to admit to himself.

Lira grew, too.

She moved to 11th grade. New teachers, new classmates. The pressure shifted but never lightened. She still played the leader. Still got handed responsibilities she didn't ask for. But she handled them better now. Firmer boundaries. Less guilt.

And less Aiden.

There were days she caught herself looking at her phone during break, waiting for his name to pop up again. It didn't.

Eventually, she stopped waiting.

But she didn't forget.

She would hear a song — something melancholic, echoing with soft guitars — and immediately think: "This sounds like something he'd love."

She'd smile, briefly.
Then swipe the thought away like a notification.

Neither of them blocked the other.
Neither of them unfriended, erased, or unpinned.

Because what they had wasn't something to delete.
It wasn't a mistake.
It wasn't a phase.

It was a moment — preserved in pixels, in digital time, in archive.

A space only they knew how to navigate.
A universe built entirely out of words and stickers and shared vulnerability.

One late night, months after their last exchange, Aiden sat alone in his room.

The night was quiet. His laptop buzzed in sleep mode. His phone screen was dim.

And for no particular reason — maybe nostalgia, maybe loneliness — he opened their chat again.

He scrolled.

Past the first "Heyaa."
Past the sticker wars.
Past the music confessions, the age jokes, the SpongeBob debates, the stories about failure and success and high school theater.

He scrolled to the middle.
Then further back.
Then all the way to the top.

It was all still there.

Everything.

Every giggle. Every moment of hesitation. Every piece of himself he had quietly handed to a girl named Lira — who came out of nowhere and stayed just long enough to matter forever.

He didn't cry.
But something in him folded gently. Like closing a letter you never meant to reread.

Lira, on the other side of that silence, still had the chat too.

She hadn't opened it in weeks.

But sometimes, late at night, she would hold her phone in both hands and wonder:

If I sent a message now... would he still answer?

She never tested the thought.

Because some connections, once severed by time, are easier left untouched — like a glass ornament you're afraid to pick up in case it crumbles from age.

But neither of them deleted the chat.

It remained, always, one swipe away.
One message away.
One memory away.

A shared echo in the archives.

A quiet truth preserved in silence.

There is something sacred about almosts.

About the people who don't become your future, but change your present so deeply that you carry them into every version of yourself that comes after.

That was what Aiden and Lira became to each other.

Not lovers.
Not strangers.
Not forgotten.

Just something softer.
Something briefer.
Something precious.

And if, one day, years from now, they open that chat again —

Scroll through the chaos, the laughter, the ghosts of who they once were —
They will smile.

Not in regret.

But in gratitude.

Because once, in the digital noise of the world...

They found each other.

And talked.

Until the last message.