David (thinking aloud):
Adrian asked me yesterday if I'd ever been in love before Abigail… before his Mom… before the messes, before The Listener became a name and not just a trait. I told him no.
I lied.
There was someone else.
Before the fame.
Before the wisdom.
Before the secrets that make my nights echo.
Her name was Neria.
No, Adrian — you wouldn't know her name. Not from Joe's stories. Not from my letters. Because Neria wasn't a story. She was silence itself.
---
We were in Form 1. Term 2. A blur of new subjects, fearsome seniors, and uniforms that never quite fit. She had transferred midterm — some family issue, I think. She barely spoke, but her silence wasn't the kind that begged attention. It was the kind that made you want to sit beside her without saying a thing.
We didn't talk much at first. A nod here. A borrowed ruler there. But one day, she left a note in my locker. No name, just a folded piece of paper that said:
"If they ask what love is, don't say my name. Just say it felt like breathing after being underwater too long."
I didn't know what to make of it then. I thought maybe it was a prank. But then another came. And another. Always poetic. Always unsigned.
Until one afternoon, I found her sitting on the bench behind the science block. That same paper in her lap. I didn't need to ask.
She smiled.
That was all.
She wrote her lowercase e's like backward 3s - rushed, uncertain, like she really never meant to write at all.
---
We never kissed. Never dated.
But we understood each other.
She told me stories that no one else knew — not even her best friend. About her father. About the scar on her leg. About how silence was safer than trust.
I never told her how I felt.
Not in plain words.
But I once wrote her a letter that ended:
"Some people find love in voices. I think I found it in your quiet."
I left it in her locker.
And the next day, she was gone.
---
David (pauses, eyes distant):
No one knew why.
Some said she had moved again.
Some said it was something worse.
But I never got a goodbye. Not even a torn note.
She vanished — like fog when the sun gets too close.
And for a long time, I thought maybe she had imagined me. Or maybe I had imagined her. But one day — one random day in Form 4 — I opened my old biology textbook, the one I had used in Form 1. And between the pages, there was one last note. Faded ink. Familiar paper. It said:
"I told you not to say my name. But if ever you forget it — whisper it into a page, and I'll find it there."
No signature. No return.
Just the echo of someone who never needed to stay to be unforgettable.
---
David (to Adrian):
So, yes. There was someone. Maybe l didn't become The Listener. Maybe I was made the moment her voice stopped reaching me.
Before all of them.
And maybe that's why no one after her ever really felt enough.
Because they spoke too loudly, and she listened just enough.
That's the kind of girl Neria was.
Not a storm.
Just the calm before one.
---