WESLEY
The new apartment in China felt too quiet on most nights. I would sit on the edge of the bed after long days at work and stare at the plain white walls. Everything here was clean and modern, but it did not feel like home. It felt like a place where I was hiding from my old life. The job was good. My team respected me. The bosses gave me important projects that kept my mind busy during the day. But when the office lights turned off and I came back to this empty space, the memories always returned. They came like shadows that would not leave me alone no matter how hard I tried to push them away.
I thought leaving for China would help me forget. I thought the distance would make the pain smaller. But it did not. Every night I remembered Natalia’s face in the hospital bed. The way she
