Chapter Two The Loudest Voice in the Room
1140 Words
Liam Chen moved through his days without much quiet. Twenty-two years piled behind him, none spent mastering soft gestures.
It’s fine. More than a few times, he’d thought it through, landing on the idea that yeah, the label fit him pretty well. As he walked, much like wind finds its way inside unstoppable, just there and that truth sat clear in his mind, accepted years back without second thoughts. Living long taught stillness, showed how heavy silence can get.
Liam turned fourteen when his mother spoke, her voice soft but worn. Her words carried the weight parents get after years of trying. She told him he felt things more deeply than most. Not just sound, though that too, he noticed everything sharper. The way light hits dust in air. How silence hums before someone speaks. You experience life at full blast, she said. That makes you different. Yet it will wear you down one day.
She turned out to be correct either way.
Back home, his closest buddy Danny fourteen years of knowing each other then once said he was "emotionally loud." That stuck with Liam, felt like praise. Looking back, maybe Danny hadn’t meant it kindly. Still, Liam took it as kind. End of story.
Out of everyone who shared rooms back then,back when he was still moving between classes alongside different kinds of classmates, some drawn to him, others simply putting up a few did agree on one thing: things shifted whenever Liam Chen walked in. Garlic stuck around for days, mixed with thyme, because meals appeared without warning, rich and layered. Around eleven, strings would hum if something sat too heavy in his chest. Noise came easily, he didn’t hold it in and laughter often cracked through quiet moments like dropped glass. Questions arrived too, sharp or soft depending on how open someone seemed at that instant; over time, he got better at reading silence before speaking. The line between deep interest and stepping too far? That became clearer with practice.
Yet he handled it carefully. That idea wasn’t true. Those who saw him as too much - some really did missed the point. Liam knew exactly what he was doing.
Back then, two winters past, during his debut season at that earlier college before the move to Calloway it happened. A stretch of time he tends to pass by without mention.
Yet things shifted. Back when doesn’t matter now. Choosing carefully, he stepped into who he truly is loud at times, maybe too much so, yet never faking it and that stance stays firm. Regret won’t enter the picture.
Still, the volume stays down because of the person next door. Quiet tunes now matter more than before. Music plays soft, just enough to hear. This change? It’s about respect, nothing else. Loud beats used to rule now they wait.
Elena Vasquez.
On the floor he sat, bowl in hand, after pouring cereal and mixing in that oat milk someone had lent him. it tasted better than regular milk, richer somehow, with a soft sweetness underneath. Around him, boxes filled the room, furniture still scattered or missing. His mind drifted to the woman through the wall.
Out came the door, swung wide as if bracing for words that sting. Fear wasn’t it closer to readiness, like a person once surprised too many times and now knows how to brace. Dark eyes scanned without moving fast, steady in their watch. She stood there, frame loose yet guarded, an entrance unsealed though held back by something thin but firm.
Still, she handed him the milk.
It carries weight. Perhaps not a lot. Yet still, it does.
After finishing breakfast, he started pulling out the books. One by one, they came free from the box because he handles them like something worth keeping. Sequence matters when it comes to spines and pages. Each has its place. They mean something.
Moving to Calloway made sense after learning their Environmental Science course stood third nationally, tied to a Scottish conservation effort he hoped to join before graduating. Another reason lived further beneath the surface: his old campus held too many faces familiar with who he used to be, two summers back. Their glances always seemed cautious, like watching something fragile sit on the edge of a shelf.
Just because he made noise didn’t mean something snapped inside. Volume isn’t damaged. These aren’t the same at all.
Forty minutes, plus a trio of online videos, got the desk built after he’d laid out his books. Above his bed’s headboard went the world map a gift from his mother with her note tucked in one edge: Everywhere is somewhere, start where you are, written just like she always did.
Midday arrived when his knuckles tapped her door a second time.
This time her reply took more words.
Out of nowhere, she spoke. A new grey cardigan appeared on her arms. That shade again made him wonder if grey meant something more. Sound filled the room, not too loud, just enough
Of course. But that isn’t the reason I came.” Out came two cartons of oat milk, pulled from his bag picked up earlier from the campus shop, the one that opens at eleven. A swap, along with a little extra
Her eyes moved to the boxes. After that, they settled on him.
"You didn't have to bring two."
"I said I will."
A shift passed across her features at first glance, she wasn't the kind of girl who demanded attention, yet somehow she gathered it without trying.
Her eyes were the first thing anyone noticed large, soft, and quick to look away the moment they met another's gaze. A faint blush seemed permanently painted across her cheeks, deepening whenever someone spoke directly to her.
Loose strands of dark hair framed her face, giving her a slightly untidy charm, as though she had spent more time worrying than looking in a mirror.a faint release, as if a single stitch had slipped free. Gratitude followed in her voice.
"You're welcome." He stayed. He should not stay. "Do you know where the post room is? I need to register my address and I've walked around this building twice and I cannot find it."
"Ground floor," she said. "Turn left out of the lift, past the laundry room, through the fire door. No sign."
"Why is there no sign?"
"I don't know."
"That's a significant omission."
"I've thought this for two years."
It had been two years. Two years she stayed right here. He noticed, though he did not know why it mattered. “Thank you,” came his reply. The first level. Nothing marked outside. Understood
Off he went. The door shut behind her.
Yet she left the chain off. In a way of saying. The door shut behind her, no latch engaged.
That was something.
- Writer
