Chapter 4: What He Always Knew
422 Words
He wasn’t blind.
From the very beginning, he knew.
He knew the way her eyes followed him at events. The way she always appeared where he was, never close enough to speak, but never far enough to disappear.
He noticed the dresses, the confidence she wore too loudly, the way she tried to look unbothered while caring too much.
He knew she had a crush on him.
He just didn’t care.
Not because she wasn’t attractive. Not because she did anything wrong. But because his heart was already occupied.
Loving someone else left no space for curiosity, no room for guilt.
So he ignored it.
It was easier that way.
He treated her like background noise—something always there, something he never needed to acknowledge. He didn’t confront her
. Didn’t encourage her. Didn’t stop her either. He simply let her exist on the edges of his world.
And for a long time, she stayed there.
Until she didn’t.
Her absence was quiet. No announcement. No drama. One day, she just stopped appearing. The girl who used to stand under the lights was suddenly nowhere to be found.
At first, he assumed it was nothing.
People like her came and went all the time.
But then he noticed it again—at another event, another party, another place she would’ve been before. The space she used to occupy felt oddly empty.
He didn’t look for her.
But he noticed.
He remembered things he never paid attention to before. How she never crossed lines. Never touched him. Never spoke unless spoken to. How she only watched.
And suddenly, it felt different.
She wasn’t trying anymore.
Meanwhile, she was learning how to live without him.
She stopped dressing for attention. Stopped waiting for coincidences. She walked past places she once avoided, breathing easier with each step.
“Ganito pala pag tumigil ka na,” she thought one afternoon.
“Masakit pa rin… pero kaya na.”
She still loved him. That didn’t disappear overnight. But the desperation did. And that scared her more than anything else—because it felt final.
Back in his world, he began to feel something unfamiliar.
Guilt.
Not love. Not longing.
Just the uncomfortable awareness that someone had cared deeply, quietly, and had finally chosen to leave his orbit.
He knew she had a crush on him.
He always had.
What he didn’t know—
was how much her silence would start to follow him.
And how losing attention he never wanted
would feel heavier than he expected.
- Writer
