WHAT WE NEVER SAID

THE STORM WE COULDN'T STOP

CHAPTER FOUR : THE STORM WE COULDN'T STOP

The end came slowly, like the sky dimming before a storm.

There were no warnings at first, just whispers, side glances, and the kind of quiet that spreads faster than truth ever could.

People in Aremu notice everything.

They notice who walks home with whom.

They notice who laughs a little too softly, who lingers a little too long.

By then, Noah and I had stopped trying to hide the gravity between us.

We still met after class still talked until dusk still found reasons to exist in the same space. But every moment began to feel borrowed, stolen from a clock that was almost done ticking.

---

One afternoon, when I went to his apartment to go check up on him that when he told me he will be going back to his home town, I was already dominated by his love that I forgot he would be wasn't going to be staying forever that he only came to serve, my heart was really broken after I learnt he was leaving soon but I still kept a smiling face even though my heart was saying otherwise

---

That evening, he came to find me by the riverbank, the place we first became us. The water reflected the bruised colors of twilight. His face was softer than I’d ever seen it, but there was something behind his calm — a breaking I couldn’t name.

> I'm going back to Luniba,” he said.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

> When?

> “Tomorrow.”

He reached for my hand, then stopped halfway — his fingers hovering just inches away.

> “I don’t regret any of it,” he said. “Not one second.”

And I wanted to tell him everything — how my heart had memorized him, how he’d become the reason I started believing that love could exist quietly, without apology.

But words failed me. They always did.

So instead, I said:

> “I’ll write about you.”

He smiled faintly. “Then maybe I’ll never really leave.”

---

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I listened to the rain and thought about how love sometimes arrives as a gift, and leaves as a lesson.

In my diary, I wrote one last line for him:

> We were never meant to last, only to be remembered.

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When I went to his quarters the next morning, he was gone.

The room was empty except for a