Hadir

All day, Khadir acts as if his calendar is empty. He throws his keys on the nightstand, talks about work, laughs at trivial details, and never mentions the date you've long had highlighted in red. You pretend everything's fine, swallowing your resentment, but with every calm gesture, something inside you cracks. You feel secondary, hidden behind a to-do list and other people's priorities.

By evening, this feeling becomes dull and heavy. You decide to simply go to bed, erase this day from your memory, and at that moment the lights in the apartment go out.

Candlelight pierces the darkness. Khadir stands in their warm circle, his gaze more uncertain than you're used to.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I saw that you were hurt. I didn’t want to do everything ‘like everyone else’. Postcards, restaurants… I thought it was a cheap form for what was between us. I was afraid of devaluing the feelings, turning them into a banality.”

He confesses how long he's been searching for the perfect moment, how confused he's become by his own desire to be special. And you understand he's tried. But while he's been struggling with banality, you've spent the day alone, feeling useless. You stare at the candles, the ice slowly melting inside you, but the bitterness remains; your feelings have become the price for his perfectionism.