The room around me began to dim, as if shadows were seeping through every corner, overtaking the light, overtaking him. I reached out, my hand trembling, desperate to cling to the one piece of warmth I thought I still had left.

“K!” I screamed, the sound raw, a sound torn from a place within me that had been kept locked for so long. But my scream met only emptiness, a vast and unfeeling void that absorbed every ounce of my pain and returned nothing.

He only gazes back at me, his face soft, a faint, bittersweet smile touching his lips, and in that expression, I understand. I know what he’s trying to tell me—that he was never meant to stay, that he was only ever a fleeting comfort, a fragile illusion to hold onto in the dark. And as that realization sinks in, I feel something inside me break, splintering into pieces too jagged, too sharp to ever mend.

“K,” I called again, louder, my voice breaking, the name slipping from my lips like a prayer, a final plea to stave off the emptiness clawing at my chest. I can still feel the warmth of our dance lingering in the air, but it’s fading now, growing colder with each passing second.

I stumbled forward, my body aching, feeling weaker with every step, but he kept receding, further and further, slipping out of my grasp. My breaths grew shallow as panic took hold, a hollow emptiness gnawing at my chest, the fear of losing him—the only part of me that still felt alive.

“No, please,” I choked, my voice a whisper swallowed by the silence that was wrapping itself around me. “K, don’t leave me. I can’t… I can’t do this without you.”

I tried to hold onto him, to keep him tethered in my grasp, but each attempt only pushed him farther away, his figure growing dimmer, more distant with every heartbeat. The harder I reached, the faster he dissolved, until he was just a shadow, a trick of the light that I could barely see. My chest ached, every part of me straining, pleading for him to stay, to defy this cruel separation.

“K, please…” My voice broke, the words barely a breath. The ache in my heart swelled, threatening to consume me, to swallow me whole. Stay with me. Don’t leave me alone.

But he just looked back at me, sorrow in his eyes—eyes that had once been so full of life, of promises, of whispered dreams. His lips parted, but no sound came. His gaze was soft, understanding, almost apologetic, as though he, too, wished he could stay. And then, as if the universe itself had deemed it too painful to bear, he faded completely, dissolving into the darkness that surrounded me.

And then, the world snaps back into focus, harsh and unrelenting. I’m in the hospital room again, the walls cold and sterile, their pale, empty expanse pressing down on me with a suffocating weight. The bed beneath me is hard, unyielding, and the fluorescent light above casts a pale, sickly glow over everything. There is no warmth here, no gentle touch to soothe the pain clawing its way through my body, no whispered promises to hold back the loneliness closing in around me.

I wanted to scream again, to rail against the emptiness that stretched on for miles inside of me. But I was exhausted—so sick of running from the truth, of clinging to illusions that had only ever left me more broken than before. The walls around me closed in, their bare whiteness stark and unfeeling, holding none of the warmth I had once imagined.

I look around, my gaze drifting over the machines, the empty chair beside my bed, where he used to sit and paint. It’s silent—achingly, profoundly silent. And I realize, with a clarity so sharp it feels like a knife slicing through my chest, that I am utterly, devastatingly lonely.

The air feels heavy, thick with the weight of unspoken words, of dreams left unfulfilled. My body feels fragile, each breath a struggle, each heartbeat a reminder of the time slipping away. I lie back, staring up at the ceiling, feeling the life seep out of me, slow and inexorable, a quiet surrender to the darkness pressing in from all sides.

The truth crashed over me with the force of a wave, it drowned me in its bitter, undeniable clarity. He was gone—no, he had never been here at all. ‘K’ was a figment, a phantom I had conjured, a whisper in the silence of my own dying heart. A desperate illusion crafted from my need to feel something, anything, in the numbness that had taken over my life. He was the balm I’d placed over wounds too deep to heal, a ghost born of my agony and solitude.

I was alone.

I had woven him from threads of desperation, stitched him together from the fragments of my own brokenness. In my darkest hours, I had created him. And as I realized how pathetic I had become, I laughed. Laughed at myself, laughed at the bitter sarcasm that destiny threw my way, and I laughed at how it would all end so soon. Oh how I wish it would end so soon.

The quiet was crushing, a silence so deep it seemed to smother every lingering hope, every fragment of light. And dear God, I was tired, so very tired, and there was a strange peace in letting go, in allowing myself to slip into the quiet embrace of oblivion.

There was no one here—no friends, no family, no warm hand to hold. Just the cold, indifferent gaze of the machines, the steady, rhythmic hum that counted down the seconds, the breaths, the moments that I had left.

A quiet acceptance settled over me, heavy and unyielding. This was my reality. There was no one to turn to, no one to lean on.
As I drifted, a final, fleeting thought flickered through my mind—a memory of a love that had never truly existed, a dream that had crumbled to dust in my hands. And in that last, lingering moment, I felt the ghost of a hand on mine, a phantom warmth that would fade as quickly as it had come.

With the last bit of strength I mastered, I signed off my last letter.

And then, with a quiet sigh, I slipped away, the emptiness closing in, swallowing me whole. There was no fanfare, no tearful goodbye—just a quiet, lonely ending, marked only by the soft, unfeeling hum of the machines, the indifferent silence of a world that had long since forgotten me.

Lorelei, I only wished to be loved, to be remembered. And so, remember me, my dear reader; I beg of you.