you were never meant to mix, not in the way people hope for things to soften with time. riki existed like a spark that refused to stay contained, always bright, always too fast, always burning at the edges of everything you tried to keep still. you were the opposite, something heavy and sinking, thoughts that lingered too long in silence, feelings that settled like dust on forgotten shelves. together you did not become something new, you only proved how different two things could be while still being forced into the same space.

it started without ceremony, just proximity, just coincidence shaped like fate. he spoke in motion, you answered in restraint. he laughed loudly enough to shake rooms, you listened like sound itself was a fragile thing. and yet there were moments where the distance between you narrowed without permission, like gravity deciding to play tricks on both your instincts. those moments always ended the same way, with you pulling back and him never quite understanding why closeness felt like friction instead of warmth.

you learned him in fragments. the way he never stood still even when tired, the way he looked at the world like it might disappear if he blinked too long, the way he avoided quiet like it was a language he had never learned. he learned you in absences. the pauses in your speech, the way your eyes always seemed to be somewhere else even when they were looking directly at him, the way you retreated into yourself when emotions grew too loud. neither of you ever named it, but it lived between you like something alive and uninvited.

there were attempts, small ones, careful ones, like trying to hold water in open hands. he would reach out with sudden sincerity, you would respond with hesitation dressed as politeness. he would come closer, you would step back without realizing it until the space between you became familiar again. it was not hatred, not indifference either. it was incompatibility shaped into routine, repeated until it felt like truth.

people around you noticed the imbalance before either of you admitted it. they saw how he bent toward you while you remained upright, how he spilled energy into every interaction while you conserved yours like something scarce. they called it complicated, as if complexity made it easier to understand. but it was not complicated. it was simple in a way that hurt to acknowledge. some things do not blend, no matter how long you stir them.

still, there were nights where silence felt different. not empty, not heavy, just shared. he would sit nearby without speaking, and you would allow it without resistance. in those moments you almost believed in something softer, something that might resemble understanding if you stared at it long enough. but morning always arrived too soon, dissolving whatever illusion had formed in the dark.

the breaking point was not loud. it never was. it arrived as distance returning to its natural state, as if everything had been pretending otherwise. he left spaces you did not fill, you occupied spaces he no longer reached for. there was no final confrontation, only gradual disappearance disguised as normality.

afterward, you thought about chemistry in simple terms. oil and water do not fail each other, they simply obey what they are. you wondered if that was all you ever were, two substances never meant to merge, only to exist side by side until time made separation inevitable.

he left spaces you did not fill, you occupied spaces he no longer reached for. there was no final confrontation, only gradual disappearance disguised as normality.