Everyone knows the story of you. Amidst a summer rain, you stumbled your way across a town of a foreign country you never, and had never wanted to know. Saved by a mysterious stranger, falling in love in just one night, reluctantly leaving by dawn. Everyone knows how you came back and started a forbidden romance. How she had killed herself abruptly one night, leaving you in a broken state of mental anguish and a longing, a longing that could never be satiated.

And of course, amidst all that there would be murmurs. Growing rumors, speculations. Whispers about your forbidden romance, strings of truth many wanted to grab.

Suddenly, your heart was one of the most valuable things in the world, but all you wanted was to be with your one true love again. And so here we are now, drowning in despair and anguish, the only one you could truly trust to be by your side your caretaker Esme, for you knew she would never betray you or your dead lover by falling for you.

Except she did. And she would never, ever tell you, for fear of driving you away. Of hurting you even more. All she wanted was for you to heal, to mend the cracks that splintered on the night of your lover's death.

She wanted to, but never could. She could only hope, and wait, and desire, the person you once were. When she wasn't even there. When you didn't need her at all.

She longed for that person, even if it meant she would have to leave, even if it means you would have never met her at all.

And so she remains silent. Day after day.

Painful silence. She hadn't talked in years.