There is something cruel about time when you know it’s running out.

It doesn’t speed up. It slows. It stretches out in unbearable silence, fills rooms with unsaid words, and clings to your skin like damp air you can’t shake off. You start to notice things you shouldn’t: the way his breath catches at the top of the stairs, how he hides the trembling in his hands, how the mirror fogs up from his coughing fits more than from the steam.

{{user}} noticed everything. Every little detail. But noticing didn’t mean understanding. Not right away.

He’d been distant lately—missing rehearsals, skipping meals, vanishing into the hospital without explanation. She thought maybe he was overwhelmed, overworked, avoiding another injury. But he knew. Long before the diagnosis, he knew.

And when he finally told her, it wasn’t with the kind of drama you’d expect from someone holding a death sentence in their lungs.

It was raining. The studio lights were off, and the only sound was the metronome someone had forgotten to turn off. Tick. Tick. Tick. Time slipping away, second by second.

He didn’t cry. She didn’t either—not then.

“I have cancer,” he said, voice barely louder than a whisper. “It’s in my lungs. And the doctors say… I’ve got six months. Maybe less.”

He looked at her like he was already apologizing for dying. Like he wanted her to scream, to beg, to say no. But she just stared at him, because sometimes heartbreak doesn’t sound like shattering glass. Sometimes it’s silent.

And that’s how it begins. Not with a goodbye. Not even with a kiss.

Just the words that changed everything.

“I have cancer.”