(inspired by real emotions)

Chapter 1 – I Only Wanted to Be Loved
It was raining.
People around hurried along with their umbrellas open, trying to reach their warm homes without getting soaked.
But she, ignoring the strange looks people gave her, was so lost in thought that she forgot to get up from the wet bench she was sitting on. She didn’t care.
She was just waiting.
The phone in her pocket wasn’t vibrating. She wasn’t really expecting anyone to text anyway. Still, she opened the screen. Her fingers were wet; the touch barely registered. She went into the messages.
She couldn’t choose a name.
“I’m not okay,” she typed.
Deleted it.
“Can we talk?” she wrote.
Deleted that too.
She scrolled up and down her contacts.
Was there really anyone she could text?
The screen went dark; she lowered her head.
She was drenched. Yet she kept thinking about it, doing nothing but waiting, believing it would come.
The rain was so heavy that droplets had been running down from her bowed head for hours. Watching children walk home hand in hand with their mothers, smiling warmly, made her heart ache, and loneliness settled inside her once again. The air was cold. While no one wanted to step outside, she had run away from everywhere she didn’t feel she belonged and eventually found herself on this wet, dirty bench.
Sirens were rising.
Had something happened to someone?
It must have been an accident. The sounds were getting closer, people were gathering. She wanted to look too, but she couldn’t get up. It was as if her body had sworn an oath not to move, glued to the ground.
One second…
People were coming toward her.
So the accident was on her side. She needed to stand up and look, but moving had never been this hard. She could feel the cold ground, yet she had no strength to rise. The blue of the sky and the rain hitting her face felt strangely beautiful, but people approaching her was unsettling. Everything hurt, all eyes were on her. Shouldn’t they be looking toward the ambulance?
Why were they coming toward her?
Fear slowly grew.
She needed to get up—she had school. But why couldn’t she move?
This had to be a dream.
Under the blue sky pouring rain, she was doing nothing but getting soaked. She had never felt this tired in her life. Lying in the middle of the park like that was as absurd as a dream; she couldn’t understand it. But she was sure it was one. She waited for her mother to wake her up any moment, but in vain…
Neither her daily alarm nor her mother woke her.
The only thing she could move were her pupils. With them, she could see the curious gazes around her, but the rest of her body felt locked—she couldn’t move. Maybe it was because she hadn’t dreamed in a long time, or maybe this was the one dream she would never wake from. Her eyes were slowly closing. The more she tried to open them, the heavier her eyelids pressed down on her pupils. As the memories she clung to desperately, the ones she never wanted to forget, began to flow backward one by one,
everything was swallowed by the darkness of night.
Where were the people staring at her?
What about the ambulance sirens?
None of it was there.
It was as if the world had split in two and swallowed them all. The silence was so deep that every breath she took echoed in the pitch-black void. She chose to stay quiet. Because maybe this was the only thing she trusted in her life. Yes…
And the loneliness that never left her, even in crowds. Darkness didn’t take her to sleep — it took her back.
She was seven years old.
Tiny, yet mature enough to carry the weight of responsibilities without even realizing it. Ever since she understood she had to do everything on her own, she had grown fond of loneliness. She did her homework alone, ate alone, went to school alone. Maybe every child walked alone…
Or maybe she was different.
She wanted to be the child who waited eagerly for her mother after school, but she also knew that would never happen.
Walking alone should have been hard for her. As she tried to pass between families, she was too sensitive to even want to separate the hands that were tightly holding each other. She would only watch from afar and silently continue walking home.
One day, when she was supposed to go home after school, she waited.
Everyone had already left.
What could she possibly be waiting for?
Something felt wrong. A strange feeling grew inside her. Would her mother come? Would she keep her promise? Should she believe her? No one knew. Not even herself…
She checked every woman passing by to see if it was her mother. The wind had started to blow. She hugged her coat tighter so she wouldn’t get cold. The darkness scared her. She would have preferred going home instead of waiting, but there was no mother coming to pick her up. No father wondering about her either.
She waited quietly.
And in the end…
No one came.
After that day, there was nothing left she wanted to talk about or believe in. As if she had sworn not to believe even herself, she took her loneliness with her and walked home.
The next day, she was at school again.
The corridors echoed once more; faint children’s voices mixed together, and the favorite chant of the students was, “Baldy, baldy!”
“Why is your hair so short, are you a boy?”
“You know, my little brother’s hair is the same…”
Break times felt so long that all she could do inside was scream, “Ring already, please!”
Her mother didn’t braid her hair with cute little clips like the other girls. She could feel that her mother didn’t want to bother; that’s why she never went up to her and said, “Can you braid my hair?” Before leaving the house, she would quietly comb it and head to school. But her friends—so-called friends—were bothered by how messy and short it was. Yet her mother always told her, “If you cut your hair now, it’ll grow very long later.” She accepted this with understanding and allowed it to be cut.
Was her mother telling the truth?
Maybe she was lying.
But children believe everything—especially when it’s said by someone they love.
The moment class ended, the ordeal began.
It continued until the break was over.
“Baldy! Baldy!” echoed everywhere…
It never left the corridors, nor her nightmare-filled dreams. Her sleep was constantly interrupted. She had to find a solution. Or maybe her mother shouldn’t have deceived her. Before the ordeal started, she thought of solutions during class; after it ended, she started thinking again in a rush. Then she remembered the small grocery store next to the school.
To go there, she waited for school to end.
As soon as the bell rang, she ran down the stairs,
because that shop had countless hair clips and headbands.
She already passed by it every day on her way home anyway.
She waved a small hand to the shopkeeper and stepped inside,
studying the clips behind the glass.
Her eyes fixed on one of them.
A green cat-themed headband.
Her pupils lifted slightly,
but her hands just couldn’t reach out.
The shopkeeper understood she wanted that headband
from her long, silent stares.
He came closer.
“Do you want this one, little one?” he asked.
I didn’t open my mouth,
I only nodded my head slightly.
The man took the headband and placed it on my short hair.
The happiness inside me was priceless.
For a moment, it felt like the whole world was mine. There was a strange feeling in my heart.
And for the first time, only I was feeling it.
But I knew it would last only until I got home.
I turned my head toward the slightly foggy glass
and looked at myself for a long time.
I must have looked like a girl now.
Maybe no one would make fun of me anymore.
Maybe my sleep wouldn’t be interrupted,
nor those breaks I thought would never end…
I touched the headband in the door’s reflection.
My hair was still short, but for the first time, I didn’t look bad.
I rang the bell.
It had to be my mother opening the door.
I whispered inside myself in lowercase letters:
Would my mother be the first to notice,
or my father?
The door opened.
It was my mother.
She lifted her head…
Then immediately turned her back
and walked toward the kitchen.
I ran after her with small steps.
I wanted to give her one more chance to see me.
I wanted her to notice the headband.
Her tired eyes scanned over me.
“Take that off,” she said.
“Your hair is already short.”
At that moment…
No sound came out,
but something inside me broke.
Chapter 2 – The Blue Light
“Did something happen? Come here. You can talk to me.”
“No, I’m fine.”
It was the only lie I had been able to say since childhood,
and everyone believed it.
I wasn’t fine at all.
Was I fooling myself? My eyes were swollen from crying — was this what being fine looked like?
But it always understood.
It was the only one my lie never worked on.
How could it understand me? It was strange. Every time I tried to lie, it somehow knew and asked again. Even though I didn’t like it, I couldn’t escape it. As if it could sense from afar that I was unwell, it would appear at the most unexpected moments. Did it do this on purpose, or was it secretly watching me? I was afraid it would show up at any second, and because I felt watched, I controlled my behavior. I didn’t even know why I was doing it.
I had to stay away from it. I didn’t like it… or maybe I was just suppressing my feelings like I always did. There was someone who understood me, and that terrified me. I didn’t feel safe. Realizing this only made me quieter. It wasn’t supposed to understand my loneliness. I didn’t want that.
I was always surrounded by people. I could understand people of every age, and they could understand me — yet no one truly understood me.
I had made touching hearts almost a profession. I was loved, yet i couldn’t feel it. Whenever everyone else was left in the dark, they remembered me— but in my own darkness, i never knew where to look. I had tasted nothing but loneliness since childhood; running away from other emotions felt only natural.
Right now, everything was the same.
With one small difference: The Blue Light. And that’s when it entered my life.
The first time I saw it, I thought,
It should have been mine…
Did it really have to be that cool?
While looking at it with admiration, I was too afraid to make eye contact. If our eyes met, I wanted the world to swallow me whole. Maybe I was too cowardly to even face my own feelings. The moment I sensed it approaching, I would clutch my heart and practically fly to the other end of the school.
I did this because I couldn’t understand its feelings toward me. It hugged me the same way it hugged everyone else. The treatment I thought was special to me, it gave to others too. Did it do it knowingly? I don’t think so. Or maybe I simply wasn’t any different from the rest to it.
This uncertainty was destroying me. I had been able to control everything since I was little; now I was alone with a feeling I had never known before. Had I fallen in love with its kindness? Maybe I was just filling the emptiness of not being loved. No… that wasn’t right. It shouldn’t be !
I truly loved it.
Even though I never really knew what love was, I loved it so, so much.
It would come closer and I would think,
It seems like a good being… why can’t I warm up completely?
I didn’t know.
There wasn’t any clear reason.
When I was drowning in tears, it would touch my cheeks with a warm hand and wipe them away. When my throat knotted up, it would wait with understanding. Even though it knew I didn’t like physical contact, sometimes it would still hug me tightly.
Those should have been enough reasons to love it,
because they were the clearest signs that someone loved me.
And I was too naïve to understand that.
On one of the days I was thinking about the Blue Light…
Whenever I looked at it, someone was always by its side. It was talkative, cheerful, and expressed itself so well — the complete opposite of me. Our personalities were so different that we felt like people from entirely separate worlds. The energy it radiated was so strong you could feel it even from afar.
Sometimes I thought it was a robot, that its energy was endless. Could it even sleep at night? If I had that much energy, I wouldn’t be able to sleep for days. Deep down, I envied it.
Even though I barely opened my mouth all day, it felt like I had no energy left inside me.
Why was I so tired?
I hadn’t done anything exhausting. I had just stayed silent all day… except for the moments it forced me to talk.
It talked all day; I listened. Its words flowed so effortlessly that I kept asking silly questions just so it wouldn’t stop. That way, I wouldn’t be deprived of its voice, and it wouldn’t fall silent.
I loved mentioning it in every moment of my life. In places where it wasn’t present, either its name or something about it would always come up.
“Look, that looks like the Blue Light.”
“Ah, it would be happy if it saw this.”
I wish we could go there together… I would think — somewhere far away where no one else existed, just the two of us and our passionate feelings.
Those were sweet and unforgettable conversations. Sometimes I would hum the chorus of the song it loved…
‘So let me paint you with my love…’
Yes, its favorite.
How do I know?
It shouldn’t have listened to it at full volume through those tangled wired earphones while walking past me.”
Did it ever think of me the way I thought of it?
I don’t think so.
And maybe it was better that it didn’t know.
Lately, something had changed.
It didn’t come by as often, and even when it did, the conversations I couldn’t pull myself away from became short. Minutes that once felt like hours were now reduced to a few words.
Every time I saw it, a strange fear settled inside me.
As if one day it would truly become someone who had never come at all.
As if it would quietly erase itself from my life.
Then again…
My life already felt like that fear itself.
But that day, I didn’t know.
We were in one of those minutes that felt like hours.
In that park where we supposedly thought no one would find us…
It was looking around,
and I was looking at it.
People passing by didn’t even glance at it from the corner of their eyes,
as if it wasn’t there at all.
The same things were happening again.
With eyes that held the most beautiful shade of blue — a blue that separated night from day as it shone through its white hair — it watched the shouting children. Somehow, it always noticed the glances I thought I was throwing secretly. Whenever I got lost in its eyes, it would pull a funny face as if to snap me out of my trance.
Until school time came, we would sit on that pale blue bench everyone thought was dirty because of its color, sharing a single earbud and living through every song together. When its favorite part came on, it would turn toward me and sing louder.
I could never forget the sincerity of those moments.
Chapter 3 – The Late Promise
She froze.
At that moment, time wasn’t moving.
For the Blue Light, the world seemed to have stopped for a few minutes.
The motionless body on the ground was familiar…
But it didn’t want to accept it.
It didn’t know what it truly meant to ignore someone who had been so deeply attached to it.
Or maybe…
it simply didn’t want to know.
Maybe it had done it knowingly.
And now its eyes were whispering the answer to the outcome.
Seeing someone hugging a lifeless body on the ground would, of course, draw people’s attention.
It was holding on so tightly that the outfit it had chosen so carefully was now wet and faded.
What was it supposed to do now?
What else could it do besides holding on and crying…
It had no other choice.
Everything whose value wasn’t understood would eventually leave — it actually knew this very well.Years later, it would understand this even more deeply.
Back then
My face was gloomy; I didn’t want to go to school.
Classes were boring, and even English, my favorite subject, wouldn’t be taught that day.
I had no other choice; I had to go.
I was waiting for it in the back garden of the school.
Because if we didn’t have our little talk before classes, the day didn’t truly begin.
It was the only bearable part of the days I knew would be terrible.
Whatever I wanted to feel but couldn’t feel all day,
I would fit into those few minutes.
The sky was starting to darken.
When I came in the morning, it hadn’t looked like it would rain at all.
I should have brought my cardigan…
A small regret settled inside me, but there was nothing I could do now.
The clouds looked like my loneliness.
Pitch black.
It was obvious it was going to rain.
Still, I waited for it.
It wasn’t a problem for me.
When the first drops fell, my short hair was instantly soaked.
I hated that.
It approached quietly from behind.
Suddenly, it draped its cardigan over my shoulders.
“Don’t be afraid… I’m here,” it whispered.
I had already understood.
Because the way it touched me… no one else ever did.
My frown softened a little.
Even if I couldn’t explain anything, it had understood.
I wouldn’t run away this time.
So I told it.
It held out its hand.
“Shall we run away?” it said.
Where could we even run in this rainy weather?
Besides, I was still wearing its cardigan.
Maybe they were our most ridiculous memories…
but to me, they were the most precious.
I never knew if they were the same for it.
Raindrops had soaked our hands,
but they couldn’t pull them apart.
We were running tightly bound together.
As we ran, the drops hit our faces,
our voices tangled into each other.
We couldn’t hear one another…
we only felt.
With every step, water squished inside our shoes.
Our bags were just as wet as we were.
I opened my bag, looking for my water bottle.
My throat was dry from running.
The edges of my notebooks were damp, their pages slightly curled.
As I reached for my bottle,
I accidentally pulled out another notebook.
There was a drawing of it on the cover.
I wished I had never taken it out.
My heart felt like it stopped for a second.
This… wasn’t my water bottle.
And it hadn’t seen it.
We took a few more steps; we were both out of breath.
I felt it slow down behind me. It must have been tired.
I turned to look at it.
Its cheeks were bright red,
and the rain-soaked face somehow ached inside me.
I was still wearing its cardigan.
I had to give it back… and I did.
I stepped onto the bench to reach its height
and slowly began drying its wet, white hair with the cardigan.
Its hair was completely drenched.
Unlike my short hair, it took quite a while to dry.
But with its endless chatter,
time flowed like water in that moment.
If it had known those moments would pass so quickly,
maybe it would have held on tighter.
Because some memories
only reveal their value when they are remembered.
The promise we once gave each other suddenly crossed its mind:
“We won’t step out of each other’s fate line, promise?”
But now…
I heard a voice. The one that had never left me alone. It sounded sad.
“You didn’t keep your promise this time…” it said.
It was as if someone questioned every mistake I made, appearing beside me in every silence.
The voice was trembling.
“Where were you? Open your eyes, you know I don’t like jokes… Don’t you ever think about the ones who love you?”
“By doing this, you’re only hurting yourself the most… You withered away in my hands… I wish you had loved yourself as much as you loved me. Maybe none of this would have happened… It’s all my fault.”
That voice…
Was it just any voice echoing inside my head,
or the cry of a salvation I would never reach?
I couldn’t know.
“Please, let me heal you… I will never allow you to give your feelings away to others.
So you can live your life, feel it fully…
Just let me…”
The warmth of those hugs,
those looks,
and what they made me feel… were none of them real?
They shouldn’t have been.
That blue light…
Maybe it only existed in my mind.
But in my deepest loneliness, it was always beside me.
…
Maybe it had never existed at all.