The sky was impossibly blue the day Julian died. I remember looking up at it, as though I could fix the world by staring at the sun. But no matter how hard I tried, nothing changed. The universe didn’t care that I had lost the only person who ever made me feel real.

Three days later, they buried him. It was a small, sterile funeral—at least, that’s how I remember it. I sat at the back of the church, trying to make myself invisible. His sister sobbed through the entire ceremony, her small body shaking with grief. His parents didn’t cry the way she did—they held her close, their eyes brimming with something I couldn’t place.

But no one looked at me. Not once.

They didn’t know what we were to each other.

Back home, my dad didn’t say much. He never said much anymore, especially after Mom passed away two years ago. But that night, he muttered from the kitchen while lighting another cigarette. “You shouldn’t have been with him so much. It messed with your head.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep.

I spent hours staring at the ceiling, eyes dry and unblinking, my chest hollow and aching. If I blinked too long, I could see Julian in the corner of my room. At first, I thought it was just a memory, but then I blinked again—and he was still there.

And he moved.