After a long pause, Vera whispered, her voice barely audible, “If you don’t want to, forget it. I can find someone else...”
The rest of her words faded into nothing.
The sound of lips meeting, of breath mingling, echoed through the quiet corridor.
Two minutes passed, thick with tension.
Elias' voice broke the silence, low and hoarse. "Don’t find someone else."
Mira, standing on the steps just beyond the wall, covered her mouth with her hand. She swallowed the sobs rising in her throat, her heart breaking with each passing second. Quietly, she turned and walked away.
In the bedroom, the faint light from outside spilled across the room, casting soft shadows on Mira’s red, swollen eyes. She stared blankly at the photo frame on the bedside table, her heart aching so painfully it felt as though it could shatter.
The photo was from the day of her high school graduation. It captured her and Elias in school uniforms, his arm around her shoulders. The moment the shutter clicked, she could still remember his soft whisper in her ear: "Mira, happy graduation. We’ll be together forever."