Chapter Two: The Way He Vanished Part 2A

We stood on the bridge for a long time.

The wind tugged at Neon’s hair, lifting strands like it wanted to carry pieces of him away. The river below moved slowly, like it was tired of pretending to be something beautiful. Neon leaned forward, elbows on the railing, eyes fixed on the water like it held answers he couldn’t say out loud.

“I used to come here when I was a kid,” he said. “Before everything got loud.”

“What got loud?” I asked.

He hesitated. “Life.”

I didn’t press. I’d learned that with Neon, silence was often more honest than words.

He pulled something from his pocket—a small, silver lighter. It was scratched and dented, the kind of object that had lived through stories. He flicked it open, let the flame dance for a second, then closed it again.

“I don’t smoke,” he said. “I just like the sound.”

I watched him do it again. Flick. Flame. Silence.

It was like watching someone try to control chaos with rhythm.

“Do you ever feel like you’re not real?” he asked suddenly.

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Like you’re just… watching yourself live. Like you’re a ghost in your own body.”

I swallowed. “Sometimes.”

He nodded. “Me too.”

We walked from the bridge to the edge of the city, where the buildings stopped pretending to be important and the streets forgot their names. Neon led the way, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched like he was trying to fold himself into something smaller.

“I want to show you something,” he said.

We turned down an alley that smelled like rain and rust. At the end was a door—chipped paint, crooked handle, no sign. He pulled out a key and unlocked it like it was nothing.

Inside was a room.

Not a home. Not a hideout. Just a room.

The walls were covered in pages—torn from books, printed from old websites, scribbled in messy handwriting. Poetry. Lyrics. Quotes. Sentences that didn’t belong anywhere else.

Neon walked to the far wall and touched a page gently, like it was fragile.

“This is where I go when I need to remember who I am,” he said.

I stepped closer. The page he touched read:

I am not what I’ve lost.

I am what I’ve survived.

There was a mattress on the floor, a lamp with no shade, and a stack of notebooks tied together with string. He sat on the mattress, legs crossed, and looked up at me.

“I used to live here,” he said. “Not for long. Just enough to forget things.”

“Forget what?”

He didn’t answer. Just reached for one of the notebooks and handed it to me.

I opened it slowly.

Inside were drawings. Not perfect ones. Not artistic. Just raw. Faces. Hands. Eyes. All of them looked like him. Or maybe like versions of him he didn’t want to be.

“I draw when I can’t speak,” he said.

I flipped to a page near the middle.

It was a sketch of someone curled up on the floor, surrounded by words like empty, too much, not enough, leave, stay, sorry.

I closed the notebook gently.

“I didn’t know,” I whispered.

He looked at me. “You weren’t supposed to.”

We stayed in that room for hours.

He told me pieces of his story. Not all of it. Just enough.

His mom left when he was ten. His dad stopped talking after that. His sister moved out and never came back. He learned to cook from YouTube. Learned to lie from necessity. Learned to disappear from watching people forget him.

“I’m not tragic,” he said. “I’m just tired.”

I didn’t know what to say.

So I reached out and touched his hand.

He flinched. Not because he didn’t want it. Because he wasn’t used to it.

“I’m still here,” I said.

He looked at our hands. “I don’t know how to be someone people stay for.”

“Then let me teach you.”

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***