NIKI once said, “The story we won’t tell is my greatest fantasy; the passions I won’t feel again isn’t lost on me.”
Everyone told us that the classroom is our second home; the teachers who stood as our second parents—ones who became the guiding stars when things grew dark, our classmates who suddenly borrowed pens, yet returned with laughter from the most foolish things and random thoughts, and the corners of the room that silently heard all the noise and had seen the victories of our limitations and the downfalls of our own negligence.
But as we turn this new chapter in the book that we are writing, we also leave behind the memories we hoped to live raw along every line of its pages. If the room, the teachers, and the classmates became the second family we once called home, how come we have to find new ones every year?
Why is living in that home only temporary?
Maybe now it isn’t about the apartment we hoped would become our forever home, but rather a classroom that holds our memories, starting to quietly linger beneath our hearts and begin to haunt the present.
Maybe this song is not only about a wife. Maybe it is also about the people who walked beside us through the uncertainty of growing up—the hands we held, the arms we have clung to, and the ears that listened no longer show the same face.
Because this is the room we won’t share.
Now that I find myself in a different room, I wonder what the people we used to be with are like without me. I wonder if the windows still remember how we ran through the corridors and rushed through activities that felt more like races than responsibilities.
The story we won’t tell is now my greatest fantasy—how I start to yearn to continue this life with you, along with the teachers who we used to laugh with every recess and every joke that, in reality, aren’t really funny.
But perhaps what is funnier is how I stood in the mirror, knowing that the person I am will be someone else’s to keep—not what I wanted, but what we need.
Despite all the yearnings I still do before I sleep, all the laughter that echoes in my head, all the mourning of the unwitnessed future, and the tears we have shared whenever we did not know when to move, we still succeeded.
Together, separately.
And now, as I sit among new faces, founded in new places, I find myself silently praying:
“I hope you shortly find what you long for.”
