Pursuing from the Shore (Sun Rays #2)

Chapter 32

Entry: Redler's Archive

I tried doing things I never used to do before.

Different streets, different air, different language, thinking that maybe if I changed enough of my surroundings, I'd stop looking for you in them.

Russia feels too big sometimes. Or maybe I just notice the silence more now. But I didn't forget who I am. I just learned how to live with what's no longer here.

It's been so long.

Kumusta ka na kaya?

Do you still draw the same way?

Do your hands still move like they know exactly what to do, even when you don't say anything?

You used to draw me.

I was your muse—God, that still feels unreal to say. It was me. Out of all things you could've chosen, you chose me. You looked at me like I was something worth turning into art.

No one's ever done that to me since. And I don't think anyone ever will.

Mahal na mahal natin isa't isa noon.

I know that. I'm sure of that. We weren't pretending. We just... were. We were each other's piece of art.

And that's why it hurts this way—because art stays, even when people don't

Sinasanay ko na lang sarili ko na wala ka.

It's strange how people expect you to "move on" like it's a place you arrive at.

I didn't move on. I just learned how to sit in the space where you used to be—until it stopped asking for you out loud.

But it still does, sometimes. In subtle ways. In inconvenient moments. Like when I write something good and my first instinct is to let you read it. Or when I see something beautiful and think, you'd draw this better.

You're still there.

Just not... here.

I became an author.

You'd probably laugh about that—tell me you already knew, like you always do. Like it was obvious. People read my words now. They underline and quote them.

But they don't know that some of those lines were written with you in mind.

That some of my best sentences were born from missing you.

Funny, right?

The world gets to read you without even knowing you exist in those pages.

And you—I know you kept going. You were always meant to. You always had something ahead of you, with or without me. That's the thing about you. You don't chase meaning—
you created it yourself.

I hope you never stopped. I hope your hands never forgot how to see the world the way you do. I hope when things get heavy, you still choose to draw anyway.

Because that's who you are—you don't need me for that.

And that part took me a while to accept.

I promised myself I wouldn't write about you anymore. That I'd outgrow this—and outgrow you. But feelings don't work like that. They don't leave just because you've decided it's time. They stay. They change shape. But they still... stay.

So here I am again. Still writing about you.
Still missing you in ways I don't always admit out loud.

Turuan mo naman akong mag-move on.