The Quiet Funeral

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Once, in a sleepy coastal town where secrets floated freely in the salt air, there lived a girl named Seena. She wasn’t famous, but in her circles, she was unforgettable—charming without trying, graceful without effort. Seena didn’t shine like the sun; she shimmered like the moon—always a little distant, always a little hidden.

People loved her. Admired her. Some even worshipped her. One of them was a boy named Abhinav.

He never confessed it outright, but he carried Seena inside him like a poem he would never finish. She wasn’t his to claim. She belonged to the world—or at least to whichever room she walked into. Because Seena had a habit of changing with her audience. She showed just enough to keep you hoping, never enough to feel certain.

But Abhinav saw her differently.

Not the curated version—the girl who smiled perfectly at gatherings or vanished when conversations edged too close to something real. He caught the moments in between. The silences. The hesitations. The quick glances when she thought no one was looking. And in those cracks, he glimpsed someone aching to be known but terrified of the cost.

They were never a couple. Not officially. But they weren’t strangers either. They lived in the delicate in-between, a space Seena created and controlled. She would reach out when lonely, then disappear when Abhinav got too close. And he forgave it. Again and again.

Until one day, she told him she was getting married.

Her wedding wasn’t an event—it was a spectacle. A perfect ceremony for the perfect life she was constructing. Abhinav wasn’t sure why he went. Maybe for closure. Maybe for a goodbye to something that had never properly begun.

When he saw her walk in, draped in gold and tradition, something inside him settled—not in bitterness, but in clarity. She saw him too. Their eyes met. She lifted her hand in a small wave.

He didn’t wave back.

That small, quiet rebellion—just enough for her to understand—was his goodbye. His final answer to years of confusion dressed up as connection.

Later, he told a few mutual friends—not to tarnish Seena, but to preserve himself. To reclaim the parts of his story she had edited without permission.

He didn’t wish her pain. But he wished her stillness—enough stillness to one day sit alone, without the noise of attention or applause, and finally meet the girl behind the mirror. The one she kept avoiding.

Because Seena hadn’t just broken hearts. She had broken patterns—and rebuilt them with the same cracks.

Abhinav knew people like her didn’t change because of heartbreak. They changed from collapse—when the reflection they loved began to crack.

And so he walked away—not triumphant, not angry. Just free.

He hadn’t met Seena the way great loves are supposed to begin. It was quiet. Casual. Through a mutual friend during the heavy, slow days of the pandemic. There was no lightning bolt, no sudden spark. Just the long, slow pull of daily conversations—six hours at a stretch—building something that felt less like a romance and more like a secret language.

At first, he didn’t see her that way. Love was still a ghost in his life—his first love had ended not with words, but with death. A girl he had adored in silence, taken from the world before he ever had the chance to speak. Since then, he had locked romance away, deep in a place even he didn’t visit often.

But Seena found her way through.

One day, without planning, she confessed her love. He resisted. She was from a different faith, and he knew—knew deep down—how hard their families would fight this. But she persisted. She said she would leave her family for him.

He relented.

For two years, they loved—completely, fiercely, in ways that left no part of them untouched. He supported her dreams, helped her navigate her career, cared for her friends, respected her roots. By every measure, it was real.

But behind the beauty, there was silence.

She kept the relationship secret. Said she’d been hurt before, judged before. Her father disapproved. His mother stayed politely distant. And Seena began to change.

She said love wasn’t enough. She flirted with others. She called him brother. Told him he deserved better. Yet he stayed. Because love, real love, isn’t just passion—it’s protection.

Then she left—to chase distant dreams stitched from ambition and escape. He helped her craft the story of her future, guiding her through doors he had quietly unlocked for her. Even as his own heart splintered beneath the silence, he lit the path beneath her feet.

And then, quietly, he blocked her.

Not in hate.

But to stop drowning in her silence.

Months later, she returned to the land that once cradled her roots. He unblocked her. She was cold now. She asked why he had cut her off. He answered, simply:

"I was scared I’d love you again."

Two days later, a message arrived.

She was marrying someone else. A man from a different faith. She called it destiny. Said her father had finally approved. Claimed she had never thought she would marry, until now.

He nodded. Calm. Silent.

But the groom’s name—it rang a bell. He had seen it once, buried in her old updates, half-forgotten.

He asked a mutual friend.

The truth spilled out—quiet but sharp.

Their journey had begun long before she ever spoke of leaving. Before the silence. Before the promises.

Abhinav felt it then—she had already crossed the line. While he had held on to a quiet hope, she had been rewriting their ending. Letting him love her fully while planting herself in a different future.

Abhinav didn’t fight. He didn’t argue. He sent her a single screenshot—a memory, a receipt of the past. Not to stop the wedding. Just to reclaim the truth before history could rewrite him.

And then he went.

To the wedding.

No words.

No accusations.

He shook the groom’s hand.

Ignored hers.

A fake smile on.

And that was her funeral—for him.

No rage. No collapse. Just silence sharpened into clarity.

From that day on, he never spoke of her again. Not to friends. Not to family. Not even in whispers to himself.

Her name became dust—unwelcome even in passing thought.

What they had wasn’t buried with bitterness. It was burned clean.

Because true freedom doesn’t come from forgetting. It comes from choosing never to carry the weight again.