Chapter 42 / 51 · 1 min

The Last Page

Our love was confined to Crimson Cup. Touchless. In Bengali. At a face-to-face distance.

The story began from the last page. Everything unfolded like a film whose ending had been spoiled. Irina and I didn’t believe in religion, but we believed in society. Society wouldn’t accept us, so we already knew the ending.

Three pages before the last, Irina would cry. I could tell she was crying just from her messages on Messenger. When you chat with someone regularly for two and a half years, the messages reach your ears as sounds. And whenever a milliliter of water was wasted, I had no trouble understanding that it contained six milligrams of sodium chloride. Our love was confined to Messenger. Touchless. In some unknown data center in Singapore, and yet soul to soul.

On the first line of the last page, I said, “So this is our last meeting, Irina?” On the second line, Irina was silent for twenty-five minutes. I was watching her. So many words gathered in those big, big eyes, and she said none of them. When she finally spoke, we ended the story of our love, and now the story of love began. Not in this country. In Paris. When you stop believing in religion, you can’t change your religion. When you stop believing in society, you can change your society.

We were as alone as the clouds. But it was us. Me and Irina. Our love may have been confined, but the love itself was not.