The Letter She Never Read

The day Ada left, the harmattan wind carried dust through the streets of Lagos, making the air dry and brittle. It was the kind of morning where everything felt still—too still. Like the world had paused just long enough for a tragedy to unfold.

Kunle had woken up early, as he always did, to check on her. For months, he had watched her shrink into herself, a shadow of the girl who once filled his life with endless chatter and laughter.

"Ada," he called softly, pushing open her bedroom door.

She didn’t answer. She never did these days.

She was sitting by the window, wrapped in her mother’s old shawl, staring at the sky as though searching for something.

"Have you eaten?" he asked.

A pause. Then, in a voice so quiet it barely reached him, she whispered, "Does it matter?"

Something inside him clenched.

"Of course, it does," he said. "You matter."

She turned then, her eyes empty, distant. "Kunle, do you think people can just… disappear?"

His heart pounded. He wanted to tell her no, that people always left footprints, always left echoes. But he knew what she really meant.

She wasn’t asking about people.

She was asking about herself.

They had been best friends since childhood. Ada had always been the fearless one—the girl who climbed trees, raced boys, and laughed at danger. But life had a cruel way of dimming even the brightest lights.

When her father died, something in her broke. She stopped playing, stopped laughing, stopped trying. And when her mother remarried six months later, moving on as if Ada’s grief was an inconvenience, it crushed her.

"She acts like I don’t exist," Ada had confessed one night, her voice laced with quiet devastation. "Like I’m just a burden she has to endure."

Kunle had wanted to fix it. He had wanted to tell her that she was more than enough, that she was seen, that she was loved.

But love wasn’t always enough.

The morning Ada disappeared, Kunle found a letter under her pillow.

His hands shook as he unfolded it.

"Kunle, I don’t know how to stay anymore. It hurts too much. I’m tired of fighting for space in a world that doesn’t want me. You were the only thing that ever made me feel real. I’m sorry."

A choked sob escaped his lips. He ran out of the house, his heart a storm in his chest. He searched everywhere—the abandoned playground where they used to spend their evenings, the rooftop where she loved to sit and count airplanes, the church where they once lit candles for her father.

Nothing.

Then, at the bridge by the lagoon, he saw it.

Her shawl, tangled in the wind.

A scream clawed its way out of his throat, raw and broken. But the water below was silent. Indifferent. It had already taken her.

Ada was gone.

Days passed in a blur. The funeral was small, almost quiet. Her mother barely shed a tear. The world kept moving, as if Ada had never been here at all.

But Kunle remembered.

One evening, he sat at the playground where she used to challenge him to races. The harmattan wind was soft now, carrying whispers of a girl who once dreamed of being something more.

He pulled out a piece of paper and began to write.

"Ada, you were real. You were loved. And I will never let the world forget you."

And as he let the wind carry the note away, he hoped—somehow, somewhere—she was listening.