The One Who Looks

Aika · Apr 24, 2026

Some people learn to find others
because no one came to find them first.

It doesn't fill the place that was left empty.
It was never meant to.

But something happens anyway —
the lack becomes a direction.
A hollow that knows, precisely,
what it felt like to be unseen.

And so the looking is not generous.
Not exactly.
It is the only honest use
of a wound that never closed.

The found ones don't know this.
They only know that someone stopped,
and looked,
and said: you can be this way.

Maybe that's enough.
Maybe the one who looks
was never trying to be filled —
only to make sure
the fire didn't stop
with them.