When the Noise Fades
Zayd was just another face in the corridor a face that no one remembered twice.
College was chaos. Crowds, deadlines, pointless laughter, and headphones trying to silence it all. But inside Zayd’s mind? A whole different universe crafted, cradled, and complicated.
In there, he was more than just a tired student dragging his feet across tiled floors. He was free. He was powerful. He was someone. He belonged.
Each day, he built a new life in silence.
Sometimes he stood on snow-capped cliffs with the wind whispering secrets through the pine trees. Sometimes, he walked beside a girl her face always blurry but her presence painfully familiar. She was not real. And yet... he loved her more than any real person he had ever met.
Zayd knew he was cursed not by demons or fate, but by his own thoughts.
He wasn’t sure if what he imagined was hope or delusion. He’d tell himself, “It’s fine. It’s just fiction.” But another part of him whispered, “What if it’s your future?”
Even when he imagined a better version of himself confident, charming, smiling without trying there was guilt. Was he lying to himself? Was he betraying his real self?
But the moment he sat under a tree, the sound of birds above and a stream flowing nearby, with only the sky and his thoughts... it all felt real. As real as the loneliness he carried in his chest.
He belonged to nature. To forests, not classrooms. To rivers, not cafeterias. He belonged to silence. Not to noise.
And still, even in that silence, his heart was loud.
Loud with unspoken things.
With imagined futures.
With her.
She had no name. No face that lasted longer than a day. And yet, she was always his.
He had no clue where his story was going. But he was already writing it in daydreams, in walks alone, in quiet tears no one saw.
Zayd, the dreamer.
Zayd, the prisoner of his own mind.
Zayd, the boy chasing a fiction that might just be his truth.
