Nastarin

🌸 Nastarin

Spring.

A noisy city.

I hurried into the shower while getting ready for work. But as I stepped out, a familiar scent stopped me in place.

…That smell.

Nastarin.

My eyes fell on the new shower gel in my hand. A transparent bottle. A simple label. Tiny nastarin flowers printed on it.

And suddenly, everything seemed to stop.

That scent… it belonged to a spring from ten years ago.

🌿 Ten Years Ago. The Village.

“Unni, can you walk a little faster? The library might close.”

“I’m tired… ah…”

She suddenly sat down in the middle of the road.

My older sister was nothing like me. She didn’t love books the way I did. She was weaker than me—physically, mentally, emotionally. Small and fragile.

But I loved books.

The library was my entire world.

Mother always sent my sister with me wherever I went. I worked in the fields during the day, and on the road back there was an old library where I spent hours reading.

My sister always came inside with me.

At night, I would read the books aloud to her.

And she listened.

Quietly.

Always with a faint smile.

My sister caught colds often.

One day, she became seriously ill, so I went to the library alone.

On my way back, a figure suddenly appeared in front of me, making me flinch.

“My God… Solih, you scared me…”

I pressed my hand against my chest.

It was Solih.

The mute young man from our village.

His parents had died long ago, and he lived alone in an old house at the edge of the village.

He said nothing.

He only smiled in that strange, quiet way of his and held out a single nastarin flower toward me.

Then he walked away without a word.

I brought the flower home with me.

The first person I went to see was my sister.

“What is that smell?”

I looked at the flower tucked inside my book and handed it to her.

“Nastarin.”

“Nastarin…”

She smiled so beautifully then… and somehow, her smile looked just like Solih’s.

“Solih gave it to me.”

“Solih…?”

She carefully took the flower from my hand.

Back then, I was only fifteen years old.

I couldn’t understand the emotions hidden inside the eyes of my sister, who was four years older than me.

Days passed.

At the end of spring, my sister was married off.

To Solih.

Even now, I still don’t fully understand how it happened.

One day, she was simply gone—taken to Solih’s house as his bride.

Months passed after that.

Sometimes I visited her.

But she had changed.

She had become so quiet.

So distant.

As if something inside her was slowly fading away.

It was one of the hottest days of summer when I saw Solih again on my way back from the library.

This time, I wasn’t frightened.

But something about him felt wrong.

“My God… Solih…”

He looked at me with what almost seemed like anger.

But beneath it, there was pain.

Then he silently walked past me.

A few months later, my sister became bedridden.

The doctors couldn’t explain her illness.

“She seems deeply troubled by something,” they said.

Day by day, she grew weaker.

She used to love listening whenever I read books to her.

Now she no longer listened at all.

One day, while I sat beside her quietly reading, she gently took my hand.

Her eyes were filled with tears.

Exhausted.

Sad.

She looked at me for a long time before whispering softly:

“He likes you…”

Then she let go of my hand.

And I understood nothing.

Not long after that, my sister died.

A small but necessary light in my life went out.

I cried endlessly.

And little by little, I finally understood.

My sister had been breaking apart silently for a very long time.

Like a flower plucked too early in spring.

After my sister’s death, Solih changed too.

He stopped leaving the house.

Months later, he also became gravely ill.

And he did not live long after her.

They had their own world.

Their own secrets.

And they disappeared together with them.

🌧 Present Day.

Outside, the city continued to roar with life.

The world kept moving forward.

But I sank onto the cold bathroom floor.

With trembling hands and tear-blurred eyes, I hurled the shower gel bottle against the wall.

The sound of shattering plastic mixed with my sobs.

The scent of nastarin spread through the bathroom.

The whole room.

The walls.

The air.

The memories.

My crying only grew louder.

But the scent never faded.

As if it still lived beside me.

🌸 Nastarin is a flower of spring.

But some scents never leave you for the rest of your life.