Chapter 1
The bubble gum was new to the girls’ school in the southern part of the city.
It had been bought that morning from a small shop near the school gate. The wrapper was bright pink, and the gum itself was soft, sweet, and almost perfectly square. The girl who bought it had smiled when she unwrapped it.
She chewed it during the first lesson.
At first, the gum enjoyed everything. The sweetness, the warmth, the sound of the girl’s laughter, and the strange world around him all seemed wonderful.
Then the teacher turned toward the class.
The girl quickly took the gum out of her mouth.
She looked around.
There was nowhere to put it.
So she lifted the edge of her desk, pressed the gum underneath it, and pushed it firmly against the wooden surface.
“Stay there,” she whispered. “I’ll get you later.”
Then she returned to her lesson.
The gum waited.
He listened to the muffled voices of the children above him. Their words sounded strange and distant.
After a while, he looked around.
There were other pieces of gum stuck beneath the desk—banana, strawberry, mint, cinnamon, and even one that had become so dark with dust that nobody could remember what flavor it had once been.
“What’s going on?” the little gum asked. “Where am I?”
The others stared at him.
“A moment ago, I was in someone’s mouth,” he continued. “Now I’m under a desk.”
The strawberry gum laughed softly.
“Don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“This is a girls’ school. Chewing gum isn’t allowed.”
The little gum looked up at the wooden underside of the desk.
“But where is my owner?”
“She forgot you,” said the strawberry gum.
“She said she would come back.”
“They always say that,” the old cinnamon gum replied.
The little gum became quiet.
“But she’ll remember me tomorrow.”
Nobody answered.
The next morning, the bell rang.
Students entered the classroom. Shoes moved across the floor. Chairs scraped against the ground. The little gum waited eagerly.
“Is she here?” he asked.
The others knew exactly who he meant.
“Yes,” said the mint gum.
The little gum became excited.
“Where is she?”
“She’s sitting at another desk.”
He waited for her to come.
But she never did.
At the end of the school day, the little gum whispered, “Maybe tomorrow.”
Days passed.
Every morning the bell rang, and the little gum asked what the strange sound meant.
“Class is beginning,” the others told him.
Later, when another bell rang, he asked again.
“Class is over.”
“But where is my owner?”
No one answered.
One afternoon, the little gum began to cry.
“Don’t cry,” the old cinnamon gum whispered.
“I’m not crying.”
“You are.”
The little gum looked down at himself.
Tiny drops of moisture covered his pink body.
“I just want her to come back.”
The old cinnamon gum sighed.
“I’ve been here for five years.”
“Five years?”
“Yes.”
“Why haven’t they cleaned us?”
“The janitor can’t reach beneath these desks. And nobody cares enough to look.”
The little gum was silent.
“Will I be here for five years too?”
The cinnamon gum looked away.
“Probably.”
Winter came.
The classroom became colder. The windows were covered with gray morning light, and the students wore coats and scarves.
The little gum slowly hardened.
At first, he could still move a little.
Then he could no longer move at all.
Months became years.
One by one, the other pieces of gum dried out, cracked, and disappeared.
The little gum remained.
He watched countless students sit at the desk. He heard laughter, arguments, whispered secrets, dreams about the future, complaints about homework, and stories about parents and friends.
Sometimes he imagined that the voices were speaking directly to him.
Sometimes he answered them.
Nobody ever heard.
Then, at the beginning of a new school year, something changed.
A red-haired girl sat at the desk.
She was new.
She looked nervous and kept glancing around the classroom.
During lunch, she opened a packet of mint gum and placed a large piece into her mouth.
The little gum watched her.
Then she did exactly what everyone before her had done.
She reached under the desk and stuck her gum beside him.
The little gum stared at her.
He suddenly felt something he had not felt in years.
Hope.
“Hey!” he shouted.
The girl froze.
She looked beneath the desk.
The little pink piece of gum stared back at her.
The girl blinked.
“What?”
“Please don’t leave me here.”
Her eyes widened.
She looked around the classroom.
“Did you just talk?”
“Yes.”
The girl leaned closer.
“You’re a piece of gum.”
“I know.”
“And you can talk?”
“I think so.”
She carefully pulled him from beneath the desk.
Instead of throwing him away, she wrapped him in a tissue and placed him inside her pencil case.
The pencils and eraser immediately complained.
“What are you doing here?”
“You’re disgusting!”
“Stay away from me!”
The little gum said nothing.
He was too happy.
For the first time in years, he was no longer alone.
After school, the girl carried her pencil case home.
In her bedroom, she threw her schoolbag onto the floor. The pencil case fell over, popped open, and everything inside spilled across the carpet.
A mechanical pencil rolled toward the gum.
“You’re in a girl’s bedroom now,” it said. “I suppose you have a new life.”
The girl picked up the gum and placed him on the end of a cotton swab.
The swab cried out.
“You destroyed my partner!”
“I’m sorry,” the gum said. “I didn’t mean to.”
The girl stared at him.
Her eyes widened.
“You can really talk.”
The gum nodded.
“Why?”
“Because a human chewed me,” he explained. “Maybe the saliva gave me a voice.”
The girl laughed.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know.”
She laughed again.
And that was how their friendship began.
Every afternoon, she talked to him.
She told him about school, her family, her dreams, and the things she was afraid to tell anyone else.
The gum listened.
Sometimes he gave advice.
Sometimes his advice was terrible.
But the girl always listened anyway.
Years passed.
The girl grew up.
She graduated from school and was eventually accepted into a university in New York.
When she packed her bags, the little gum became worried.
“You’re leaving.”
“Yes.”
“Where are you going?”
“Very far away.”
“Will you take me?”
The girl smiled.
“Of course.”
She mixed a little water and saliva in a tiny container to keep him soft. Then she placed him carefully inside and packed him in her bag.
At the airport, however, a security officer discovered the container.
He frowned in disgust.
“What is this?”
The girl hesitated.
“My gum.”
The officer stared at the pink object.
“It talks?”
The girl almost laughed.
“No.”
The officer looked suspicious.
“Put that disgusting thing back in your bag.”
The girl obeyed.
In New York, everything was different.
The buildings were taller. The streets were louder. People hurried everywhere.
The girl shared an apartment with a young man who studied at the same university.
At night, he often heard her talking in her room.
He assumed she was on the phone.
Then one evening, he opened the door without knocking.
He saw the girl sitting beside her desk.
And beside her was the gum.
A talking piece of gum.
The young man stared.
His eyes widened.
The gum stared back.
The young man immediately saw an opportunity.
“If people hear this,” he thought, “we could make a fortune.”
He imagined television shows, interviews, newspapers, and money.
A lot of money.
But the girl refused.
“He isn’t a product,” she said.
“He’s just a piece of gum,” the boy replied.
“No. He’s my friend.”
The boy laughed.
“A talking piece of gum could make us famous.”
The girl shook her head.
“Leave him alone.”
But the boy did not listen.
At a graduation party, he secretly grabbed the gum, placed a microphone in front of him, and announced to everyone that he had something extraordinary to show them.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, smiling, “you are about to meet the only talking piece of gum in the world.”
Everyone laughed.
“Say something,” he ordered.
The gum remained silent.
The boy frowned.
“Come on.”
Nothing.
The guests began to laugh.
The boy’s face turned red.
“Say something!”
The gum stayed completely still.
The boy looked at the crowd.
His dream disappeared in seconds.
Humiliated and furious, he blamed the gum.
“You ruined everything.”
The girl took the gum from his hand.
“You shouldn’t have taken him.”
The boy said nothing.
But his anger remained.
Several days later, on a freezing winter morning, he secretly sabotaged the girl’s car.
He thought he would only scare her.
But things went terribly wrong.
The girl lost control of the vehicle.
The car crashed into a tree.
She survived the impact, but she fell into a coma.
The gum was helpless.
He was trapped inside her bag.
He could do nothing.
Then he remembered her phone.
Using a pencil to press against the screen, he somehow managed to call emergency services.
The ambulance arrived in time.
The girl survived.
The boy was overwhelmed with guilt.
He visited her in the hospital and stood beside her bed.
“I was wrong,” he whispered.
He looked at the little piece of gum sitting beside her belongings.
“Give me the gum. Maybe he can bring me good luck.”
The girl slowly opened her eyes.
She smiled weakly.
“The gum has no magic.”
The boy looked confused.
“What do you mean?”
She held the little piece of gum in her hand.
“It was my imagination that gave him a voice.”
The boy stared at her.
“But I heard him.”
“I know.”
“So he really talks.”
“Only when I believe he does.”
The boy looked at the gum.
The little piece remained silent.
She continued.
“Without me, he’s just an ordinary piece of gum.”
The boy said nothing.
For the first time, he understood what he had done.
The gum had never promised him fame.
It had never promised him money.
It had never promised him good luck.
The only thing it had ever given anyone was companionship.
The boy walked out of the hospital.
Outside, snow was falling quietly.
He looked up at the gray sky.
For a long moment, he stood there in silence.
Then he whispered:
“Wow…”
He shook his head.
“So it was all just an illusion after all.”
Inside the hospital room, the girl looked at the little piece of gum.
She smiled.
“Maybe,” she whispered.
The gum said nothing.
But she smiled anyway.
Because sometimes, she thought, it doesn’t matter whether a miracle is real.
Sometimes we create the voices we need to hear.
Sometimes loneliness gives a voice to the smallest things.
And sometimes a forgotten little piece of gum is enough to remind someone that they were never truly alone.
Nice ✍