> "It wasn't freedom I wanted. It was authorship."
They invited me back.
Not with flowers.
Not with apologies.
But with legal silence.
A contract labeled Restoration Opportunity.
Fine print too thick to read without a microscope.
My name in bold.
But it wasn't my name—it was the one they sold.
---
They offered me a stage again.
A comeback.
They said people missed me.
They said:
> "The story doesn't need to be real to be beautiful."
They said:
> "We can rewrite it together this time."
---
But I had already rewritten it.
Alone.
With blood in my throat and ink under my nails.
---
I stood in their boardroom.
White walls.
Mirrored windows.
Too many eyes that only blinked when I said something they could sell.
And in the center—
a reel.
A projected timeline of my "career."
Edited.
Narrated.
Every scene a version of me they built.
The awards.
The "childhood dream."
The carefully staged "romantic mystery" arc.
No mention of Joon.
No mention of the erased hospital.
No mention of how I hummed my first song to protect someone else's life.
---
> "You can take control of this," one executive smiled.
"We're offering you the pen."
But I didn't need their pen.
I brought my own.
---
> "This timeline is a lie," I said.
They shifted.
Squinted.
> "Then what's the truth?" another asked.
I opened the notebook.
Dropped it on the table.
> "It starts here.
Where he held my hand while I slept in fear.
Where I learned to sing because the silence was killing us."
"You didn't discover me.
You un-wrote me.
And now I've written myself back."
---
They said it was too risky.
Too raw.
Too unstable.
> "Audiences don't want fractured stories."
> "They want something to believe in."
---
> "Then let them believe in what almost broke me."
I stood.
> "And if you won't let them—
I'll sing it louder than your version ever did."
---
That night, I announced a live performance.
Unfiltered.
Unapproved.
Unmarketed.
Just a stage, a mic, a chair.
And my truth.
---
They tried to stop it.
Platforms removed the event listing.
Threats poured in.
Old producers sent me fake "supportive messages" with subtle legal reminders.
But I sang anyway.
---
The stream crashed in the first 2 minutes.
But not before half a million people watched the intro.
Me, on a dim stage.
No makeup.
A candle on the floor.
And one sentence:
> "They edited my origin.
But I've edited it back."
---
I sang the song for Joon.
I sang the songs they never let me finish.
The songs that bled instead of rhymed.
The songs with his name in every breath.
And I ended with one lyric:
> "You don't own the silence I survived."
---
When I left the stage, I didn't cry.
I felt taller.
Not invincible.
Not healed.
Just… finally whole enough to begin again.
---
In the days after, I disappeared from the charts.
But not from people's hearts.
Letters flooded in.
From girls who had lost their voices to systems.
From boys who remembered imaginary friends too vividly.
From people who'd been rewritten by others' stories.
They didn't ask for a sequel.
They thanked me for an origin they could believe in.
---
One letter stood out.
No return address.
Inside:
A single line, handwritten in blue ink.
> "You never stopped humming, did you?"
I smiled.
---
I never saw Joon again.
Not in mirrors.
Not in dreams.
But I didn't need to.
He had become part of the song I don't need permission to sing.
He was in the breath between verses.
In the pauses I used to fill with lies.
In the silence I now chose.
---
My final act?
I started teaching.
Not performance.
But rewriting.
Workshops for artists erased by their own industry.
Rooms where people came to speak their names—
even the ones they weren't supposed to remember.
---
And sometimes…
When the lights go low
and the world gets quiet enough
to almost forget again—
I hear it.
A hum.
Consistent.
Familiar.
Alive.
---
He's still there.
Not haunting me.
Harmonizing.