Zo stopped walking.
I took two more steps before I realized he wasn't beside me anymore.
I turned.
Fuck.
He stood in the middle of the path and right under a canopy of bougainvillea as if the island itself had paused around him.
Silent, he stared at me. The grin was gone. His mouth was slightly open. His hands hung at his sides.
Fuchsia petals drifted through the air, twisting and spiraling around him.
Slow.
Weightless.
Some landed on his head and shoulders.
Others fell all the way down and settled against the stone.
My eyes watered.
Beyond him, the island breathed—salt air rolling in from the sea, the distant hush of waves folding against rock, the faint creak of bamboo somewhere deeper in the garden. A wind chime stirred once, twice, its thin note dissolved into the open sky.
And still, he did not move.
Another petal brushed past his cheek and fell at his feet.
I didn't know what to do with my hands. There was nothing to fix, no version of this moment I could make easier. I just stood there on that path watching my best friend shatter, and the helplessness of it pressed against my soul.
Death was the worst kind of truth about life, not because it arrived, but because it refused to be argued with.
It did not bend for love.
It did not pause for joy.
It never considered timing or fairness.
It was just. . .too real.
Too cruel.
One moment, a person existed in color, sound, scent, touch, and memory.
Laughing.
Speaking.
Moving.
In the next, they were absent.
Silent.
Severed.
And the sun still rose. The ocean still breathed. People still laughed in the distance. And that was the violence of it.
