Chapter 5: A Quiet Kind of Strength
The house returned to its glittering routine in just a few days, as if Jiha's collapse had been nothing more than a brief inconvenience.
No one mentioned the allergic reaction again. No one apologized.
She was expected to smile, be polite, and stay out of the way.
Jiha did all of that — but something in her had changed.
She moved through the halls like a ghost, careful and quiet. At meals, she picked at her food, always checking twice before taking a bite. Her appetite had vanished anyway. Her stepmother still smiled too much, still touched her arm too lightly in front of others, and her father — he had become someone she could no longer recognize. Distant. Absent, even when he sat just across from her.
When he looked at Jiha now, it was with a tired sigh. Not concern. Just… inconvenience.
So Jiha stopped speaking unless spoken to. Stopped hoping he'd notice how much she was shrinking inside.
Instead, she coped the only way she could: by carving out a private world where no one could reach her.
Her mother's old journal, found in the back of a drawer, became her companion. Jiha read every page, tracing her mother's handwriting with her fingers like it was a lifeline. On the last few blank pages, Jiha began writing her own thoughts. Not letters. Not poetry. Just small truths.
Today I smiled when I wanted to cry.
No one noticed the difference.
She hid the journal beneath her mattress. It felt like the only safe thing in the house.
At night, she stared at the ceiling, wondering if her mother would have believed her. Would have defended her. Would have knocked the plate off the table and held her hand.
Sometimes Jiha cried. Quietly, so no one would hear.
But some days — just some — she woke up and felt a spark of resistance.
Not anger. Not revenge.
Just… the need to hold on to herself.
She brushed her hair how she liked it, not how her stepmother told her to. She wore the locket her mother gave her every day, even though the woman once called it "childish." She sat in the garden alone with a book, ignoring the watchful eyes from the windows.
Tiny rebellions.
No one noticed.
But Jiha did.
And that was enough — for now.
Because healing doesn't always come with dramatic declarations or stormy confrontations.
Sometimes, it begins in silence.
Sometimes, survival looks like breathing quietly and refusing to break.