sol.ace_r

Every night at 11:52 p.m., the boy writes a letter.
There was no reason.
It was just that, when that hour arrived, words began to seep out from somewhere deep inside his heart.
During the day, he was quiet. He neither laughed nor cried.
But once the sun had fully set and the room grew breathlessly still, his heart, too, began to move little by little.
It was around that time that he could feel, faintly, that he was alive.

He began writing letters around the age of thirteen.
At first, they were letters meant to be sent.
The very first one, written after a long time, with great care, was addressed to his father who had left.
But he never managed to send it.
He didn’t know the address, and honestly, he didn’t want to know.
He simply folded the paper and put it into a drawer.
That was the end of it. Nothing was said, and nothing happened.

The next night, he wrote another letter.
This one wasn’t addressed to anyone.
He simply, quietly, transferred the words left in his heart onto the page.

“I’ve been spacing out a lot lately. I feel empty inside.
I can’t even remember what happened at school.
It feels like no one knows what I’m feeling.”

That letter, too, went into the drawer.
The third night, the fourth night. The letters kept piling up, one by one.
Without realizing it, the boy began to wait for that time.
The only moment in the day when he could take his heart out and set it down.

The boy’s daily life was quiet.
At school, he spoke little and spent more time with his head lowered.
Some teachers spoke to him and suggested counseling.
The boy shook his head and said, “I’m fine.”
There was no emotion carried in those words.
Not because he was truly fine, but because it was the only thing he could say.

At home, he was alone as well.
His mother worked late, and there was always a Post-it note on the dining table.

“Son, are you doing okay? I’m sorry I’m so busy.
I love you. Make sure you eat, and write in your diary today.”

Once, the boy stared at that note for a long time before tearing it up.
Then he took out the very first letter he had kept in the drawer.
“What kind of face would Mom make if she read this?”
He didn’t know.
In the end, he placed the letter back deep inside the drawer.
Just quietly, pushed it back in.

The letters kept piling up.
Dozens, hundreds.
When the desk drawer could no longer hold them, he began storing them in a box.
Writing letters didn’t make his heart lighter.
But it didn’t make it heavier either.
At least, in those moments, he felt that he was alive.

The smallest emotions he felt throughout the day.
A friend avoiding his gaze in the hallway.
Bumping into someone in the lunch line and receiving no apology.
Sitting alone during P.E. class.
Things that might mean nothing to someone else were huge, heavy feelings to the boy.

If no one acknowledged them, if no one remembered them,
he began to doubt whether those moments had even really happened.
So he wrote them down.
As if clinging to memory, as if pulling emotions out into the open.
He wanted proof.

“I existed.”
“I felt.”
“I was in pain.”

As time passed, the tone of the letters slowly began to change.
Sentences that once started with “I” one day began to start with “you.”
As if he were truly speaking to someone.

“Where are you right now?”
“Do you feel something similar to what I feel?”
“You won’t disappear without saying anything, right?”

At the top of the letter, he wrote only, “To.”
The boy liked that blank space.
It could be anyone, or no one at all.
Perhaps, it could even be himself.

One day, carrying a box of letters, he headed toward an old red mailbox next to a convenience store.
A rusted metal mailbox that was hardly used anymore.
The boy quietly dropped the letters inside.
He knew it was strange, but he felt oddly light.
It felt as though his emotions were no longer his alone.

Even after that day, he continued to write letters.
Some days, it was just a single line: “Today was really hard to endure.”
Other days, long stories stretching across two pages.
Those letters were now addressed to “someone no one knows.”

Then one day, just before opening the mailbox, the boy absentmindedly lifted his head.
A letter was resting on top of it.
Unsealed, gently swaying in the breeze.
Inside was a short sentence.

“I received the letters you wrote.
So I’m writing back.
I write letters every day, too.”

The boy felt as if his breath had caught in his throat.
It could have been a joke, or someone’s scribble.
But those words carried a certain weight—the kind only someone who has truly written letters would know.
Slowly biting his lip, the boy folded the letter and held it tightly in his hand.

And that night, he picked up his pen with a slightly different heart than before.

“Thinking that someone saw what I wrote—it’s a first for me.
Strangely, I cried.
Thank you. Truly.”

The boy still writes letters.
Every night at 11:52 p.m.
That habit remains unchanged.

But these days, sometimes, he gathers the courage to put the letters into the mailbox.
Even if no one reads them, with one small, fragile belief—that somewhere, someone else might be writing just like him.

With that one belief, the boy endures another day.

And that belief, very quietly, is connecting him back to the world again.