I don’t know if she even remembers me.
Virginia Rong. A name I’ve carried quietly since 2001. It’s strange how someone can pass through your life so briefly, yet linger in the shadows of your memory for decades. I never obsessed. I didn’t search frantically. I wasn’t trying to chase a ghost.
But sometimes? I wondered.
I only found out she was four years younger than me years later — during a random phone call that lasted maybe fifteen minutes. When I was 21 and she was 17, age didn’t even cross my mind. We were just two people in a moment. Talking. Laughing. Feeling something that maybe didn’t quite have a name back then.
We never dated. We never kissed. There was nothing to officially grieve. No break-up. No fallout. Just… life. And silence.
And maybe that’s why it still lingers. Because it was never closed. Because I never knew if I meant anything to her, the way she etched herself into me without even trying.
She was the girl who sang “The Rose” to me, once in front of a full bubble tea cafe. I was sitting at the middle table, and she went up to the CD player, put the disc in, and sang. Right there. In front of a crowd waiting for their drinks. Her voice, soft and a little shy, floated through the cafe. She sang for me.
And I… ignored her. Not fully. But enough to hurt her. Enough to dismiss what was so clearly a gesture of vulnerability and love. I was so caught up in my own storm that I couldn’t see what she was offering — not just her voice, but her heart.
Virginia really liked me — really liked me. She called me every day, no matter what. Sometimes, she’d even lock her cafe customers inside just to come upstairs and greet me when I came down from my office. For her birthday, I had a custom-made Winnie the Pooh made for her — the original brown version, not the Disney one.
I remember sitting on her bed one evening, holding that bear to my face. It smelled faintly of her — of soft skin and saliva, like she had been kissing it again and again. That was the kind of affection she offered me. Gentle. Unfiltered. Real.
I told her I loved her once — drunk, but sincere. Yet… I could never kiss her. I could never let it be real, because I was insecure – because I didn’t trust that something so kind, so open, could possibly be meant for someone like me. So I stayed frozen. Guarded.
And in doing so — I let something beautiful wilt right in front of me.
One night, I said something cruel. I told her I didn’t even know why she bothered calling me. And just like that… she stopped.
I broke her. Not just her heart — her spirit. I saw it, even back then. And when I realized what I had done, it was too late.
It was a moment of unintentional cruelty. Not evil, but cruel all the same. The kind of careless dismissal that deserves a slap upside the head… maybe three. I wasn’t trying to hurt her. I just didn’t know how to love her the way she needed to be loved. And that makes it worse, not better.
I remember locking myself in the washroom at the office late at night, crying uncontrollably. I was shattered — broken beyond words. The security guards who patrolled the building knew me. They just let me be. They knew I wasn’t okay.
And it wasn’t just her. Everything was collapsing. My company, Loud Productions Inc. was in ruins. My partners had betrayed me. I lost over $100,000. I was exiled from home for a week. I felt like a failure. Like everything I touched, I tainted. And she… she was the one good thing I didn’t believe I deserved.
Over the years, I’ve come across her name – once on LinkedIn, maybe Facebook. Never a photo. Never a trail that led anywhere real. Just a digital whisper reminding me that she still exists somewhere in this world.
I didn’t dig. I didn’t message. I didn’t pry.
Not because I wasn’t curious. Of course I was. But part of me always knew: if she wanted to be found, she would’ve left a door slightly ajar.
Maybe she doesn’t want to remember me.
Whatever the truth is, I respect her silence. And I’m not here to disrupt it. I’m not seeking forgiveness. I’m not hoping to rewrite history.
I’m just here in the shadows, like some fool standing in the rain long after the storm passed, still hoping for a spark from a match I already soaked. Not to rekindle anything – just to know she’s warm, wherever she is.
All I know is: she was someone who meant more to me than I knew how to handle. And I, with all the wisdom of a soggy napkin, let her slip through my trembling hands. She was a muse I didn’t deserve – not because I was a villain, but because I was too wrapped in my own pain to notice the light in front of me.
And while I never really looked for her… I never really forgot her either.
This isn’t about longing. It’s not even about closure. It’s just the softest slap to my past self’s face. A head shake. A whisper: you fool.
Because if I had today’s soul, today’s spine, today’s heart – she might have been loved the way she deserved. Properly. Fully. Without fear.
But hindsight, like most wisdom, only arrives once the train has left.
And sometimes, that’s the part that stays.
