Ten years.
That's how long the silence had lasted.
Ten years since Rivan had stood in the center of their home, bags in hand, heart full of apologies and gifts — only to find echoing emptiness and a note-less goodbye. Ten years since he had walked through those rooms in a daze, fingers brushing against walls that once heard laughter, now bare and breathless.
He had searched for them.
In the beginning, he turned the city upside down. He paid private investigators, hacked through public databases, pulled strings at hospitals, schools, and property offices. But Keal and Liora had been careful. Their names vanished from every system. No trails. No digital footprints.
Just like that… gone.
Rivan's world shrunk into the vast villa he had bought for all of them — built for love, now a mausoleum of memory. He ran the company by himself now. Every board meeting, every investor event, every quarterly review — all flawlessly executed by a man whose mind was always elsewhere.
He had become richer, more powerful than ever before.
The name Rivan Elisar meant something. It stood on magazine covers, on Forbes lists, in whispers of admiration and envy.
But none of that filled the silence of his nights.
He never touched the main bedroom meant for him, Keal, and Liora. Instead, he decorated it exactly the way they loved it — the blanket Liora once said reminded her of spring, the bookshelf Keal loved arranging by color, the scent diffusers Rivan had picked for them on a rainy Tuesday they never forgot.
He kept it pristine. Just as they would have wanted it.
The twins' rooms, too, had never been cleared.
One room for a boy, walls painted with cartoon rockets and glowing constellations, the way he once begged Rivan to do.
The other, a room for a little girl, full of soft pastel butterflies, glowing fairy lights, and a dollhouse they once built together piece by piece.
He added life-sized plush pillows shaped like their small forms — ones he had custom made to match their childhood heights. Standies of Keal and Liora stood silently in the hallway, dressed in their favorite clothes. A corner in the main room held every birthday card, every drawing, every single memory they left behind.
He spoke to them.
Sometimes, while brushing his teeth or tying his tie, he would glance at the photo on his dresser — Keal holding the twins, Liora laughing beside them — and whisper, "Do you think they still remember me?"
He never got an answer.
But he kept asking.
---
Elsewhere, life bloomed humbly.
Keal worked tirelessly to provide. After bouncing between small jobs, he secured a stable position in a shipping company back in the city they had once called home. The offer was good — benefits, school options for the kids, and just enough pay to stop worrying at night.
And so, with three children and hearts still wrapped in quiet ache, they returned.
Not to the same neighborhood.
No.
That place still echoed with too much.
Instead, they found a modest house tucked on a quiet street, with a faded picket fence and a small garden tangled in weeds.
Three bedrooms.
One for the boys— Sahir, now fourteen, quick to protect; and for little Rivan Jr., nearly ten now, endlessly curious and always asking questions about stories no one quite knew how to answer.
One for the girl, Eliya, also fourteen, gentle but fierce when it mattered.
And one for Keal and Liora, who still sometimes woke up thinking they had heard Rivan's voice in a dream.
The kids had grown up on stories.
They knew the name "Rivan." It lived in the house like a ghost — present in their mother's lingering silences, in the way Keal stared at old photographs, in the softest lullabies Liora hummed when she thought no one was listening.
They weren't forbidden to speak of him.
But they knew better than to ask why he left.
They believed he had vanished.
Only Keal and Liora knew the truth — or, at least, what they had come to believe: that Rivan didn't want them anymore.
---
On the other side of the same city, Rivan stood in his villa, buttoning his sleeves, the scent of expensive cologne clinging to the silence around him.
He was still running the company — alone now — and more successful than ever.
Just yesterday, he had finalized a scholarship partnership with a new school program. He did it quietly, no press, no media. Just a hope — faint, foolish — that maybe, one day, someone might remember his name for the right reason.
He flipped open the student list in the new quarterly newsletter.
His heart stopped.
> Rivan Elisar Jr. — accepted with full honors.
He read the name three times.
"Rivan Jr.?"
He whispered it aloud like a prayer. Or a curse. Or a miracle.
He stood, breath caught, fingers trembling.
It couldn't be coincidence.
But if it wasn't…
Then what had he missed?
---
And back in the city, behind the high walls of a grand villa that echoed only with memories, Rivan stood quietly inside a room bathed in soft, golden light. It was their room — his, Liora's, and Keal's. He hadn't changed it. Not even once. Liora's favorite embroidered curtains still framed the windows. Keal's old paint-splattered apron hung behind the door, untouched. Their photos still rested beside the bed, and the scent of lavender — the one Liora loved — lingered faintly in the air.
Down the hallway, two other rooms remained frozen in time. One filled with plush toys, painted clouds, and a wall mural of rockets and lions — his son's room, decorated with all the dreams the boy once whispered to him. The other had pink canopies, glow-in-the-dark stars, and oversized bookshelves lined with picture books and crayons — everything his daughter loved. In each room, life-sized plush dolls bore the faces of the twins. He had them custom-made. He talked to them when the silence became too cruel.
He didn't know about the third room he should've built. The one for the boy who would carry his name.
But every night, he stood at the window and whispered their names into the wind. Not as a goodbye… but as a vow.
"I'm still here," he said softly. "And I'll find you. All of you. Even if it takes the rest of my life."
The stars outside blinked back — quiet witnesses to a man still waiting.