A Year That I Found Beautiful and Sad
Chapter 1: Hello Friend
The sky above Sydney never truly looked welcoming to someone whose world was silent. Gray clouds hung low, as if the weight of the Australian atmosphere that day deliberately pressed down on the already fragile shoulders of Emma Amy. The woman, who had lived through twenty nine summers with sunburned earth colored skin and ears that had never caught the frequency of human voices, was now breathing in the cold scent of asphalt.
Amy fell to the ground.
Her fragile body struck the rough surface of the sidewalk, leaving a sharp pain that quickly spread through her knees and palms. Around her, laughter erupted not as a form of happiness, but as a weapon. There were four people there, faces that should have been called friends, yet their eyes showed something far darker than mere playful teasing.
"Look at her, she cannot even hear the sound of her own body falling," said one of them, a blonde woman whose lips curved into a cruel smile.
Amy did not hear those words audibly, but she read every insulting movement of their lips. She saw the violent shaking of their shoulders caused by laughter. Since she lost the ability to perceive sound at a very young age, Amy learned that humans are at their loudest when they are hurting others. She felt like an anomaly in a city full of noise. She felt lonely, a kind of loneliness that could not be healed simply by the physical presence of other people around her.
Tears began to gather in the corners of her brown eyes. Amy felt that in this world there was not a single soul who truly became her friend. The rough shove that had caused her to fall earlier was not merely physical contact, but a declaration that she was unwanted. With the remaining strength she had, Amy stood up. She did not fight back, nor did she curse. She only lowered her head, letting her black hair cover her swollen face, then turned around and walked away from the crowd that was still busy laughing at her limitations.
She walked without direction, her feet carrying her toward a wide city park. Amy sat on a wooden bench whose paint had begun to peel. In front of her, children ran around and couples appeared to be talking affectionately. Amy could only watch. To her, the world was a silent film played over and over again without subtitles.
After some time trying to calm her racing heart, Amy decided to walk again. Her mind was still chaotic, filled with questions about why fate gave her different skin color and tightly sealed ears. Because she was too absorbed in her bitter thoughts, Amy did not notice her steps at a narrow sidewalk corner.
Braak.
A light collision occurred. Amy jolted as she realized that she had just bumped into someone. Worse, her hand accidentally brushed against a plastic cup of coffee carried by the man in front of her. The dark liquid spilled, staining the man's old boots and the lower part of his jeans.
The man was Travis Marno. At the age of thirty, his face looked tired, a reflection of an amateur musician struggling against the harshness of the music industry in Sydney. Marno stared at his wet shoes, then looked at Amy with a gaze filled with flashing anger.
"Do you not have eyes? Look at what you have done to my only pair of shoes for tonight's performance!" Marno shouted with his loud baritone voice, loud enough to make people around them turn their heads.
Amy only stood still. She saw the man's mouth move quickly, his face turn red, and the veins in his neck tighten. However, Amy showed no reaction at all. She did not apologize, nor did she look afraid. She only stared into Marno's eyes with a confusing emptiness.
Feeling ignored made Marno even more irritated. He waved his hand in front of Amy's face. "Hey! I am talking to you! Do you think staying silent will solve this problem?" Marno snapped again, this time with a higher tone.
Still, Amy did not answer. To her, Marno's shouting was nothing more than meaningless movement of air. Amy felt she could no longer handle another conflict on this already terrible day. So, without a single word, Amy walked on, passing Marno as if the man were nothing more than a lifeless streetlight.
Marno stood frozen in place. Confusion began to replace his anger. "Did she really ignore me?" Marno muttered to himself while frowning.
A sudden sense of curiosity made Marno decide to do something impulsive. He began following Amy from behind. He wanted to know whether this woman was truly arrogant or if there was something else. Marno walked several meters behind Amy, observing how she walked with slumped shoulders, as if she were carrying the weight of the entire world.
They walked quite far, passing blocks of old buildings until Amy finally arrived in front of a grand building that was an art museum. Amy entered and sat on a long bench in a quiet corridor, staring at an abstract painting with extraordinary intensity.
Marno stood not far away, observing Amy's movements. He saw how Amy did not react at all when a museum staff member dropped a stack of brochures right beside her. The dim museum lights illuminated Amy's facial profile, and at that moment Marno realized something. This woman was not pretending.
Marno reached for a small notebook and pen from his sling bag. He wrote something hurriedly, then gathered the courage to approach. He held the paper right in front of Amy's view.
Are you deaf?
Amy flinched slightly when she saw the paper. She looked at Marno, then at the writing. There was a defensive flash in her eyes. She grabbed the pen from Marno's hand and wrote an answer beneath the question with sharp handwriting.
I am not deaf, do not follow me.
Amy handed the paper back to Marno with a rough movement. Marno read the answer and frowned. Why did she deny it when all signs showed otherwise? There was a mystery behind this woman's firmness that made Marno want to stay longer, but the watch on his wrist reminded him of an urgent reality.
"Damn it, I have a competition to attend," Marno whispered softly.
He looked at Amy once more, but the woman had already turned her face back toward the painting. Without another word, Marno turned around and half ran out of the museum. He had to get to the amateur music competition venue, which might be his last chance to be recognized.
On his way to the competition, Marno took a moment to stop at a small shop to buy a bottle of water to moisten his dry throat. There, he saw a very familiar figure leaning against a wall while smoking.
The man was Crahln Ryan, a fellow musician who was already thirty seven years old. Ryan had extraordinary talent, but his attitude often made Marno feel exhausted.
"You are late, Marno. I almost thought you ran away because you were afraid of losing to me again," Ryan said in a belittling tone as he saw Marno approach.
Marno only snorted while taking a sip of his water. "I had something to deal with earlier. How is the preparation?" Marno asked briefly.
Ryan put out his cigarette with the tip of his shoe. "Honestly, I really hate joining competitions like this again. It is a waste of time. I already have a child, I already have years of experience. We are on the same team, and with my ability, our team is guaranteed to win. This competition is nothing but a boring formality to me," Ryan complained with full arrogance.
Marno felt irritation begin to creep into his chest. He remembered Amy, the silent struggle the woman might be facing, then he looked at Ryan who so easily belittled the opportunity in front of them.
"You may feel like you are already ahead, Ryan, but for me a competition is still a competition. Nothing in this world is certain until the judges announce it. In my opinion, everyone standing on that stage has the same strong desire to win, and belittling them will only make you look small," Marno said in a cold tone.
Ryan fell silent, processing Marno's words that felt like a gentle slap to the face. He did not expect Marno to speak that firmly.
Marno did not wait for Ryan's reply. He immediately walked into the performance building, leaving Ryan still standing frozen in front of the shop, staring at the remaining water in his own plastic bottle. Inside, Marno knew that the song he would perform today might sound different, because his mind was still lingering on the woman at the museum who claimed she was not deaf, yet lived in the deepest silence.
Development of Detailing and Narrative Complexity
Amy's world was a labyrinth without sound. Every morning, she woke up to vibrations from a special alarm clock beneath her pillow that shook her entire bed, a physical reminder that time kept moving even though she could not hear its ticking. Her brown skin, inherited from a lineage often looked down upon on the outskirts of Sydney, became another layer of identity that made her feel like a stranger in her own land.
The incident in the park earlier was not just ordinary bullying for Amy. It was the accumulation of pain over many years. She remembered how at the age of nine, her world suddenly became silent after a severe infection took away her sense of hearing. In that same year, her mother left her, and since the age of nine she had never seen her mother again, nor heard the gentle voice that used to sing her lullabies. The loss was double, the loss of the world's sound and the loss of the sound of affection.
When Travis Marno scolded her on the roadside, Amy actually felt the vibration of the man's voice in her chest. Strong sound waves could indeed be felt by people like her, not as tones, but as uncomfortable air pressure. She saw the overflowing anger on Marno's face, an expression very familiar to her. People always got angry when communication did not go according to their wishes, and Amy had been the target of that anger for almost two decades.
On the other side, Marno himself was a man whose life was filled with unsatisfying noise. As an amateur musician, he spent his nights in noisy bars, trying to make people hear his songs amid clinking glasses and drunken chatter. His encounter with Amy, who was so silent, gave a very sharp contrast to his soul.
When Marno followed Amy to the museum, he was actually searching for answers to the emptiness within his own heart. Why did the woman look so calm in the middle of the storm of anger he threw at her? Why did she choose to keep walking without turning back?
At the museum, when Amy wrote that she was "not deaf," it was an existential statement. For Amy, the word "deaf" was a cold medical label, a disability. She felt she was more than just a loss of ear function. She was an observer, she was a feeler, and she refused to be defined solely by what she could not do. Her rejection was the highest form of self defense.
Marno's meeting with Ryan at the coffee shop showed another side of the narrative conflict. Ryan represented stagnant self satisfaction, an arrogance born from fear of failure hidden behind a mask of experience. Meanwhile, Marno, though rough and impulsive, still had a hunger for meaning.
"Do you understand what I am saying, Marno? We are already on a different level," Ryan said in a tone as if he were lecturing a student.
Marno only saw Ryan as a representation of everything wrong with ambition. "Different levels mean nothing if your heart is already dead to the process, Ryan," Marno replied before finally walking away.
Will Marno meet Amy again? Or was that encounter only a small ripple on the surface of calm water? Sydney continued to turn, with all its noise and silence, binding these two different souls in a year they would later remember as the most beautiful and the saddest time of their lives.
How would the relationship between Marno and Amy continue? Would Amy continue to shut herself behind the solid walls of her silence? And would Marno be able to find the right tone to describe Amy's soundless world? All those questions hung in the cooling Sydney air as the sun slowly began to set on the western horizon.