“Then why do I keep looking at the door?”

The thought reached me so clearly that I stopped packing.

Alejandro was miles away.

And yet his voice still appeared inside my head.

For one ridiculous second, the part of me that had loved him for two years wanted to turn that sentence into hope.

Then I remembered the others.

How annoying.

We don’t belong to the same world.

I know she likes me. I just don’t care.

So I closed the cardboard box.

Whatever Alejandro was beginning to feel was no longer my responsibility to investigate.

A week later, I left.

Lucía came to the station with two bags of snacks and swollen eyes.

“You’re really going.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t even give me time to organize a farewell dinner.”

“I didn’t want one.”

She studied my face.

Then asked quietly:

“Is this because of my cousin?”

My hand tightened around the suitcase handle.

“No.”

It was not entirely true.

But I did not want to make Alejandro the center of my departure.

“I stayed too comfortable here.”

“I want to see what I can do somewhere nobody already has an opinion about me.”

Lucía hugged me.

Then whispered:

“He asked about you yesterday.”

My chest betrayed me with one small beat.

I hated it.

“What did he ask?”

“Why you were transferred so suddenly.”

I smiled faintly.

“And what did you say?”

“That if he wanted to know, he should ask you himself.”

He never did.

Good.

The branch was seven hundred kilometers away.

Smaller office.

Older building.

No executive elevators.

No Alejandro Shen.

My salary increased by only eight hundred yuan.

But for the first time in years, I did not spend my mornings wondering whether my hair looked good enough to enter another company’s director’s office.

I worked.

Actually worked.

The branch manager discovered quickly that I remembered shipping codes almost perfectly.

Then that I caught invoice inconsistencies faster than most of the junior supervisors.

Three months later, they put me in charge of administrative coordination for two regional projects.

Six months later, I began studying at night for a professional diploma.

Nobody there knew I had once followed a man around with documents and yogurt like a lovesick teenager.

That anonymity was a kind of mercy.

The strange ability to hear thoughts did not disappear immediately.

Sometimes I heard colleagues thinking:

“She’s better than her résumé.”

Others:

“She asks too many questions.”

Once, during a meeting, I heard the branch director think:

“If Dulce had a degree, I could promote her tomorrow.”

That thought hurt.

But instead of shrinking, I enrolled in a part-time university program.

That was when I understood something.

Hearing people’s thoughts could destroy you if you treated every private judgment like a verdict.

People thought cruel things.

Petty things.

Contradictory things.

A coworker could admire my work at ten in the morning and resent me by lunch.

One person could think I was intelligent and underqualified in the same minute.

Alejandro’s thoughts had hurt so much because I had already feared they were true.

I had allowed his opinion to become the mirror I used for myself.

So I stopped.

Almost.

Because four months after I left, Alejandro appeared at our branch.

He came for a supplier dispute.

I was standing beside the printer when I saw him walking through reception in a dark coat.

My body remembered him before my mind did.

Then his thoughts reached me.

“She cut her hair.”

Pause.

“She looks thinner.”

Then, unexpectedly:

“She didn’t even look at me.”

I lowered my eyes to the documents.

Good.

Let him notice.

The meeting lasted two hours.

I presented the administrative timeline because I had built it.

Alejandro sat opposite me.

Professional.

Expressionless.

When I finished, he asked:

“Who discovered the duplicate shipment authorization?”

“I did.”

“You?”

His surprise irritated me.

“Yes, Director Shen.”

His thoughts came immediately.

“I sounded insulting.”

Then:

“She always noticed details like this.”

Then:

“Why did I never know?”

I almost laughed.

Because you never asked.

Out loud, I said:

“The corrected evidence is on page seventeen.”

He looked at me for another second.

Then nodded.

“Good work.”

Once, those two words would have kept me awake all night.

That day I simply turned to the next page.

After the meeting, he stopped me in the hallway.

“Dulce.”

“Yes?”

“Do you have time for coffee?”

“No.”

His eyebrows lifted.

“I have another meeting.”

“Oh.”

Then his thought:

“She really doesn’t want to stay.”

A strange satisfaction moved through me.

Not revenge.

Proof.

I really had changed.

He asked:

“Dinner?”

“I’m studying tonight.”

“Studying?”

“University entrance program.”

His face changed.

“You went back to school?”

“Yes.”

Then came another thought.

“I thought she was satisfied with being an administrator.”

I looked at him.

He suddenly seemed ashamed, as if he knew exactly how ugly that assumption was even without me hearing it.

“I should let you go,” he said.

“Yes.”

I walked away.

That evening, Lucía called.

“You saw him.”

“News travels fast.”

“He called me.”

“For what?”

“To ask why you transferred.”

I laughed.

“Four months late.”

Lucía became quiet.

Then said:

“I think my cousin is an idiot.”

“That’s your family business.”

“No, listen.”

“I asked him whether he liked you.”

My heart stopped.

“Lucía.”

“He said no.”

I closed my eyes.

Of course.

Then she continued:

“So I asked why he has suddenly memorized your branch schedule.”

I opened them again.

“And?”

“He hung up.”

I laughed despite myself.

It felt good.

But not good enough to return.

Alejandro began appearing more often over the following year.

Sometimes for legitimate work.

Sometimes with excuses transparent enough that even I could recognize them.

But something had changed.

He did not ask me to bring coffee.

Did not keep me waiting outside his office.

Did not speak down to me.

When I made an error, he corrected the error.

Not my education.

Not my salary.

Not my background.

And slowly, his thoughts changed too.

At first:

“She seems different.”

Then:

“No. She was probably always like this.”

Months later:

“I miss the way she used to talk too much.”

That one almost made me angry.

He had once hated exactly that.

Then came another:

“I trained her to become quiet around me.”

That thought made me stop.

Because it was the first one that sounded like responsibility.

Not longing.

Responsibility.

A year and a half after my transfer, I returned to headquarters for an annual review.

Alejandro asked if we could speak privately.

I agreed.

His office looked exactly the same.

The same dark desk.

The same full-length mirror.

The same door I had once stood behind with a folder crushed between my fingers.

He noticed me looking at it.

“I owe you an apology.”

I said nothing.

He continued:

“When you worked here, I knew you liked me.”

“I know.”

His eyes widened.

I smiled faintly.

“Continue.”

He swallowed.

“I thought because I never encouraged you openly, that meant I was behaving correctly.”

“But I was arrogant.”

“Yes.”

“I judged you.”

“Yes.”

“I thought your job, your education and your closeness to Lucía told me everything important about you.”

“Yes.”

His mouth twisted.

“You’re enjoying this.”

“A little.”

He almost laughed.

Then became serious.

“When you left, I first thought I missed the attention.”

I appreciated the honesty.

“Then?”

“I realized I missed you.”

I looked at him.

He continued quickly:

“That doesn’t mean I expect anything.”

Good.

Because I no longer wanted confessions that came packaged like obligations.

“I just wanted to tell you that I was wrong.”

“About what?”

He looked directly at me.

“That we belonged to different worlds.”

My heart tightened.

He added:

“We did.”

“But not because yours was smaller.”

“I simply never bothered to enter it.”

For once, I did not hear his thoughts.

Maybe the strange ability had faded.

Maybe I simply stopped needing it.

I asked:

“And now?”

“Now I’m asking if I can get to know you.”

I stared at him.

“As what?”

“A person.”

“No yogurt?”

He looked embarrassed.

“No yogurt.”

“No documents invented as excuses?”

“That was mostly you.”

I laughed.

“Fair.”

Then I said:

“Coffee.”

His eyes brightened.

“One coffee.”

“Not a date.”

“I understand.”

It took another year before I allowed it to become one.

By then, I had completed my diploma.

Received another promotion.

Moved into a small apartment I paid for entirely myself.

Alejandro never asked me to return to headquarters.

That mattered.

He came to me.

Sometimes by train.

Sometimes after long project meetings.

And when I was busy, he went home.

No pressure.

No wounded pride.

One evening, after dinner, he said:

“You know, I used to think you were always looking for reasons to see me.”

“I was.”

“I know.”

He smiled.

“And now I’m the one checking whether your office light is still on.”

I looked at him.

“That sounds unhealthy.”

He laughed.

“Probably.”

Then he became serious.

“Can I ask something?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you leave so suddenly?”

For a long time, I had imagined telling him the impossible truth.

That I had heard every cruel thought.

That the day he believed I was merely standing outside his office, I had heard what he would never have dared say aloud.

But I did not.

Some truths did not need supernatural explanations.

I said:

“Because I finally understood I was spending too much of my life trying to earn the attention of someone who thought very little of me.”

His face went still.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“And because I needed to find out who I was when I wasn’t trying to impress you.”

He nodded.

“Did you?”

I smiled.

“Yes.”

Three years after I transferred, Alejandro asked me to marry him.

I said no.

He blinked.

Then nodded.

“Okay.”

I laughed.

“That’s all?”

“You said no.”

“I’m not going to argue with your answer.”

That was exactly why, six months later, when he asked again, I said yes.

Not because he had become richer.

He already was.

Not because I had finally become “good enough” for his world.

That question had stopped mattering.

I said yes because he had learned something more important than how to love me.

He had learned how to respect me when I was not giving him what he wanted.

Lucía cried harder at our wedding than my mother did.

During dinner, she whispered:

“You know this is ridiculous, right?”

“What?”

“You ran seven hundred kilometers away to escape my cousin and somehow still married him.”

I smiled.

“I didn’t run away to make him follow me.”

“I know.”

“That’s why it worked.”

Years earlier, I had stood outside Alejandro Shen’s office and heard him think:

We don’t belong to the same world.

He had been right.

At the time, his world was one where titles, education and status told him who deserved his attention.

Mine was one where I measured myself through other people’s approval.

Neither world was good enough for a marriage.

So I left.

I learned.

I worked.

I stopped bringing documents upstairs just to see his face.

And Alejandro, without my admiration constantly waiting at his door, finally had to decide whether he missed being admired—

or missed me.

By the time he knew the answer, I was no longer the woman who would accept him simply because he finally wanted her.

That was the part he had to learn too.

The first thought I ever heard from him was:

“She comes again. How annoying.”

The last one I ever heard, months after leaving, was much quieter:

“Why didn’t I see her before?”

But by then, I no longer needed access to anyone’s thoughts.

Because the most important voice I had learned to hear was my own.

And it was finally saying:

You never needed to become someone from his world.

You only needed to stop abandoning your own.