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THE GIRL I’D DIE FOR
BEFORE I KNEW YOUCHAPTER 1 1Mun, she was just a girl I knew. That is perhaps the strangest part of all of this. I knew her name before I knew her. I knew the face before I knew the person. She was a friend of a close friend of mine, someone who existed somewhere within the same small world as me, close enough to recognise but never close enough to matter. At least, that was what I thought. We met during our diploma years in Raub, somewhere between familiar faces, shared friends, passing conversations and the ordinary days that never seemed important enough to remember. Sometimes we would look at each other and smile. Sometimes it was only a quick, "yow, what's up?"
And then we would continue with our lives. There was nothing extraordinary about us and no grand first meeting between us. No instant connection. No moment when the world seemed to pause and quietly tell me, this is the girl you will one day love. Just me and her. Two girls moving through the same place at the same time, occasionally crossing paths without ever wondering whether those paths would eventually become the same one. And yet, there was one little moment I still cannot fully explain. She had won a chocolate at PTAR after answering a question from the speakers. I remember seeing her there, pleased with something so small, and for some reason, I took a photograph of her. I was not close to her. I had no particular reason to keep a picture of her. I did not know that I would one day spend hours looking at photographs of her, remembering the exact circumstances in which they were taken. I simply lifted my phone and captured her. Maybe I thought she looked pretty. Maybe I wanted a memory. Maybe some part of me was paying attention before the rest of me had any idea what it was paying attention to. I did not know then.2
The photograph itself was insignificant. It was only a girl standing somewhere with a chocolate she had just won. But sometimes, when I think about it now, I wonder whether there are things our hearts recognise long before our minds are willing to admit them. Because if someone had told that version of me that the girl in that photograph would one day become the person I would want beside me for the rest of my life, I probably would have laughed. Then came the last day of our fifth-semester final examination. Everyone had gathered at the hall because it was the last day, and everyone wanted photographs. There were people everywhere, friends calling one another over, groups forming and reforming, everyone trying to capture the end of a chapter before we all went our separate ways. And somewhere among all those people, I found Mun. We had barely ever spoken beyond little greetings. We had never sat down and told each other our stories. We were not the kind of friends who knew everything about one another. If someone had asked me then who Mun was, I probably would have said she was just my friend's friend.3
Yet somehow, that day, we took a picture together. Just the two of us. I did not know that one day I would look at it and realise that sometimes the beginning of a love story does not look like a beginning at all. Sometimes it looks like two people standing beside each other in a crowded hall, completely unaware that they are about to become something neither of them could have imagined. And perhaps that is how our story began. Not with love. Not with a confession. Not even with friendship. Just with a girl I happened to know. My Mun. The girl I'd die for. 4
KELANTAN, SOMEHOW?CHAPTER 2 5 When diploma ended, I thought our story might end with it. There was no reason for me to assume otherwise. People leave university with photographs, memories, friendships and a vague promise to keep in touch, and then life becomes busy. People move. Classes change. New places replace old ones. But somehow, both Mun and I were given our degree placement in Kota Bharu, Kelantan??? Neither of us wanted it. I remember how ridiculous it was that two girls who had barely been more than acquaintances during diploma suddenly found themselves united by the same complaint. We texted each other about it, talked about calling UiTM to ask about changing campus, complained about
being sent to Kelantan, and tried to figure out whether there was any way out of it. We did not know then that the place we were both trying so hard to escape would become the place where we became us. Eventually, we accepted it. Then I asked for the contact of the person who owned the house Mun was renting because I wanted to live with her. It seemed practical at the time. Familiarity was comforting, and if I had to start over somewhere new, I wanted at least one person I knew beside me. Then we found out we were going to be in the same class. Looking back, it almost feels as though life had been quietly arranging things while we were busy complaining about them. The girl I had once only greeted in passing was suddenly someone I would see every day. Someone I would come home to. Someone I sat with. Someone I talked to. Someone I became attached to far quicker than I realised. 6
The beginning of degree was soft. We became close quickly, almost excessively so. We were clingy with each other, always together, always finding some excuse to stay near one another. There was an ease between us that had never existed during diploma because we had never been given enough time together to discover it. And the more time we spent together, the more I realised that Mun was not the girl I thought I knew. She was funny in ways I had not expected. She was talented in ways I had not yet discovered. She was affectionate, expressive and strangely comforting to be around. There were things about her that made me want to keep looking, keep listening, keep learning. Still, at the beginning, neither of us thought much of it. We were both involved with other people. We had our own relationships, our own feelings, our own lives outside each other. Whatever was happening between us was simply friendship. Sometimes a word is only a temporary shelter for a feeling that has not yet found its proper name. Until it wasn't. 7
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN USCHAPTER 3 8 I don't remember the exact moment friendship became something else. Maybe it happened gradually. Maybe it was in the way we started looking at each other for slightly too long, or the way being alone together began to feel different from being alone with anyone else. Maybe it was hidden in all the small touches that did not seem important enough to question. And then Mun kissed me. The first time, I didn't kiss her back. I let it happen. At first, I convinced myself that it meant nothing beyond the love she already had for me as a friend. I thought perhaps she was simply affectionate, perhaps she loved me deeply in a way that did not require anything more.
It’s easier to believe that. But eventually, I stopped pretending I did not feel something. After mid-semester, I kissed her back and once I did, there was no longer any comfortable way to tell myself that nothing had changed. Something had. The closeness between us became more intense, and the private moments we shared became something neither of us could comfortably fit inside the word friendship anymore. There was excitement in it, but there was also tenderness. Mun was my first in those ways, and I remember how gentle she was with me. There was no sense that she was rushing me into something I did not understand. Even when everything felt new, she made it feel safe. I loved kissing her. There was something almost frightening about how easily my body responded to her, how a single kiss could make everything else around me feel distant. We became playful and reckless in the privacy we created for ourselves, leaving little traces of our affection on each other and then laughing about how we were supposed to hide them afterwards. 9
There were hickeys on Mun's neck, more than a few, and I remember covering them for her with makeup afterwards. It should have been funny, But I remember that she was unusually quiet that day. I noticed. I have always noticed when something changes in her, even when I do not understand why. I wanted her to know that whatever we were doing did not make me uncomfortable, that I did not regret being close to her. And without thinking too much about how she might hear it, I said, "I'd still be comfortable doing all this with you even as a friend or more than that." I thought I was comforting her. Instead, I opened a door. Because Mun had been carrying a secret. She loved me. Not casually. Not temporarily. Not as a friend. She had been telling her friends how much she loved me. She had been struggling with the fact that she should not love me as much as she did, especially because she believed she could never actually have me. 10
And somehow, knowing that did not make her feelings disappear. It only made them hurt more. She had even told me that she did not like the person she had liked before. Later, I realised why. Her heart had already moved somewhere else. To me. She liked me so much that the feeling itself had become something she thought she should be ashamed of having. She knew it was complicated. She knew there were reasons she should have stopped. But love is not always obedient. Eventually, she confronted me about what I had said. At first, she only gave me hints. Little pieces of the truth that she seemed almost afraid to place completely between us. I kept pushing, asking her what she meant, wanting her to say the thing she was clearly trying not to say. And finally, she did. She told me she liked me. I remember how strange it felt to hear something that, perhaps, some part of me had already known. The truth did not suddenly make everything easier. If anything, it made everything more real. 11
CHAPTER 4THE FEELINGS 12 One night, I got drunk. I was not completely conscious of myself, and all the things I had been trying to keep organised inside my head seemed to spill out at once. And in that drunken blur, I told Mun everything. Everything I was feeling, Everything I couldn't make sense of, The conflict between the person I was with and what I felt for her. I don't remember every detail clearly. But I remember her crying. I remember the pain. And I remember the sentence she gave me through all of it. I remember the weight of knowing that the person I loved was crying because of something I had said and not being fully sober enough to fix it properly.
Then she said, "You have to choose one, Hani." I think that sentence stayed with both of us. Because she was right. We made mistakes. We hurt each other. There were betrayals. There were tears. There were moments when loving each other felt less like a beautiful thing and more like something unbearable. We both carried pain from that time. Some of it healed. Some of it didn't. And even now, there are pieces of that history that still follow us. Not because we don't love each other. But because love doesn't automatically erase what happened before it. I think that was when the reality of us became impossible to ignore. Because loving someone is one thing. Knowing what your love costs them is another. And ours cost us both. One night in Mun's room, the night before one of our tests, when everything suddenly felt both terrifying and unbelievably happy. The confession was sudden. I remember giggling afterwards, almost unable to contain how much I loved hearing the truth from her. There was something so beautiful about finally knowing the feeling 13
I knew almost everyone would have an opinion about it. And I was afraid that many of those opinions would not be kind. There is a particular loneliness in loving someone when you already know that not everyone will see your love the way you do. To us, it was tenderness, attachment, comfort, desire, loyalty, all the complicated things that make a person become important to another person. But to someone looking from the outside, it could be reduced to something they thought was wrong. Sometimes I wished it could simply be simple. There were people we could not tell. There were people who might have walked away from us. There were people who might have looked at something that felt so deep and real to us and called it unforgivable. Still, I was happy. I was with Mun. She knew. I knew. 14
THE THINGS THAT HURT USCHAPTER 5 15 If this were a fairytale, I would leave this part out. I would tell you that we met, fell in love, kissed, confessed, and lived happily ever after. But ours has never been a fairytale. It has been messier than that. There were things that happened between us that hurt both of us deeply. There were betrayals, misunderstandings, arguments and moments when I thought the weight of everything we had done to each other might become too heavy for either of us to carry. Not because I loved her less, but because I loved her enough for everything to hurt. The smallest things could become reminders of bigger wounds. A sentence could bring back an old memory. A silence could make one of us wonder whether the other was pulling away.
Sometimes the problem in front of us was not even really the problem; it was simply the place where all the things we had never fully healed decided to surface. We hurt each other. That is the truth. But another truth is that neither of us ever became indifferent. Even when we were angry, we cared. Even when we were crying, we wanted to know if the other person was okay. Even when we thought we needed distance, there was still some quiet part of us hoping the other would come back. Even when we reached the edge of losing each other, we found our way back. Even now, there are things from that period that still bother us. Things that have nothing to do with what we are today, yet somehow still find their way into the present. I think that is what happens when people have loved each other through difficult circumstances. The past does not disappear simply because the relationship changes. We are learning that loving someone does not mean never hurting them. It means taking responsibility when you do. It means listening when they tell you that something hurts. It means learning the shape of their wounds so you do not keep pressing on the same places. 16
We cried, We got angry, We said things we wished we hadn't. Then we apologised. We talked. We tried again. And perhaps that is one of the things I love most about us. Not that we never hurt each other. But that we never stopped trying to become better for each other. We learned that loving someone is not only about wanting them. It is about learning how to hold them without hurting them. It is about knowing when to speak. Knowing when to listen. Knowing when pride has to disappear because the person standing in front of you matters more. And every time we make our way back to each other, I understand a little more about what love actually means 17
Then came 14 July 2026, A date that, to everyone else, is probably just another day. Mun asked me to be her girlfriend. She wrote it on an Ace card: "My lily of the valley, you are my lucky card." And then, through our Google Docs, she asked: "Will you be my girlfriend?" And I said yes. A very enthusiastic, YEEEEESSSSSSS. Maybe that sounds silly. Maybe it is. But I don't care. Because I remember how happy I was. MY LUCKY CARDCHAPTER 6 18
I said yes with the kind of happiness that makes you forget how to behave normally. After all the confusion, all the uncertainty, all the pain that had made us wonder whether there could ever really be an us, suddenly there was. And there was Mun, My girlfriend. And of course, becoming girlfriends did not erase the past. We still fought. We still had moments where we were angry, moments where we cried, moments where we misunderstood one another. We were new to this version of us, and there was no manual for how to love each other properly after everything we had already been through. However, Mun handled it with a kind of patience I will always be grateful for. We kept learning, We kept talking. We kept finding our way back. Mun handled it with a kind of patience I will always be grateful for. And then there were her letters. Mun is the sweetest talker I know. She leaves me random notes and little letters telling me how much she loves me, how much she adores me, how much she likes me, how much she wants to stay, how long she hopes we can be together. She has given me so many that, honestly, sometimes I feel guilty because she keeps giving me 19
pieces of her heart in words, and I have never known how to give mine back in quite the same way. Maybe that is why I am writing this. Maybe this book is my answer to every letter she has ever given me. Maybe every chapter is a way of saying that I was listening. I heard you. I remember. And I love you more. Mimo. 20
Sometimes I look at her and wonder how I became lucky enough to have her. She is beautiful in ways that are difficult to explain without sounding like I am exaggerating. I love her eyes, the way they change when she is excited or happy. I love her hands, her hair, her body, the little details that make her unmistakably herself. But what makes me admire her goes far beyond how she looks. She is good at sports. She can play music. She can draw. She is incredibly smart. Ridiculously talented. Sometimes she seems to move through the world carrying abilities I never learned how to have. THE GIRLCHAPTER 7 21
And then there is me. I do not do sports. I never really learned music. I am not good at drawing. I do not always feel intelligent beside her. Sometimes, when I look at everything she can do, I feel like a nobody standing next to somebody extraordinary. I have had moments where I wondered what she could possibly see in me. But Mun has never made me feel like I needed to compete with her. She has never asked me to become someone else. She simply loves me. I do not have to be good at everything she is good at. I just have to be the person she chose. And she chose me. That thought still makes my chest ache in the gentlest way. Because I am so lucky. I love the girl everyone else gets to see. But I think I love even more the girl I have been trusted to know privately—the girl who writes letters, who worries, who loves fiercely, who wants to make things right after a fight, who can be soft even after life has given her reasons not to be. That is the Mun I love. Not a perfect girl. My girl. 22
Sometimes I imagine a house. Nothing extravagant. Not necessarily a beautiful one. Not necessarily a big one. Just a place that belongs to us, where her things and my things eventually become impossible to tell apart. Just somewhere that belongs to us. A place where we can wake up beside each other, A kitchen where we argue about what to eat, A living room where we fall asleep halfway through a movie, Two toothbrushes sitting beside each other, Her things mixed with mine, Her music playing somewhere in the background, Her laughing from another room, Maybe groceries on the counter, Maybe laundry waiting to be folded, Maybe an argument over something THE FUTURE I KEEP IMAGININGCHAPTER 8 23
ridiculously stupid, Maybe an apology ten minutes later, Maybe ordinary days, Maybe mornings when neither of us wants to get out of bed, Maybe nights when one of us is talking too much and the other is pretending to listen. Because when I say I want forever with her, I don't mean only the beautiful moments. I want the boring ones too, I want the mornings, The tired nights., The bad days, The celebrations, The exams, The holidays, The days when neither of us has anything interesting to say. I want to do everything with her, I want to watch her become every version of herself she is meant to become, I want to be there when she succeeds, I want to hold her when she fails, I want to know every version of Mun that comes after this one. And selfishly, I want her to know every version of me too. That is the future I want, Not a life without problems. A life where, whatever the problem is, I still get to come home to her because I do not want to imagine even one second of my life without her. I want to do everything together. I want to build memories until there are too many to count. 24
I want more pictures. I want letters. I want old cards kept in drawers. I want years of ordinary days that become extraordinary only because we lived them together. And maybe, one day, we will find our old photobooth somewhere I will simply look at her and say, "I think some part of me knew you were worth remembering." I used to think forever was an impossible word. But now I think maybe forever isn't one enormous promise. Maybe forever is just choosing the same person again and again. It is looking at the person beside you and knowing that, somehow, out of every person you could have met, life brought you here. My love, My girlfriend, My home, My lucky card My Mun. If I am given the choice, I will keep choosing her until there are no more tomorrows left to choose from. The girl I'd die for. And, if she lets me, The girl I'd live for. 25
Hani is a girl who never quite knew how to say everything she felt out loud, so she decided to write it down instead. The Girl I’d Die For is her first attempt to preserve a love story she never wants to forget—not because every part of it was easy, but because every part of it was theirs. This book was written for Mun, and for every little moment that made loving her feel like coming home. THE GIRL I’D DIE FOR honeymoon