Chapter 1 when voices became my world.
It was 26th April. I had just returned home from college after my end semester exams, exhausted but free. Life felt calm, ordinary—until a strange twist changed everything.
Two of my friends, mischievous as always, told a girl to flirt with me. I didn’t know it at the time. For me, it felt like something real. For two days, I spoke with her, unaware that it had all begun as a joke. She talked to me warmly, naturally, and I believed every word.
And then, just as suddenly, she blocked me.
I was left confused, staring at my screen, wondering what I had done wrong. My friends eventually confessed—it was all their idea. They had asked her to pretend. The girl didn’t even know the truth herself in the beginning. My heart sank, but before I could make sense of it, something unexpected happened.
A day later, she sent me another request. I accepted it. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but some bonds are not born from reason; they are born from feeling. Slowly, we began talking again. And this time, it wasn’t a prank. It became real.
Day by day, our conversations grew longer. She played a game regularly, and I joined just to be near her. What began as casual chats soon turned into hours of voice calls in that virtual world. Two to three hours daily—sometimes more.
I didn’t even realize when it happened, but her voice became my favorite sound. It was like music I couldn’t stop listening to. Mornings began not with the sun, but with the thought of hearing her again. I skipped meals, ignored my coding assignments, even drifted away from my studies—all just to be in that game with her, listening, laughing, living in the sound of her.
She never admitted we were more than friends. “We’re best friends,” she would insist. But the way she spoke to me—the care, the warmth, the playful jealousy when I spoke about other female friends—felt like more. It felt like love disguised as friendship.
I sent her gifts. Small things at first, then more. It made me happy to see her smile, even if it was only through words on a screen or the soft tone in her voice. But slowly, I began to notice her drifting. Whenever I sent too much, whenever I tried too hard, she pulled away. She would ignore my messages, vanish for hours, then return with questions dipped in jealousy, only to melt again into conversations full of affection.
I was addicted. Not to her face—I had never even seen her properly outside that game. Not to her presence, for we had never met. But to her voice. The way she said my name. The way silence disappeared when she spoke. It was my drug, my comfort, my undoing.
And then August came.
After the 1st of the month, everything began to change. She grew distant. A new boy entered her game world, always beside her, always sharing the hours that once belonged to us. I felt her slipping away, and desperation made me weak.
On 4th August, she asked me a question.
“Adi… don’t you think you talk to me like a boyfriend would?”
I froze. My heart raced. Maybe this was the moment. Maybe she finally understood. I tried to laugh it off, to avoid the storm I felt building. But inside, I knew the truth. I loved her. I was in too deep.
So I told her.
“Yes… I like you. More than you think. I really do.”
The silence on the other side cut me in half. Then came her words, sharp and cold:
“We were just friends. That’s all. Nothing more. I’m deleting you. Don’t contact me again.”
I stared at the screen, my fingers trembling. My chest felt heavy, as though someone had stolen the air from the room. I wanted to scream, to ask her why she spoke to me the way she did if friendship was all she ever meant. But all I could do was whisper to myself, trying to hold back tears.
Still, in a last attempt to see her happy, I sent her a gift that same night. A silent gesture of love, even when she had already walked away.
But it wasn’t enough. She blocked me from everywhere—messages, calls, every corner of the digital world we had once shared.
The next day, I logged into the game, my heart pulling me toward the place where her presence still lingered. I checked her profile, like I always did, a helpless routine I couldn’t stop. But this time, I found a message waiting for me:
“Stop visiting my ID. Forget me.”
The words shattered me. She wasn’t just leaving—she was erasing me.
And yet, I couldn’t.
Because by then, her voice wasn’t just a sound anymore. It was a memory carved into my soul. A memory that still echoed long after she was gone.
That was the day I realized—sometimes, voices can become your world. And when that world falls silent, the silence is unbearable.
