Chapter 1
The blue light of the smartphone was the only thing keeping the darkness of the room at bay. For the last three months, this screen had been a repetitive nightmare. We were stuck in a loop: a brutal argument, a cold silence, a desperate "fix," and then a few days of peace before the frost crept back in. We had been "fixing" us for so long that there was more tape and glue than actual relationship left.
But tonight, the loop finally snapped.
I was tired of the contradictions. I was tired of watching her be the "sweetest person" to everyone else while I received only the sharpest edges of her personality. I picked up the phone and typed the question that had been rotting in my mind for those three months:
"Why are you cold only to me, though you say you love me the most?"
I watched the "Read" receipt. I knew her patterns by heart now. I knew exactly what was coming.
"If you want to leave, leave," she replied. It was her standard defense, her way of pushing me away so she didn't have to be vulnerable.
"I can't," I sent back. It was a confession of my own weakness.
"Whyy," she asked. That casual, mocking extra letter.
"I love you," I said. It felt like a surrender.
"Stop pretending," she shot back.
And just like that, the three months of "fixing" and "trying" turned to ash. The anger didn't rise slowly; it hit me like a physical wave. I realized that as long as I stayed, she would keep rewriting my reality until I didn't even know who I was.
"You know why I always come back?" I typed, my thumbs slamming against the glass. "Do you know why I stay while you treat me like shit? You treat your friends sweetly. You treat strangers with respect. But me? You save the frost for me. I stay because I love you."
I waited, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"Stop lying," she said.
That was the limit. That was the final brick in the wall. She had called my love—the only thing I had sacrificed my dignity for—a lie.
I didn't reply. I didn't send another word to be dissected or mocked. I tapped her name, scrolled to the bottom, and hit Block.
Click. The conversation vanished. The loop was broken. I felt a sudden, terrifying rush of oxygen. I was finally, legally, and digitally alone.
But as I sat there in the dark, the anger began to leak out, replaced by a crushing, hollow ache. My mind, traitorous as it was, didn't replay the fights. It didn't replay the "Stop lying" text. Instead, it replayed the beginning—the version of her that was actually sweet, the version that made the last three months of war feel worth it.
I broke. I didn't just tear up; I sat on the edge of the bed and cried for the girl I had just erased. I looked at my hands, the same hands that had just pushed her out of my life, and whispered to the empty room:
"No matter how well you carry it, it doesn't mean it’s not heavy."
I was carrying the end of us, and it was crushing my bones. I told myself I would never unblock her. I told myself the wall was permanent
But when the sun came up, the resolve of the night had vanished. I woke up reaching for my phone, my thumb instinctively moving toward the place her name used to be. The bed felt too large. The silence of the house was a physical weight.
Maybe I’ll just leave her blocked for three or four days, I thought. Just a lesson. Just enough time for her to realize what she lost.
A small, desperate part of me—the part I was too ashamed to admit to—hoped she would find another way to reach me first. A call from a different number, an email, a knock on the door. If she reached out first, I could stop being the "warden" and go back to being the boy who loved he the mirror offer
