Dhruve hadn't slept properly in days.Every time he closed his eyes, Priya's voice played somewhere in the dark — soft, broken, echoing "I think I'm falling for you."
He wanted to forget it. Fuck, he tried to. But the silence of his apartment made everything louder — the ticking clock, the rain against the window, the sound of his own thoughts scratching at his skull.
So he did what he always did — distracted himself.He opened his phone. Messages waited for him — little digital ghosts of the women he'd charmed with his fake calm.
"Miss talking to you.""You disappeared again.""You okay?"
He replied out of habit, short sentences, polite lies.But this time, something felt different. He could sense a strange shift — they weren't just curious anymore; they needed him. His silence made them cling harder. His distance made them chase.
He'd learned that trick early — if you pull away just enough, people start trying to fill the space themselves.But now, that trick was starting to feel less like control and more like a cage.
One of them, Anya — the woman with sharp eyes and that chaotic laugh — called him out of nowhere.He almost ignored it, but something in his chest told him to pick up.
"Dhruve?" her voice came soft, slurred. "You sound tired.""I am," he said flatly."You okay?" she asked again. "You've been quiet lately. Did I do something wrong?"
That same fucking sentence again.Did I do something wrong?The words hit him like a trigger. It was what his wife used to say right before lying through her teeth.
He exhaled slowly. "No, you didn't. It's just been a long week.""You can talk to me, you know," she said. "I'm not like the others."He smiled bitterly. Everyone says that, he thought.
But then she said something that caught him off guard."You know, you pretend like nothing affects you, but I can tell something broke you. I see it when you go quiet."
His jaw tightened. "Don't analyze me, Anya.""Why not?" she laughed softly. "You do it to everyone else."
He froze.For a moment, he couldn't even breathe.
She didn't mean it as an accusation — maybe she was just teasing. But to him, it sounded like a mirror cracking in the dark. Someone had seen him.
"Goodnight," he said abruptly, hanging up before she could answer.
He stared at the phone for a long time after that, pulse pounding in his neck.Fuck. He didn't like this feeling — this awareness that his web wasn't invisible anymore.
Later that night, he went for a walk — just him, the cold air, and the endless hum of the city.He thought about Priya again. He hadn't texted her since that night, but she'd messaged him twice:
"Are you okay?""Please, just tell me if you're fine."
He didn't reply.But now her words echoed with guilt instead of power.
By the time he got back, it was past midnight.He poured himself a drink and sat by the window, phone in hand, staring at the messages he never answered.He typed one out, deleted it. Typed again. Deleted again.
Finally, he wrote:
"You didn't do anything wrong. I just… don't know how to be around people anymore."
He hit send.For a few seconds, he just stared at the screen, heartbeat loud in his ears.Then her reply came faster than he expected.
"I knew it. You're not cold. You're just hurt."
He laughed softly. "Maybe both," he muttered.
He didn't know why he texted her again. Maybe because he was tired of pretending. Maybe because he wanted to feel something human again.But once the wall cracked, everything started spilling out.
He and Priya talked until morning — about nothing and everything. Childhood memories, music, dreams, even pain.For a few hours, it felt almost normal. Like maybe he wasn't broken.
But in the back of his mind, another part of him whispered: This is dangerous.Because every time he started to feel something real, it ended the same way — with betrayal, with loss.
The next day, at work, he felt strange. Unsteady. His calm expression was still there, but inside, the rhythm was off.He caught himself zoning out during meetings, fingers tapping nervously against the desk.Anya texted again, more aggressively this time.
"Why aren't you answering?""You don't get to vanish like that."
He sighed, deleting her messages one by one. The web he built was tightening around him.Each connection, each lie, each fragment of emotion — they were all pulling at him from different sides.
By the time he got home that night, exhaustion hit him like a wall.He looked at his reflection again — the mirror he once used to study others now stared back at him like a judge.
"You fucked up, didn't you?" he whispered.The man in the glass didn't answer, but his eyes looked older, hollowed out.
Maybe Priya was right — maybe it was killing him.He'd built walls to protect himself from love, but now those same walls were trapping him inside his own emptiness.
He laughed quietly. "Damn… maybe that's karma."
He looked at his phone one last time before bed.One message from Priya glowed on the screen:
"You don't have to be perfect. You just have to be honest."
He didn't reply.He just stared at the message, whispering to himself,"Honesty got me killed once."
Then he put the phone face-down and closed his eyes, letting the silence swallow him whole.