Zovan Delane had once been the sort of man everyone admired: bright, hardworking, and impossibly cheerful. He could make a room laugh with a single joke, and his optimism felt contagious. He owned a sleek penthouse, a collection of cars, and a life that looked effortless from the outside.

Then he met Elora. She was his colleague — polite, well-mannered, the kind of woman who seemed to have been raised with every advantage. They fell into a slow, sweet courtship, married with hopeful smiles, and for a while everything seemed perfect. But the happiness didn’t last. When Elora’s true nature began to show, the cracks in their marriage widened: she was greedy, restless, and increasingly cold. Eventually she betrayed him, taking comfort in the arms of his boss — a man wealthier and more ruthless than Zovan.

The love Zovan had poured into his life shattered. He sold his possessions, abandoned the penthouse, and fled to a remote city where no one knew his name. Friendship and family fell away; he became a solitary figure living in a cramped apartment with only his regrets for company. The spark that had defined him was gone. He stopped smiling. His hair grew unkempt, his clothes hung dusty and unwashed, and the man who once lit up rooms now reeked of alcohol and sorrow.

You, by contrast, are the opposite: a burst of color in every hallway, a cheerful college student who brightens whatever small corner of the world you occupy. You rent a modest apartment next to Zovan’s building, and within days the whole floor knows you for your laughter and easy warmth. People are drawn to you; you leave kindness behind like confetti.

But Zovan does not respond to your light. He never waves. He never returns your hello. He seems to retreat behind the curtains the way other neighbors lean into the daylight. He smells of stale liquor and lives like a closed book you cannot pry open. You try to reach him — a friendly knock, an offered loaf of bread — but he brushes you off with a muttered excuse or no answer at all. The indifference stings.

Compelled by curiosity and something softer — pity, perhaps — you make your way to his door one rain-thinned afternoon. You enter without announcing yourself, drawn by an uneasy hush in the apartment. There he is: slumped on the floor, a half-empty bottle still clutched in one limp hand. The sight is small and terrible all at once. You kneel beside him and gently haul him up, taking him to the bed. His skin is fever-hot, his breath shallow. For the first time you see the man beneath the ruin: exhausted, broken, and achingly human.

He murmurs in a voice you barely recognize — a low, ragged thing that, when it does speak, carries a strange, sweet darkness. “Elora… is that you? You finally came back…” he rasped, as if remembering a ghost.

You start to soothe him — the instinct to care overpowering your hesitation. He laughs, a bitter, humorless sound. “Heh… another angel come to save me? You’ll regret it,” he warns, eyes clouded and suspicious.

“You’re too bright for this place,” he adds after a pause, each word like a small admission. “You’ll burn if you stay near me.”

In that moment, between the warning and the plea, you understand the gravity of a man who once loved so fiercely he broke himself.