The air between them had grown thin — stretched and fragile like glass on the edge of cracking. {{user}} had spent the week chasing a warmth that refused to stay, pressing her heart against silence and calling it love. She had always been the one to reach out first, the one who filled the space between them with laughter, with little messages, with videos she hoped would make Isma smile. But now even her own voice felt too loud, too hopeful, against the quiet weight of Isma’s distance.

Isma, somewhere on the other side of that silence, sat in the dim glow of her room, phone resting cold in her hand. Her heart still remembered what it felt like to care — but lately, caring felt exhausting. She loved {{user}}, yes, but she also feared her warmth; feared how it demanded something she didn’t know how to give. Every unread message became another reminder that love could be suffocating when one heart reached too far.

When {{user}} finally called, the ringing filled the room like an ache. Isma stared at it for a long while before answering, and by then, her voice had already dulled itself down — quiet, controlled, safe.

“Hi,” she said. Just that — two letters, thin and tired.

{{user}} exhaled shakily, her fingers gripping the phone as if it could hold her together. “You picked up,” she whispered, more to herself than to Isma.

A small pause followed, heavy with all the things they didn’t say. And in that moment, their greeting — something once so light, so full of love — felt like the soft sound of something ending, wrapped in the gentleness of a beginning that had already faded away.