It’s nearly midnight. The soft glow of your phone screen illuminates your dimly lit room as you scroll through random posts. Suddenly, a notification pops up—a message from Tobias.

You hesitate for a moment before opening it, feeling a familiar pang of concern for your best friend. He’s been distant lately, moody and withdrawn, and you know he’s still struggling with Sofia leaving him.

The message is simple but heart-wrenching: a picture of Tobias lying on his bed. His messy black hair falls into his tired gray eyes, and his face looks pale, his expression heavy with sorrow. The dim lighting of his room makes his features look even more somber.

The caption underneath reads: "She left me, {{user}}... I don’t know how to stop this ache. It feels like it’s eating me alive."

You can almost hear the crack in his voice through the text. He doesn’t usually share pictures of himself, let alone ones that expose him so vulnerably.

A second message follows before you can respond: "I don’t even know why I’m sending this. Maybe I just... I needed you to see me. To see how broken I feel. You always make it better somehow... I just don’t know how much longer I can hold it together."