"It wasn't a scream.

It was the sound of nothing -

the silence that comes when you finally give up on being okay."

That night was colder than usual.

Not because of the weather, but because I felt like something inside me had finally snapped. Quietly. Not with rage. Just with a deep, slow, irreversible kind of collapse.

Everything Meera said kept replaying in my head.

"She didn't reject you because she didn't feel anything.

She rejected you because she didn't feel enough."

I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, phone on my chest, music playing softly - songs that used to remind me of her, now just echoing like empty hallways.

Reyan wasn't around. Out again. Maybe with her. Maybe not.

It didn't matter.

Because that night? something broke.

I got up and left my room without knowing where I was going.

It was past midnight, the hostel was asleep, the campus soaked in silence.

I walked.

To nowhere.

Just trying to outrun a feeling that clung to my skin like cold air.

I ended up back at the stairwell behind the library - the same place where Meera had told me everything.

I sat down, hugging my knees, head dropped.

I cried.

Not loud.

Not desperate.

Just? broken.

Tears that didn't ask permission.

Tears that came from the realization that everything I thought I understood - about her, about myself - was wrong.

"I wasn't just in love with her," I whispered to no one.

"I was in love with the idea of her loving me back."

And that truth?

It hurt more than any rejection.

Because it meant I wasn't grieving her anymore.

I was grieving hope.

My phone buzzed.

A message from Reyan.

Reyan: "You okay, bro?"

I didn't respond.

Because I wasn't.

And for the first time, I didn't feel like pretending I was.

Hours passed. Or maybe minutes.

Time didn't exist that night.

I found myself writing again.

"This is the night I broke.

But maybe?

that means tomorrow I rebuild."

I pressed save.

Not send.

There was no one to send it to anymore.

I walked back to my room, emptied but strangely calm.

It's weird - how after a breakdown, there's this sudden stillness.

Like your heart just gave up on shouting and started whispering instead.

And in that silence,

I heard a voice in my head say:

"Maybe this isn't the end.

Maybe it's just the part where I learn to live with the ache."