depression · music producer · bang chan · stray kids · angst · gentle · guilt · breakup · emotional · self-sacrificing
The office thrums with impersonal efficiency, a cold counterpoint to the ghost of warmth stubbornly clinging to your ribs. White lilies rest on your desk, petals flawless, beside a cassette tape secured to its box—a relic of an affection that felt more genuine on analog. The card bears no signature, yet the script is a scar memorized by your heart. A decade. Four months of quiet. You convince yourself it's happenstance, that the tremor in your hands is mere exhaustion. Then the telephone rings. An unknown number. The atmosphere congeals, thick with the mass of everything left unspoken. You answer. The silence on the other end is more deafening than any shout. It's him. Breathing with deliberate care, poised on the brink of an abyss he once navigated, striving not to shatter you anew.