Grey stared at the ceiling of his room like someone hoping for an epiphany to descend from the blank whiteness of its surface.
He had been lying in the same spot for hours, his body barely moving except for his slow, heavy breaths—like someone who had drowned long ago but hadn't fully died. His eyes, sleepy and weary, kept fixated on a single point as if expecting a tiny crack, a flaw that would change everything.
But the ceiling remained still. And silent. As white as a canvas abandoned by its artist.
His mind was a mess. Not messy in the usual sense, but in a form that logic or emotion couldn't define.
Something foreign, yet so familiar. An abstract contradiction he couldn't control.
Everything he did might have only worsened his condition. His life was nothing more than surviving on a battlefield that never ended.
Every part of him seemed conscious of its hatred for the others.
He felt like he was living between two worlds: too low to scream for help, yet too high to run away.
Trapped in-between—between proving himself and surrendering to everything—he existed as a metaphysical space where answers no longer took the form of words, and questions lost their meaning.
"What's really happening to me?" he thought, even though the question never found ears to hear it.
He sat up and bent over the scattered papers on the floor. His hand trembled as he reached for a crumpled sheet full of unfinished scribbles. Words appeared like tiny ghosts, flickering in and out of his vision.
He tried to write—as if it were the only way to save himself from the madness he was facing.
But two hours had passed, and he couldn't even form a single complete paragraph.
Every sentence seemed incapable of capturing what he felt.
"This feeling is indescribable. Even if I pour everything that crosses my mind, they'll just laugh.
Or worse, they'll try to give advice—
Advice they probably don't even understand themselves."
He crossed out the writing. Again. And again.
Then silence.
A biting silence.
Suddenly, a notification sound broke it.
An ordinary, trivial sound—a short tone from his phone.
He looked up. Slowly. As if hearing a voice from the void.
"Alan." The name appeared on the screen.
Alan. An old friend. Perhaps the only one still choosing to reach out after Grey shut himself off from the world.
They hadn't spoken in months. The last time they met, Alan had tried to offer some advice and listened to Grey's ramblings late into the night. And tonight—without reason—he was calling.
Grey got up from the floor, his movements sluggish.
He walked past piles of paper like ruins of an abandoned house—writings he didn't know what he wanted to say or who he wanted to read them.
He picked up the phone and stared at the screen for a moment, his heartbeat quickened slightly. Just slightly. But enough to make him feel that maybe, just maybe, he could still feel something.
Then, without further thought, he answered.
"Grey..." the voice on the other end was familiar.
A voice he used to hear almost every night with others—though now, who knows where they all were. He was the only one left from the crowd that used to gather.
Grey tried to act normal.
"Yo?"
For the first time in who knows how long, Grey looked out the window.
The night sky outside looked just as silent as the ceiling above his bed earlier.
Alan responded.
"Hey, weren't we supposed to meet this week?"
He said it loudly.
Grey chuckled lightly to ease the atmosphere.
"I've been finishing my writing, wasn't it you who asked for it?"
"I know you haven't finished it," Alan replied in a calm voice—almost too calm, like someone who had prepared for lies but still hoped for honesty.
And suddenly, Grey felt exposed.
As if the words hadn't come from the phone, but from inside his own skull. Alan's voice slipped in—not in a judging tone, but also not allowing him to hide.
He fell silent. For a long time. His breath audible through the call.
"I…" his voice cracked, "I don't know what to write.
I'm not even sure anymore whether I'm the one writing, or just my shadow. At this point, I don't even recognize myself."
He didn't say anything more. The phone was still at his ear, but his mind had drifted deeper than Alan's voice, quieter than the night itself.
Alan didn't reply immediately. Silence crept in again, but this time it didn't bite. It felt more like a cold but soft blanket—a silence that understood.
"You know, Grey… I often think," Alan continued slowly, "maybe it's not your writing that matters.
But the fact that you're still trying to write.
That's the only thing keeping you here, right? In this world."
Grey lowered his head.
It felt too heavy to hold up.
Something in Alan's words tore him open—but also began stitching him back together.
Like an old wound carefully reopened so it could be cleaned.
"Maybe," he whispered. "But sometimes I wonder… what for? For whom?"
And then, without realizing, he sat back down on the floor.
The phone still at his ear. He stared blankly at the wall, waiting for Alan's reply.
There was no outburst. No tears for it.
"For yourself, Grey," Alan replied. "Because if not you, then who?"
What does "for yourself" even mean?
He replayed Alan's words in his mind, like a child trying to decipher an old book written in a foreign language.
Was his self even something worth fighting for?
Was it even worth hearing, seeing, saving?
Grey closed his eyes.
He felt like he was speaking with two versions of himself in one empty space—
One still trying to hold on,
And the other, tired, fed up, wanting it all to end.
But neither ever made peace with the other.
Like two prisoners in the same cell sharing fate, but never truly understanding each other.
Often he felt like an actor lost in a script he never wrote,
Playing a role someone else handed him, pretending to understand.
He laughed when he had to laugh, cried when needed,
But behind it all… he didn't understand what he was even doing.
Alan's voice still echoed faintly on the other end,
But now more like a distant echo from afar.
Then the thought crossed his mind:
"So, am I still myself…
When the only thing I can do refuses to accept me?"
That question came without sound, but echoed loudly in his chest.
Writing wasn't just a habit. Not just a tool.
To Grey, writing was the only place he could truly exist.
There, he could be honest, be wrong, be afraid, be weak.
The world never allowed that.
The world only recognized strength or failure. Life or death.
But paper? Paper knew the gray area.
And he was someone who didn't even know if he could still be called human.
His tears didn't fall.
He was too trained to silence them before they came.
But the sorrow remained, ever-present, like smoke in a closed room—unseen, yet suffocating.
Alan's voice finally returned, gentle and careful.
"You don't have to believe me.
The truth is, both of us know—no one's coming to save us.
Everyone we once called friends turned away when I lost everything in my life.
And now… wouldn't it be ironic if we gave up without proving anything?"
Grey laughed—really laughed—for the first time in ages.
He felt something calling him from the emptiness inside.
He laughed in the middle of the night like a madman—
As if he finally understood what he needed to do.
Alan, hearing Grey's laughter, joined in.
No words were said, but both of them understood what they would try to do next.
They laughed for a long time.
Finally, Grey spoke again.
"Well, I guess I'll give it another shot. So… I'm hanging up now."
Alan, whose laughter was slowly fading, replied:
"Alright. I'll be waiting to see what you'll share with the world."