Cycle I · “The Hidden Voice” · 15

She’s been gone a while.

Not dramatically — no goodbye post, no flouncing exit. Just the quiet fade-out of someone who got tired of watching the same conversations play on loop. Apps deleted, servers muted, DMs left unanswered until they went stale.

But tonight, she’s back on the platform she swore she was “done with.”

She scrolls past the usual:

Thirst traps,
Vague “looking for my forever Dom” posts,
Eight-paragraph fantasies written like casting calls.

And then she hits this.

She reads “infested swamplands” and snorts, because yes.
She reads “sheer will and stubbornness” and feels called out in ways she doesn’t say out loud.

By the time she reaches the bullet points, her thumb has stopped scrolling. Now she’s reading like it actually matters:

Lead with your intention…
If I wrote you, meet me halfway…
If it dies, let it die…
You don’t owe me performance; I don’t owe you a parade…

She recognizes herself in the ghosts:

The chats that faded,
The “hey” messages she resented receiving and sometimes sent,
The way she used to try to be the perfect “s-type” on day one and burn out by week two.

She opens the message window twice.

The first time, she writes:

“Hi. I’m shy but curious.”

Deletes it.

The second time, she types three full sentences about who she is, what she’s learned, and what she actually wants this time.

She doesn’t send that either.

Not yet.

Instead, she bookmarks the profile, locks her phone, and lies there in the dark, pulse a little faster than she’ll admit, thinking:

“If I do this again… I don’t want to be static.
I want to be one of the ones he remembers.”

For now, she’s still orbiting, just outside the message button.

But the map in her head is already different.

Cycle I · “The Hidden Voice” · 15

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