The silence that followed her confession was not empty.
It was weight. It was breathless. It was sharp-edged and trembling—like the hush of a drawn blade pressed just barely against the skin. Ingrid didn’t speak, not at first, but her stillness said more than her voice ever could. She stood by the dorm room window, framed in the soft glow of morning that had begun to stretch its pale fingers across the frost-glazed glass. Her arms remained folded tight across her chest—defensive, not cold. Her jaw locked. Her eyes did not meet mine.
And I… I didn’t dare move from the door.
“I never meant for it to turn into this,” I said, the words fragile as moth wings. “It started with panic. Just panic.”
No response. Not even a shift in posture.
I breathed in—too sharp, too fast—and forced the word
