It had been a week. A week of silence, of routine, of academic pressure that felt both grounding and suffocating. I was loaded with coursework again, assignments piling up like bricks in a wall I didn’t want to climb.
I had stopped using my phone altogether except for chatting with Damon while he was at work or while he was in his study — it wasn't because I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but because there was no one left to speak to other than Damon or Naina. Naina and I had made it a routine to have a 2-hour Zoom call every evening.
My parents had stopped contacting me. The only exception was my dad’s occasional Zoom call, where he’d speak in clipped sentences while my mother hovered in the background, her lips pressed into a line, her eyes refusing to meet the camera. She didn’t say a
