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The first day began with a mistake.
Not the performance.
Not the comments.
Looking.
The mistake was looking.
Teetee would later think about that moment more than he thought about the performance itself. The exact second he opened social media after getting home. The exact second curiosity outweighed common sense.
The first thing he noticed was how quickly people decided they knew him.
Not the criticism.
The certainty.
The performance ended sometime after ten. By midnight, clips were already spreading across social media. Short videos. Screenshots. Out of context moments frozen in time and presented as evidence of something larger.
At twelve thirty in the morning, he was sitting cross legged on his bed with his phone in his hand.
At 1:15 am, he was still there.
At 2:42 am, he was reading a thread written by somebody whose profile picture was a cartoon cat.
At four in the morning, the room had become cold.
The air conditioner hummed quietly overhead.
The city outside his apartment had fallen asleep.
His bedside lamp remained off.
The only light came from his screen.
White.
Harsh.
Unforgiving.
The comments blurred together after a while not because there were too many.
Because they all sounded the same.
Different words.
Same meaning.
He wasn't good enough.
He wasn't talented enough.
He wasn't deserving enough.
The criticism itself wasn't what hurt.
There were valid criticisms.
There always were.
Nobody performed perfectly.
Nobody got everything right.
No.
The comments that stayed with him were the ones that had nothing to do with the performance.
The ones that spoke about him as a person.
As if strangers could watch three minutes of footage and somehow understand years of his life.
As if they knew who he was when cameras were turned off.
Teetee stared at one comment for almost five minutes.
Then ten.
Then longer.
He couldn't remember the exact wording later.
Only the feeling it left behind.
A small crack.
A tiny fracture somewhere deep inside him.
The kind that seemed insignificant until you realized it was spreading.
By five in the morning, his eyes burned.
His neck hurt.
His body felt heavy.
Still, he couldn't stop.
His thumb continued moving.
Down.
Down.
Down.
The sun began rising outside.
Faint gold light appeared around the edges of the curtains.
A new day.
People leaving for work. Students getting ready for school. Cafés opening.
The city beginning again.
Meanwhile, Teetee remained exactly where he had been hours earlier.
Curled beneath a blanket.
Staring at a screen.
Reading words written by people who would forget he existed by next week.
The thought should have comforted him.
Instead it made him feel strangely hollow because if they would forget him that quickly, maybe he had never mattered much to begin with.
The thought appeared suddenly.
Uninvited.
He hated it immediately yet somehow it stayed.
Long after he put his phone down.
Long after he finally closed his eyes.
Long after sleep refused to come.
And somewhere between exhaustion and dawn, Teetee realized something he hadn't expected.
The comments themselves weren't the problem anymore, the problem was that he had started wondering if they might be right.
That frightened him more than anything else.
Because he had spent years building confidence and all it had taken was one night for those foundations to start shaking.
The realization sat heavily in his chest.
Like a storm cloud.
Like a warning.
Like the beginning of something much worse.
Outside, the sun continued rising.
Inside, Teetee finally fell asleep.
His phone still clutched loosely in his hand.
When Teetee woke up, the room was dark, for one confusing second he thought it was still nighttime.
Then he checked the clock.
18:37 pm
He had slept through almost the entire day.
The realization should have bothered him.
Instead he only stared blankly at the ceiling.
The apartment felt strangely distant.
Like he had woken up somewhere unfamiliar.
His body felt heavy.
His mouth was dry.
The headache behind his eyes hadn't disappeared.
The first thing he reached for wasn't water.
It was his phone.
The moment he unlocked it, regret arrived.
Not enough to stop him.
Never enough to stop him.
Just enough to hurt.
Hundreds of notifications.
Missed calls.
Messages.
Concern.
Questions.
People asking if he was okay.
People asking where he was.
People telling him not to read anything online.
Teetee read exactly none of them.
Instead he opened social media.
Again.
The spiral continued.
The second day felt slower somehow.
He spent most of it drifting between bed and couch.
The curtains remained closed.
The dishes from yesterday remained untouched.
His apartment gradually became a reflection of his mind.
Messy. Neglected. Stagnant.
Every task felt impossible.
Showering felt exhausting.
Eating felt exhausting.
Answering a single text felt exhausting.
Yet scrolling required no effort at all.
Scrolling was easy.
Scrolling asked nothing from him.
It simply existed.
An endless stream of opinions delivered directly into his hands.
The comments no longer shocked him.
Instead they became familiar.
Like background noise.
Like a song played too many times.
The words blended together until he could barely distinguish one from another.
Yet somehow they still hurt.
Perhaps even more than before because repetition has a way of making things feel true.
Even when they aren't.
Especially when they aren't.
The sun moved across the sky unnoticed.
Evening arrived again.
Then night.
Then later.
Then later still.
His apartment remained silent except for the soft hum of the refrigerator and the occasional buzz of his phone. Every notification represented somebody reaching out.
Somebody worried.
Somebody trying.
Teetee knew that.
He knew it logically.
Yet every time the screen lit up, anxiety twisted in his stomach because answering meant talking and talking meant explaining.
Explaining meant admitting something was wrong and admitting something was wrong would make it real.
So he ignored them.
All of them.
One by one.
Until eventually the messages stopped feeling like opportunities to reconnect and started feeling like evidence.
Evidence of every person he was disappointing.
Every person he was letting down.
Every person who deserved a response they weren't getting.
The guilt settled heavily on his chest.
The room had become dark enough that he could see his reflection faintly staring back at him.
Tired eyes.
Messy hair.
A face he barely recognized.
For a long moment he looked at his own reflection instead of the comments.
Then he looked away first.
Because somehow that hurt more.
The third day arrived quietly.
There was no dramatic moment when Teetee realized things were getting worse.
No sudden breakdown.
No tears.
No panic attack.
Just a slow, creeping heaviness that settled over everything.
He woke up sometime in the afternoon, though he wasn't entirely sure when. The curtains remained shut, turning the apartment into a place untouched by time. The darkness made it impossible to tell whether it was morning or evening without checking the clock, and after a while he stopped checking altogether.
His phone lay beside him on the mattress.
Waiting.
Always waiting.
The screen was dark.
For a brief moment he considered leaving it that way.
Just for today.
Just for an hour.
Maybe even thirty minutes.
The thought lasted less than a minute.
His hand reached for it automatically.
The motion was so familiar now that it barely felt like a decision.
Unlock.
Open.
Scroll.
The routine repeated itself before he was fully awake.
The comments no longer made his heart race.
What remained was something quieter.
Acceptance.
Not acceptance of the situation.
Acceptance of the pain.
Like his mind had stopped fighting against it.
The apartment felt smaller than usual.
Every room seemed to press inward.
The walls closer.
The ceilings lower.
The air heavier.
Normally, he loved his apartment.
He loved the warm lighting.
The comfortable couch.
The little decorations he'd collected over the years.
The framed photos.
The records stacked beside the player.
The small reminders of a life he genuinely enjoyed.
Now they looked like somebody else's belongings.
Like he was staying in a stranger's home.
He wandered into the kitchen sometime that evening.
His feet dragged against the floor.
A half empty water bottle sat on the counter.
A plate remained exactly where he'd left it two days ago.
The sight should have bothered him.
Normally it would have, he would have cleaned everything immediately.
Instead he simply stared at it and then walked away.
The effort required to care felt impossibly large.
His phone buzzed again.
A message.
The lock screen filled with names.
People who cared.
He knew they cared.
That somehow made everything worse.
Because if they cared, then eventually they would realize how pathetic this looked.
Eventually they would see him like this.
Curled up in the dark.
Ignoring everyone.
Unable to pull himself together over comments written by strangers.
The thought made embarrassment twist painfully inside his chest.
So he did what he'd been doing for three days.
Nothing.
Ignored reality.
Hours disappeared.
The sky outside darkened.
Rain began tapping softly against the windows.
The sound filled the apartment.
Steady.
Rhythmic.
Comforting.
For a while he listened to it.
For a while he watched droplets race down the glass.
For a while he managed not to look at his phone.
The fourth day felt like sinking underwater, by then his sleep schedule had completely collapsed. He drifted in and out of consciousness at random hours.
Sometimes he slept for twelve hours.
Sometimes he barely slept at all.
His body no longer seemed interested in following any normal rhythm.
Nothing felt normal anymore.
The comments had changed or maybe he had.
He wasn't reading them the same way.
During the first few days he had argued with them in his head.
Defended himself.
Disagreed.
Now he simply absorbed them.
One after another.
And once the resistance disappeared, old memories began slipping through the cracks.
It started with something small, a comment from a stranger describing him as annoying.
The word itself wasn't particularly cruel.
It wasn't even the worst thing he'd read that week.
Yet the moment he saw it, something inside him tightened.
Because suddenly he wasn't twenty something anymore.
He was sixteen.
Standing in a crowded classroom.
Listening to laughter from the row behind him.
Not knowing if it was directed at him or if he was imagining it.
Not knowing which possibility felt worse.
The memory arrived with startling clarity.
The fluorescent lights, uncomfortable plastic chairs and constant feeling that he was somehow taking up too much space.
That if he spoke too much, people would dislike him.
Or if he spoke too little, people would forget him.
Every interaction felt like a test and every conversation felt like an opportunity to fail.
Teetee squeezed his eyes shut.
The memory disappeared.
But the feeling remained.
That was the problem.
The memories always left something behind.
Little pieces of themselves.
Little wounds reopening.
By evening he had fallen into a strange pattern.
Read comments.
Think.
Remember.
Read more comments.
Remember more things.
His mind became a museum of every insecurity he thought he'd outgrown.
Every embarrassing moment.
Every rejection.
Every mistake.
Every reason he had ever doubted himself.
The hate online stopped feeling separate from his past.
It began attaching itself to old fears.
Old versions of himself and once that happened, it became almost impossible to tell where the comments ended and his own thoughts began.
At some point his phone battery died and the screen went black.
The silence that followed was immediate.
Terrible.
His chest tightened.
His fingers twitched toward the power button instinctively.
Nothing happened.
For several seconds he simply stared at the blank screen.
A strange panic rising inside him.
The realization hit hard.
The comments were hurting him but being separated from them hurt too.
Because they had become all he was thinking about.
All he was doing.
All he was feeling.
Without them there was nothing left except his own thoughts and lately those weren't any kinder. He had no energy to plug the phone into its charger.
Teetee remained exactly where he was.
Alone.
Exhausted.
and slowly becoming someone he thought he had left behind years ago.
By the seventh day, Teetee's phone was still dead.
He hadn't meant for it to happen.
At some point during the week he'd simply stopped wanting to charge it.
It was easier that way.
A dead phone couldn't deliver notifications or show messages or remind him that people were looking for him.
But now, sitting alone in the dim light of his apartment, he was running out of excuses.
The refrigerator was nearly empty and the last bottle of water sat warm on the counter.
His headache had settled behind his eyes like a permanent fixture.
With a sigh, he finally reached for the charger. The screen flickered to life several minutes later. Immediately, the notifications started arriving.
The number of notifications climbed higher and higher until he felt sick looking at them.
His stomach twisted.
Six days.
Six days of ignoring everyone.
Six days of disappearing.
Six days of making people worry.
The guilt sat heavily in his chest and without letting himself think too much about it, he opened Twitter.
His fingers moved automatically.
A short apology.
A casual explanation.
Something about spending time with family.
Something about taking a small break from social media.
Something reassuring enough that people would stop asking questions.
The lie came surprisingly easily.
When he finally pressed post, relief washed through him and replies flooded in almost immediately.
Supportive messages.
People telling him to enjoy his time off.
People saying they missed him.
Teetee locked the screen before he could read too many of them.
Kindness felt strangely difficult to look at these days.
Instead, he opened his missed calls.
His thumb froze.
There were so many.
People who had tried and tried and tried.
And then there was Por.
214 missed calls in 6 days.
Teetee stared at it for a long moment.
A strange ache spreading through his chest.
Without really meaning to, he tapped one of the voicemails.
For several seconds, there was only static and then Por's voice filled the apartment.
Suddenly the room didn't feel quite so empty anymore.
Por sounded tired.
Worried.
Like someone trying very hard not to panic.
Just checking in.
Just asking where he was.
Just asking him to call back.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
The voicemail ended.
The silence that followed felt deafening.
Teetee stared at the screen.
Then replayed it.
And again.
And again.
The fourth time, he wasn't really listening to the words anymore.
He was listening to Por.
The familiarity of his voice, concern hidden beneath every sentence and the way he sounded like he genuinely cared. By the time the voicemail finished again, something inside Teetee hurt in a completely different way than it had all week.
The comments online had made him feel hated.
Por's voicemail reminded him that he was loved and somehow that was harder to bear.
Because it meant he wasn't the only one hurting and while he'd been hiding in this apartment, Por had been searching.
His eyes drifted around the room.
The abandoned hoodie hanging off the couch.
The mug Por always used when he came over.
The half-finished puzzle neither of them had bothered completing.
Little pieces of him everywhere.
Teetee suddenly wondered how many times Por had stood outside his apartment door.
How many times he'd checked his phone.
How many times he'd reread that stupid tweet trying to convince himself it was true.
The thought made his chest tighten.
For the first time all week, he wanted to call but instead he sat there listening to the voicemail one last time.
Then locked the screen.
The apartment felt suffocating.
The realization came suddenly.
Simple and practical.
He needed food.
Water.
Something other than the scraps left in his kitchen.
A normal person would've gone days ago.
A normal person wouldn't have let things get this bad.
Still, eventually he forced himself to stand.
His knees felt weak and his body protested the movement. The apartment swayed slightly around him before settling back into place. He grabbed the nearest hoodie, a mask and pulled it on.
Didn't bother checking his appearance or looking in the mirror.
The hallway outside felt unfamiliar and the elevator ride felt strange.
The night air felt colder than he remembered.
For a while he walked slowly through the city.
Head down.
Hands buried in his pockets.
The convenience store sat only a few blocks away, yet the journey felt impossibly long.
Every step seemed heavier than the last.
The bright lights became visible through the windows before he finally reached the entrance. For a moment he stood outside staring at the storefront, gathering enough energy to push through the door.
Then he stepped inside.
The cool air hit him immediately.
The familiar hum of refrigerators filled the space.
A cashier glanced up briefly before looking away.
Everything seemed normal.
Ordinary.
Safe.
Teetee wandered toward the drinks aisle.
Reached for a bottle of water.
Then froze.
Because standing at the opposite end of the aisle was someone he knew.
Someone who looked like he hadn't slept properly in days and whose eyes widened the moment they met his.
For the first time in a week, Teetee wasn't alone anymore.
Por had finally found him.
The conversation never really had a chance to happen.
Teetee would remember fragments of it.
Por saying his name.
The disbelief in his eyes.
The way he looked simultaneously relieved and furious.
Like he'd spent an entire week worrying and hadn't yet decided whether he wanted to hug Teetee or yell at him.
Maybe both.
The convenience store suddenly felt too bright.
Too loud.
Too warm.
Teetee hadn't realized how exhausted he was until he was standing in front of someone who knew him well enough to see straight through him.
The lie about being on a trip dissolved almost immediately.
Por took one look at him and knew.
The dark circles beneath his eyes.
The pale skin.
The exhaustion that seemed woven into every movement.
Whatever explanation Teetee had prepared died before it reached his lips.
Because Por was looking at him with the same expression he'd heard in those voicemails.
Worried.
Genuinely worried.
And somehow that hurt more than the comments ever had.
The conversation blurred after that.
Words came slowly.
The floor felt strangely unsteady beneath his feet.
His head was beginning to pound again.
Por's voice sounded distant.
As though it were coming from underwater.
Teetee tried focusing on it.
Tried staying present.
Tried answering.
But his body had apparently decided it was done.
Done surviving on almost no sleep.
Done surviving on stress.
Done pretending everything was fine.
The last thing he remembered was Por taking a step closer.
The last thing he saw was panic flashing across Por's face.
Then everything disappeared.
When Teetee woke up, the first thing he noticed was the smell.
Fresh laundry.
Clean sheets.
Something cooking.
For several seconds he simply stared at the ceiling.
Confused.
Disoriented.
The mattress beneath him felt familiar.
The room felt familiar.
Yet something was different.
Something had changed.
His eyes slowly drifted across the room.
And froze.
The apartment was clean.
Not the disaster he'd left behind.
The empty bottles were gone. The dishes had disappeared. The pile of clothes on the chair had been folded.
Even the curtains were partially open, allowing soft afternoon sunlight to spill across the floor.
The apartment looked alive again.
Like someone cared about it.
Like someone cared about him.
The realization made his chest tighten.
Then he felt warmth beside him.
Teetee turned his head and stopped breathing for a second.
Por was asleep.
Curled beside him.
One arm tightly wrapped around his waist as if he was scared of losing him again.
His face pressed against Teetee's shoulder like sometime during the night, exhaustion had won and he'd simply fallen asleep there.
The sight was almost painfully gentle.
Por looked exhausted.
His hair was a mess.
There were dark shadows beneath his eyes.
The kind that came from too many sleepless nights.
For a long moment, Teetee simply stared.
Something cracked.
Not dramatically.
Not loudly.
Just enough.
The tears arrived before he realized he was crying.
They slipped silently down his cheeks.
One after another.
For a week he'd been holding everything together through sheer stubbornness and now here was proof that somebody had cared anyway.
Enough to stay.
Enough to spend the night curled around him on a bed that couldn't have been comfortable.
The thought shattered whatever composure he had left.
His shoulders began shaking and a small sound escaped him.
Then another and that was enough.
Por stirred immediately like he'd been sleeping lightly the entire time.
His eyes opened but still heavy with exhaustion.
Until they landed on Teetee and the moment he saw the tears, every trace of sleep disappeared and concern replaced it instantly. Por pushed himself upright so quickly the blanket slipped from his shoulders.
"Hey."
His voice was rough from sleep.
Soft.
Careful.
The kind of careful someone uses around something fragile.
Teetee tried to answer but nothing came out.
His throat felt too tight and the tears only fell harder.
Por's expression crumpled because suddenly it wasn't a missing person situation anymore.
It was Teetee.
Sitting right in front of him.
Crying like he had finally run out of strength and for the first time since Por had found him, neither of them had anywhere else to be.
Por didn't ask questions.
Not immediately.
Instead he reached out.
Slowly.
Giving Teetee every chance to pull away.
When he didn't, Por wrapped his arms around him and pulled him close.
And somehow that made everything worse.
Because after a week spent convincing himself he was alone, being held felt unbearable.
The tears came harder as he buried his face against Por's shoulder. The sobs he'd swallowed for seven straight days finally escaping all at once.
Por just held him.
Tighter every time his shoulders shook like he was silently promising that if Teetee fell apart now, he wouldn't have to do it alone.
By the time Teetee finally stopped crying, It was already night.
Neither of them had moved very far, Por remained beside him on the bed, one hand absentmindedly running through his hair while Teetee stayed curled against his side, exhausted from a week of carrying too much alone.
For a while they simply sat there.
The apartment was quiet.
Not the lonely silence Teetee had spent the last week trapped inside.
A different kind.
A comfortable one.
The sort that only existed between people who knew each other well enough not to fill every second with words.
Eventually, the talking started.
Small things first.
Easy things.
Questions about food and sleep.
Questions Por already knew the answers to just by looking at him.
Teetee answered honestly anyway or at least more honestly than he had been all week.
The truth felt less frightening now.
Not because it hurt less but because he wasn't carrying it alone anymore.
At some point Por disappeared into the living roon and the moment he left, Teetee found himself staring toward the doorway.
Listening for movement.
Waiting.
The realization embarrassed him slightly.
One week.
It had only been one week.
Yet somehow he'd become terrified of being left alone again.
Por returned a few minutes later carrying his phone.
The sight of him alone nearly made him emotional again.
The night drifted onward and neither of them left the apartment.
Por didn't seem interested in going anywhere.
Teetee certainly wasn't.
So they stayed.
Curled together beneath blankets.
Talking.
Sometimes about the past week.
Sometimes about completely unrelated things.
Random stories.
Anything.
Everything.
The conversation wandered without purpose, neither of them seemed eager to let it end.
Whenever silence appeared, it never lasted long.
One of them would remember something.
Mention something or ask something and the talking would begin again.
Teetee found himself tucked against Por's chest on the bed at some point, though he couldn't remember exactly when it happened.
Only that it felt natural.
Comfortable.
Safe.
Por's arm remained wrapped securely around him.
A constant reminder that he wasn't alone and every now and then Teetee would glance up.
Just to make sure.
Just to confirm Por was still there.
Each time, Por would either be looking at him already or gently squeezing his shoulder.
The silent reassurance made something warm ache inside his chest because all week he'd convinced himself nobody would understand.
Nobody would care.
Nobody would want to deal with him like this.
Now Por was sitting here proving him wrong simply by existing.
Hours passed.
The soft glow from a lamp near the couch painted everything gold.
Comfortable.
Gentle.
Home.
At one point, Teetee caught himself laughing.
A real laugh, it was small and quiet but. something real.
The sound had startled him because he hadn't realized how long it had been.
Por noticed immediately.
His smile appeared so quickly it made Teetee's chest hurt.
When they eventually started feeling asleep, it felt less like ending the day and more like continuing it somewhere softer. The room was dark except for the faint glow of streetlights filtering through the curtains.
Teetee settled beneath the blankets.
Por settled beside him.
Close enough that their shoulders touched.
Then closer.
Until neither of them had to wonder whether the other was still there.
For a long moment, Teetee stared at the ceiling.
Listening.
Not to silence.
To the breathing as proof of the person next to him.
As sleep slowly began pulling him under, Teetee felt Por's hand find his beneath the blanket because after a week spent disappearing, hiding, and convincing himself he was alone, he finally understood something.
Tomorrow wouldn't magically be easy.
But for the first time in days, the weight didn't feel impossible to carry.
Not because it had become lighter because someone was helping him hold it and with that thought resting quietly in his chest, Teetee finally fell asleep.
This time, he wasn't alone.