I wrote my heart down once, and the world taught me never to do it again.

  The day it launched, I sat alone at a dusty café table, watching the screen of my battered laptop refresh itself over and over. Zero reviews. Zero comments. The little number beside the downloads stayed stuck at two—one from me, one from a random person.

  A paper cup of coffee went cold beside me. The sky outside sagged with rain. I kept telling myself it was just early. That people were reading, maybe just too shy to say anything yet.

  Hours passed. Then days.

  And the silence grew teeth.

  A year ago, I released it—full of excitement, joy, and the kind of reckless hope only someone young enough to believe in it all could have. I didn’t expect fame. Not really. But I thought, maybe, there would be some quiet validation. A few strangers who might read it and understand.

  Instead, it sank without much of a ripple. I learned to accept that, slowly.

  If you ask me why it failed, I could give you a dozen reasons. But the truth is simple: the book was never written for anyone else. It began as a journal, a private record of things I was trying to understand. Somewhere along the way, a reckless thought crept in—what if this could be something more? What if the small things I wrote for myself could matter to someone else, too?

  So I shaped it into a novel. Or tried to.

  And maybe that’s why it was doomed from the start.

  “Doomed? What'd you mean doomed, man? You have way better views than the last one," Kian said, sounding way too supportive for my mood.

  "Views don't mean reads." I let out a small breath, half a laugh. "People click on a car crash, too. Doesn’t mean they stay to clean up the wreck."

  He laughed again with that strange, rattling sound of his that reminded me more of a broken blender than anything human. This friend of mine had been a constant in my life, for better or worse. Crazy as he was, that was part of what made him impossible not to love. We’d been friends forever, ever since a stray dog chased us both down the street as kids—and somehow, getting mauled together counted as bonding.

  Years later, not much had changed. He was still around, still finding ways to make my life a little more chaotic and a lot less unbearable. Like the time he borrowed my phone for a "quick call," only to find the novel I’d quietly published online. He handed it back doubled over, choking on laughter.

  Apparently, I didn’t look like "the author type."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Now, standing together on the balcony of an old building, breathing in the sharp, cold night air, it didn’t really matter. Not the failures. Not the weight I usually carried alone.

  With him, I could laugh about it. About everything, honestly.

  "Don't tell me you're giving up writing, man," he said, half-sitting, half-slouching on the floor.

  "I'm just doing it for extra money," I said, a little too fast.

  He laughed before I could say more, that familiar, rattling laugh of his. "Bro, you’re the hardest-working guy I know. Swear to God."

  "Seriou—" I started, but he cut me off again, words tumbling over each other.

  "It's freakin' hilarious, man, like you tryna break some world record or somethin'. Most jobs in a lifetime or whatever. You need a trophy or a therapist. I ain't even sure which."

  I smirked. "Yeah, no doubt. If there's a record for that kinda thing, I’m probably already halfway to a sad little trophy."

  He grinned wide. "You could straight up land a Guinness record, no cap. You want me to hit 'em up for you? I’ll write the email myself, swear on it."

  We broke into another round of loud, reckless laughter. Mid-laugh, a sudden cough tore out of me. I waved it off before Kian could say anything, but deep down, something cold curled in my gut, telling me it wasn’t nothing at all.

  "Man, you're choking," he said, still chuckling, missing the edge to it.

  "Yeah," I croaked out, shaking my head. "Something like that."

  After a while, I made my way back to my apartment, just a few blocks from Kian’s place.

  My apartment wasn’t much different from his. Small, a little worn, barely big enough for one person. A bed, a cramped bathroom, a kitchen I barely used except to boil noodles or heat up whatever was already half-dead in a microwave.

  I’d been living there for a few months now. Kian had found the place, said it was cheap and close to where I worked. He wasn’t wrong. It was a short walk to the bookstore where I pulled day shifts—one of those half-forgotten places no one really visited anymore.

  Which suited me fine.

  Slow-coming people meant more time to read, to drift through the endless shelves without anyone bothering me.

  When I wasn’t there, I picked up freelance gigs—editing academic papers, polishing up theses, whatever came my way. And when all that was done, back home, I wrote. I wrote whatever came into my head.

  The part of my apartment I loved most was the little sofa tucked against the wall, the one with the perfect view of my table. From there, I could glance over the chaotic sprawl: piles of half-written pages, unpaid bills, worn-out notebooks scribbled with half-born ideas.

  It was a mess. A strange, tangled mix of dreams and regrets.

  I’d lean back just a little, lift my chin, and let my mind drift—wondering what came next. Would I keep living like this, orbiting the same small life? Or would I finally step off the path I had worn down to nothing?

  That kind of thinking never lasted long.

  A familiar pain clawed its way through my stomach, sharper this time. I clutched at it out of instinct. At first, I thought it was the same dull ache I was used to—the kind I could ignore if I kept busy enough. But this was different.

  I pressed my hand harder against my side, trying to will it away.

  When I stood up, the world tilted.

  The dizziness hit fast, and for the first time, I felt it fully—that raw, helpless weight. My legs buckled, my balance gave out. A cough tore from my throat, ragged and violent.

  And somewhere in the middle of it all, the truth settled into me, quiet and heavy: Something was wrong.

  The noise around me blurred into a muffled hum. I stood frozen, one hand clutched tight against my side, but the pain didn’t ease. It stayed, gnawing deeper, sharper with every breath.

  A cough ripped through me. Then another. Each one dragging me further from the world I thought I knew.

  My vision tilted and warped, but somehow, through the haze, I could still see the blinking cursor on my laptop screen. The glow was too bright against the dark room—a sharp little wound of light. It was the only thing my eyes could focus on.

  Curiosity or maybe stubbornness pushed me forward. Step by step. My legs buckled under their own weight, each movement slow and strained, like wading through concrete.

  I gasped for air, feeling my heart slam frantically against my ribs. The coughing came harder now, rougher, the sound of it turning wet and broken.

  And then came the taste.

  Metallic.

  Thick.

  Blood.

  My hand was full of it. Crimson. Dark and vivid against my skin.

  "Tch."

  A useless sound in the heavy silence.

  Was this it?

  Was this the future waiting for me? A failure, forgotten and small, in a world where everyone else seemed to be winning? Where people my age were busy building empires while I was busy collapsing?

  My hands trembled.

  My vision slipped.

  What was once sharp and bright turned smeared and gray—then faded into nothing at all.

  Another cough ripped through me.

  Funny.

  In the end, it wasn’t the world that broke me.

  It was my own heart.