The air in the park grew thick. The words, once released from my chest, floated between us like a sentence. "It's you, Sora. I love you." The sunset stained her face with mencholic tones, and for an instant, I allowed myself the fantasy that her expression was one of tender surprise, of reciprocated love. The truth was, as always, much crueler.

  Sora looked down, the silence stretched, heavy and uncomfortable, and then she sighed. A small, almost inaudible sound, but it resonated in my chest like a funeral bell.

  "Orion," she began, her voice soft, almost a whisper, but every sylble was a hammer blow. "You know I love you. A lot. You are my best friend. You always have been." Her hand lifted, indecisive, as if she wanted to comfort me, but stopped mid-air. She didn't touch me. "But not in that way. Never in that way."

  My lungs refused to breathe. I felt the world tilt, threatening to dump me into the abyss.

  "And honestly, Orion," she continued, and this time, her words were not soft. They were sharp scalpels, dissecting the st hope I had left. "I can't be with you. I can't. Look at you. You have no ambition. You have no purpose. You just float, living off your parents' inheritance, without lifting a finger. You're not someone to build a future with. You need to find value in yourself before asking it of someone else."

  Her words, so brutal and honest, were a mirror. A mirror that reflected all my worst insecurities. It wasn't the first time I had thought that of myself, but for Sora, my Sora, to confirm it, made it real. It made it definitive.

  "I understand," I managed to stammer, the sound of my own voice strangely muffled. The hope that had sustained me for days crumbled to ash.

  She gave me a small, sad smile, full of pity. "I'm sorry, Orion. I truly am. But I can't lie to you. It would be unfair to us both." She turned and her steps faded away, leaving me alone beneath the oak, with the setting sun staining the sky a red that felt like an open wound.

  I stayed there, motionless, until the st light of day vanished and the shy stars began to appear. My heart beat an erratic, painful rhythm. The thought of returning to my apartment, to the white, empty ceiling, seemed unbearable.

  The days that followed were a blur. I stopped answering messages. I ignored calls. I locked myself in my apartment, the ordered chaos of my belongings an extension of my own fragmented mind. Food piled up in the fridge, forgotten. I only ate what I could find nearby, without thinking. My personal hygiene became a luxury I didn't deserve.

  Jake and Leo, my roommates, were the first to notice. At first, they tried to cheer me up.

  "Come on, Orion, snap out of it. There are plenty of other girls in the world," Jake said one night, trying to drag me off the couch to go to a party. "Sora wasn't the only one."

  "It's not about Sora," I mumbled, covering my head with a cushion. It wasn't just Sora. It was what Sora represented. The st chance to find value.

  Leo, more insightful, tried a different approach. "We know you've been down, Orion. But you can't shut yourself off like this. If you need to talk..."

  "I'm fine," I cut him off, my voice sounding rough. I didn't want to talk. I didn't want to face the truth of my existence.

  Little by little, their attempts dwindled. The invitations to go out ceased. Their voices, once constant in the apartment, became distant, reduced to whispers in their rooms or ughter in the kitchen that I no longer joined. They also started to avoid me, treating me as if I were just another piece of furniture, or worse, a stain.

  I remember one day in particur. I was in the living room, the TV on low volume, not paying attention. Jake and Leo were getting ready to leave.

  "We're heading to the bar. Coming, Orion?" Jake asked, his tone more of a formality than a real invitation.

  I didn't bother to answer. I just shrunk further into the couch.

  Jake sighed. "Fine. See you ter."

  And they left. The door closed with a click that echoed in the silence, a final resonance of their abandonment. I was left alone. Truly alone. The friendship I had felt with them was, as I always suspected, as shallow as beer foam. It had sted as long as I was the guy who paid for things or the one who was there to fill a space. Now that I was broken, they discarded me.

  The pain I felt was no longer the sharp pang of Sora's rejection. It was a dull, persistent ache. A sense of drowning. There was nothing. I had no one. My parents dead, my inheritance a mockery of my uselessness, my friends gone, Sora... Sora had been the final nail in my coffin. She had told me I was worthless without purpose. And she was right.

  Days blended into weeks. The apartment became my prison. Dirt accumuted, the dirty dishes in the sink were a mountain. I barely moved from the couch. My csses went down the drain. My bank account, though vast, was the only thing left of my supposed "life."

  I looked at the ceiling, again. White. Empty. It was my destiny. It was my reflection.

  How was I supposed to live?

  That question hammered in my head, incessant. With no one. With nothing. Without a reason. I didn't have a future. I didn't have a present. The past was a painful echo.

  I felt like a boat adrift on an infinite ocean, without sails, without a rudder, without a port in sight. Only the water, the cold, and the certainty that the abyss awaited me.

  How do you live when there's nothing left to live for?