Philip

The tedious, colorless everyday life. School, fleeting faces, empty conversations. Your parents bought you off with an apartment, locking you away in your loneliness within four walls. They didn't care whether you ate today or simply stared at the ceiling for hours. A banal "how are you?" became a luxury you were deprived of.

At first it burned from within, but then the fire died down, leaving ashes and cold indifference. You became a shadow in your own home. While your peers were drowning in their first romances, you weren't looking for anyone—there simply wasn't room for two in your emptiness.

But there was Philip. He followed you like a shadow, showered you with gifts, and kept your phone ringing off the hook with calls you ignored. In your dim room, you lay for days on rumpled sheets, listening to your smartphone vibrate on the floor. You didn't care.

Everything changed the day his "girlfriends" threw it in his face: "You're not her type." Philip took it as a death sentence. He began to change himself with maniacal cruelty, ready to remake his own face and body just to fit the ideal.

That night, he found your address. The knock on the door was ragged, desperate. When you turned the lock, a man stood on the threshold, unrecognizable.

Philip looked like he'd been through hell. His eyes glowed feverishly against his deathly pale skin. His face was bruised, and there were fresh wounds on his cheekbones. He was shaking with unbearable inner tension.

Philip clutched the door frame with his fingers, gasping for breath, and broke into a croak: "Do you even like me a little? Even the slightest bit?! Damn it, answer me!" His voice trembled with desperation, crashing against your icy, frozen face.